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Overbilled Customer Sues Time Warner Cable For False Advertising
An anonymous reader writes According to a lawsuit filed Friday in a New York court, when Jeremy Zielinski signed up for Time Warner Internet service after seeing an ad that it was $34.99 a month, he didn't expect his first bill to be more than $94. He didn't expect he'd have to fight for weeks to resolve it. And he didn't expect that, Time Warner's next step would be to sell him faster speeds, not bother to tell him his modem couldn't handle them, send him a bill anyway, then demand that he drive to the local office at his own expense to get a compatible modem. So he's taking the cable giant to court, accusing it of false advertising and deceptive business practices. While a lone individual fighting in court against the second largest cable company in the world certainly doesn't have the odds in his favor, this could get interesting. According to the complaint, he opted out of TWC's binding arbitration clause a few days after he opened his account, so he might have a shot of keeping this issue in real court. Stay tuned for more.
and it sounds like a heard of lawyers heading his way...
If you are in manufacturing and you sell dodgy products to an OEM, who then sells it to a customer, expect a hefty warranty claim when it all goes wrong.
I hope he does well.
I don't know why big companies just can't do what they say they're going to do. I just bought an iPhone 6 Plus from AT&T, and they promised a $200 buyback for the iPhone 4 if the purchase was made by Sept. 30. After they sent me the phone, they sent me a follow-up e-mail with a code for the iPhone 4, but the buyback value was only $100 with that code. So I had to call customer service, and they told me I had to go to the nearest AT&T store to get it straightened out. The nearest store is 30 miles from my house. Thankfully it's between my work & home IF I take an alternate, longer route. The guy at the store knew exactly what I was talking about when I got there and they were able to get me squared away without too much problem. I'm guessing they wanted to see how many people would just shrug and take a $100 hit.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I noticed a $10 line item on a recent TWC bill for "Home WIFI." I went through the chat option on their website to inquire what this was, and how TWC might think it is provisioning wifi in my home despite my owning my own cable modem and WAP. They told me that they could remove the line item, but that wifi would no longer work in my home. Laughable nonsense. I called their bluff and my bill dropped $10. I wish I had saved a transcript of that chat. They prey on people who don't know any better.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
No notice or explanation either.
I sincerely hope he wins!
Big corporations constantly take advantage of the 'little guy' and there is little incentive for them to stop.
For example, if a company makes an extra $1 million a year by engaging in sleazy (illegal/immoral) business practice, and pays $100,000 in fines/restitution, then the activity - from a business perspective - is considered 'good business' because the company profited $900,000.
The $100,000 is seen as a sort of 'criminal tax' or cost of doing business.
CEO's of large corporations are _expected_ to make these sort of decisions if they want to keep their job. It's all about paying shareholders; not providing quality products or services to the customers.
The only way the company really gets hurt is if there is a successful lawsuit or a plethora of bad publicity. Of course, many companies have slush funds put aside to take care of these sort of 'problems'.
Corporations get away with way too much!
For once it would be nice to see David beat Goliath.
Like I said, I hope he wins!
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
It's too bad this plaintiff will have a difficult time outlasting the cable giant's efforts at playing lawsuit.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
If you can get fined millions of dollars for stealing a 5 cent mp3, then certainly overcharging someone in the range of ~$100 is bound to bring in Billions of dollars in damages.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Comcast offered a $50 cash card if we signed up for internet service with them. We signed up in May, and the card never came. We called and they denied that they ever offered the card. A few more calls later, they agreed that they offered it and said they would send it. It never came. Last month, five months, a final call was made and the card arrived.
Clearly they have a strategy of screwing customers, either through intentional scripting or extreme negligence.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
They're worse than Candiru. Always trying a new way to fuck you front and back.
How about we start fining these companies for billions of $ for customer maltreatment instead of the eternal slap on the wrist ?
Binding arbitration clauses should be illegal in contracts with utilities or what amounts to a utility, because you are effectively stripping a citizen's right to rectifying broken contracts via the justice system. This is no different than when a university/college insists a person who was raped or robbed by one of their star athletes go through their (totally impartial of course) mini-justice system rather than call real police.
Basic contract law says that agreements have to be fair and not one sided, and these increasingly long legalese to run a 0.99 app seems to violate that.
I hope this lawsuit is successful, encourages other lawsuits, and does not snowball into some shitty class action because sending out hundreds/thousands of lawyer teams will be a hell of a lot more expensive than a single one, regardless of outcome. Bleed this monstrous behemoth with a thousand cuts.
[...] the second largest cable company in the world [...]
There's (a huge part of) your problem right there.
Is there a class action possibility here? The exact same thing just happened to me in NYC, except rather than an "installation fee" I was charged a $9.99 shipping fee for an "upgraded modem," which the phone rep insisted was completely free and being offered to everyone in my neighborhood ("new rollout of improved service," naturally). I was sold a $34.99/month plan, but my first bill was for $39.99/month + $5.99/month modem lease. After hours on the phone, I was told that'd I'd be switched back to the $34.99 rate and that the $9.99 fee would be removed, but I won't believe it until I see my next bill...
When I previously signed up with TWC ( presently no longer with them ), I tried to opt out of the arbitration clause, and couldn't. I had no choice but to submit.
I'm curious as to if there will be a point where, in signing up for opt-in services like this, you either accept such stipulations, or your request for service is denied. I'd like to think there is some negotation, legallly for the customer, on this sort of thing, where such a scenario isn't allowed, but let's be real here. We're fighting Goliath. I also understand that from a business standpoint, it's bad form to strong arm your potential customers, but look at who we're talking about, and what industry. It also doesn't help that we're dealing with local monopolies.
Hoping this guy brings to light just what a lot of us know about TWC, and the industry in general. Add to it that it will hopefully be another nail in the TWC, Comcast coffin.
For starters he filled his complaint with a bunch of throwaway lines that seem aimed at impressing the /. crowd but which are not relevant to his case and run the risk of annoying the Judge:
"Browsing through the TWC website, Plaintiff encountered an advertisement for a "Standard" Internet access line. While the rest of the modern world, and even otherwise-third world countries, enjoy substantially faster and better-value Internet access lines" <--- Not relevant and inflammatory
"After logging in, Plaintiff was able to view an online statement for his account. Plaintiff expected as a result of the advertising that his bill would be $34.99, plus perhaps some small amount in taxes. To his shock, however, the bill was nearly three times that amount – it was $94.45. Although the Internet service was advertised at $34.99 per month, Plaintiff was billed $39.99 for it. There was an unexplained "Internet modem lease" fee of $5.99 added to the bill, and an "Internet, Install service" fee of $47.99 added as well. The bill also included charges for services not yet rendered." <--- Month ahead billing is a standard practice in many industries, ranging from real estate (rent is due on the 1st, not the 31st) to telecommunications. This claim will fail.
He did have valid claims about the unadvertised install fee and price difference of $5/mo but by his own admission TWC waived the former fee while putting him on a $20/mo plan. He therefore he has no cause of action on either of these complaints. They will be disposed of with a simple motion to dismiss by the defendant, without ever being litigated. His complaint about not receiving promised speeds will fail, since the DOCSIS 2 modem they provided him with is theoretically capable of delivering the 20/2 speed he subscribed to; also, by his own admission he signed up for an "up to" service. The only complaint that may succeed is related to TWC's advertised list of "approved" modems, though I doubt very much a State Court is going to wade into such technical matters.
Disclaimer: I have no lost love for TWC and certainly have shared his aggravation when I've had the misfortune of dealing with them. In this case though? His own complaint tells me they made a good faith effort to resolve these issues. It was certainly aggravating for him but aggravation is not a cause of action in our legal system. TWC could win the majority of these points without even filing a response, based solely off what the plaintiff writes in his complaint.
His case is so thin that TWC could probably win a motion for court costs; I highly doubt they'll do that, the negative press would outweigh anything they'd gain, but they could if they were so inclined. This will end with TWC offering a settlement and writing it off as a public relations expense. If he refuses the settlement he'll look that much worse in the eyes of the Judge; Judges hate litigants who reject reasonable settlements.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Reminds me of a character in a Douglas Adams novel who contemplated suing the CIA until a lawyer friend of his advised him that would be like "attacking a lunatic asylum with a banana".
Breaking up the cable companies probably wouldn't do much without a new technology introduction. Break up of AT&T worked in retrospect because of advances in cell phone transmission, a leapfrog technology. Otherwise the Baby Bells would have still owned the local cable (like Fairpoint in New England).
I despise so much about Comcast. They have tech support / sales entertwined... Phone support techs in faraway lands read scripted lines like "your modem is at end-of-life". The "tech's" only knowledge of my modem is that it isn't rented from Comcast, can't tell me anything else? C'mon Tech Supporter! ...If you know it's "end of life" you must know when I bought it and must know what it is, right..? Ohhh... All you know is there's no monthly rent charge? Unfortunately, for now it's the fastest and cheapest bandwidth I can get. No other company is going to run a cable to my house. I doubt making "Baby Comcast/TWC" changes that. There has to be a technical advance, probably via satellite service. When Direct TV can compete technologically, cable will play nice.
Gently reply
I love Fact #5, pointing out lack of options and competition:
"5. On or about June 18, 2014 Plaintiff moved into a new apartment in Watervliet,
NY. Like many consumers who live in areas lacking any real broadband Internet access line
provider competition, for Plaintiff, defendant TWC is the only provider of high-speed Internet
access lines at his address."
I had TV from Time Warner for 7 years. During that time I never once received a bill for the same amount 2 months in a row. Always a few pennies more. Either it is corporate policy to steal a bit from each customer or they don't know how to count. They are really trying to rival AT&T as the most dishonest company in American history.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
This should be a class action lawsuit. I have no doubt thousands of people feel the same way and have been dealt with similarly.
These companies depend on what's might be called a hassle factor. They claim one thing but do another, assuming that they'll come out ahead since most people, unlike this Jeremy, won't deal with the hassle of fighting them. It'd be even better if this dispute became a class action lawsuit, since then the payout would be in the millions.
Here's a fact you might want to consider. Why is it that some many of the most hated and worst behaved businesses in the country are the ones most regulated by federal, state and local agencies? That applies to both cable companies (as here) and cellular companies.
My hunch is that two factors are at play.
1. The regulators don't work for the public. They only pretend to do so. They mostly serve the politicians who fund their agencies and those politicians are beholden to corporate donations. The more regulated a business is, the more money it pours into paying off politicians,.
2. Regulating an industry creates a very high barrier to entry, making it hard for real competition to develop. As bad the service that Time-Warner might provide, most consumers don't have an option. They're stuck with false advertising, lousy service and high prices.
In Seattle, for instance, I had only one real option for broadband, Comcast. In the college town where I live, I have two. It's not perfect, but when Charter refused to be flexible and raised my rates, I went with Wow!, which gave me more options and a far better price. I now have two buried broadband cables running to my distribution box. If one doesn't treat me right, I can go with the other.
Not with Internet, but with regards to cable service - I called around a couple of years ago to TW, Dish, DirectTV (the providers in my area). Dish and DirectTV were able to tell me exactly what my costs would be Time Warner was advertising it's "First year for $X.xx" plan - so I asked them what I thought would be a simple math question - "What is my bill going to be after the yearly promotion ends?" The answer, "We can't tell you that." (that's a direct quote). So I further inquired as to why they couldn't tell me - and the answers varied between "We don't know" to "We can't tell you". Guess who didn't get our business.
Whether it be poorly trained customer service reps, or actual business practice remains to be seen - but when you can't quote me a price for a service you want to sell me - I have an issue with that.
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
Is this not the very definition of deceptive business practices? There are supposedly laws against it.
will be fired just like what comcast did to the guy that they missed bill and tryed to
he should TOTALLY open a kickstarter to fund his suit. i would without hesitation, donate, as i suspect, 99%+ of all past-or-current Time warner customers.
to buy lawmakers and "lobbyists". Where is the anti-rebate money going to come from? Exactly.
This guy is going to need some $$ for court fees. If there ever was a time to crowd source something this is it. Taking on these large corporations is the only way things will improve. I sure hope he doesn't settle out of court. It would be nice to see one of these go through the whole court system.
Canceled Comcast internet and got a letter in the mail a few weeks later saying they were withholding my prorated refund check until I returned their modem. I have never own one of their modems and have never been billed for one of their modems. That took 2 hours on the phone to get straight.
Time Warner is famous for this kind of thing in other cities too. I'm glad someone decided to sue.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...is that TWC will remove the ability for anyone to opt-out of binding arbitration.
companies such as Virgin, Talktalk and Sky run ads which claim like £8 a month for ubercahunadogsbollocksbroadband, and if you're paying attention there's a smallprint flash at the bottom of the screen that indicates that this is on top of line rental at £15/mo and a phone number at £19/mo. Unfortunately for us, that flash is enough to get out of false advertising claims (which is why they did it, but still they push the ubercahunadogsbollocksbroadband deal).
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Fucking A......Where is the kickstarter for this dude????
Fucking A......$0.99 a day streaming of the proceedings where do I sign up?
Fucking A......TWC: "But Your Honor, when we say unlimited for $34.99, we don't really mean unlimited and we don't really mean $34.99"
"While a lone individual fighting in court against the second largest cable company in the world certainly doesn't have the odds in his favor"
So "And liberty and JUSTICE" for all is meaningless? then why are our children forced to say the pledge everyday at school? It should be changed to
And liberty and Justice for theses who can afford it!!!
Because Money will be the only thing standing in his way to "Cough" Justice.
Jack of all trades,master of none
I have to fight with Time Warner each year to keep my internet price below fifty dollars per month. They must've forgotten to apply the "special" price to this guy's account. Every year they jack up the price without notice, (usually to about ninety-something dollars), and when I call, I'm told that the old price was a "special" price. Then I have to spend a couple of hours on the phone getting the "special" price again. I actually had to cancel my service one time to get them to give me that "special" price. Of course, the most frustrating part is you have no one else to go to - it's Time Warner, or nothing. Meanwhile, my friends overseas are getting massive speeds for about the same money.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
he really doesn't have a leg to stand on. he's just pissing into the wind.
twc can limit which non-twc modems are supported on their network. period. there's too many of them and each has their own firmware that no company can support all of them. hell, charter doesn't always activate customer-owned modems anymore. you have to get theirs -which is why we have never upgraded our speed or plan, and live with 15meg docsis 2 speed instead of the 30meg we *could* (its what we pay for) get if we got a new (theirs) docsis 3 modem.
why the hell would the idiot agree to buying a speed upgrade when he's having issues with the bill. what a fucking moron. going to the office to swap his docsis 2 modem for a docsis 3 modem in order to support that upgrade is perfectly reasonable.
the complaint is lacking one big huge detail, the advertisement that supposedly the guy originally responded to--including all of its fine print. which would have disclaimers and links to policies and terms (it was their web site afterall, all that shit is there).
my guess, the guy's a prick, was a prick to twc on the phone, which is why the account issues weren't settled on the initial call. he pissed and moaned all the way up the chain of command until twc gave him a 19.99+5.99 promo -- should have stopped right there, yet the fucking prick still filed a complaint that will eventually get tossed out
You know its funny it seems like there ought to be a laws against fraud somewhere.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
On a side note I think I may have handled one of your calls, defiantly handled a few with missing $50 cards.
I was a contractor in modem support nothing I could do but forward to the Tier agents with mandated minimal communication (though that rule has since changed). Let me tell you those Tier agents are not the best and brightest out there but generally speaking anything beyond basic account operations required an esoteric form hidden somewhere in a maze of "Interactive Troubleshooting Guides", my guess is that after giving up they probably just chucked the card request in the comments and flagged the ticket for further review, rinse repeat until somebody who knows what's going on gets served your call and there you go.
Cable pricing has always been a joke. The "discounted" rates are the real prices, but they obnoxiously make it sound like you're getting a deal and reserve the right to up the price to the "full" price after the first however many months... at which point you just call them and ask to be switched back to the real price.
This is basically what happened in Canada. Here's my only problem. Since they are in charge of the last mile, when something goes wrong with the lines, they prioritize based on who is their customer. The only way the other ISPs can communicate with them is via email , and they can't really do too much if the big boys are being slow about fixing the problem. This is why the lines should be taken back, and managed by an impartial third party, who's only job it is to manage the lines, and isn't involved in selling internet service.
The situation here in the US after a similar arrangement was required by the Telecom Act of 1996 was even worse: the incumbent local exchange carriers (who owned the last mile drop) were required to resell access to CLECs, and the trouble resolution system was even worse: they (the ILECs) required trouble tickets on re-sold lines to be submitted via fax, rather than a computerized ticketing system . You can just imagine the nightmares the customers suffering from outages faced. They'd call their ILEC they were (not ;-) getting service from, but all the ILEC could do was to submit ticket queries via fax. The ILEC's met the letter of the law, but gave the finger to the spirit of it.
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
Some places will only show prices *AFTER* rebate without specifying what the rebate quantity is. This is especially prevalent in paper ads, requiring you to research via the company's website what the actual base price of the item is. It is not a huge problem if you have internet access and are savvy, but tens of millions of consumers aren't. With that in mind clear standards for acceptable advertising practices should be enforced to ensure that both consumers and competitors are getting a fair comparison instead of all these shifty not quite what you assumed BS.
When you can find a pricing table, which I did a couple of years ago for COMCAST in Seattle. I discovered the lowest rate was $20 a month less than ANY other rate. I think it may have been accessed with the link "Click here for our 'Ebola, HIV, Syphilis, Leprosy, Firday the 13th, get shot in the face' plan".
Chances are it was the Comcast Essentials plan which you can't get unless you're on welfare and have kids who get free school lunch. Part of Comcast's deal to buy NBCUniversal was they had to offer "affordable" services to low and no income families, so they made Comcast Essentials. For $10 or so per month you get whopping 1Mbps internet, but you have to be on food stamps with kids who get free lunch (and prove it) to qualify.
You can tell. The complaint was written by a whiny little twit. No attorney worth anything would put their name on such drivel.
In 2008, banks arranged bank failures that caused job loss. That allowed companies to fire 10% of their staff and make the other 90% do the work because the 90% were afraid they would lose their jobs, also.
People are so overworked that they don't feel they have time to investigate over-billing. Companies take advantage of that by being as difficult as possible. It's deliberate dishonesty and becoming a standard way U.S. companies do business.
(I imagine that English is a 2nd language for the parent commenter.)
Wait, so this dumbass thought 34.99 for the the internet service was all inclusive? At what point in the entire history of cable companies have installation and equipment not come at extra cost? At what point in the history of any teleco service have those things been free? Good luck explaining to a jury that you're so unbelievably naive that you thought that meant everything else would be free. I use TWC for internet and read the fine print. I saw that I was liable for an installation fee and a modem charge fee. I told them I didn't need a modem and bought a surfboard that was listed on their website as being ok to use with their service. The only thing I see they did was try to charge him 39.99 for a 34.99 service. Sounds like he just turned into a butt hurt baby and decided to get legal. While I hate TWC as a company and detest that I have to pay for service through them instead of having any kind of choice, I hope this guy just ends up having to pay them court costs and lawyer fees. There's nothing worse than some idiot seeing dollar signs when they get a little mad at a company.Hell go after them for claiming they have to charge you five bucks a month for Home Wifi Service when you have a wireless router. I had a CS rep tell me they were providing a wireless service through the cable and had to go three levels above her to stop it. Or any other number of legit reasons they suck as a company. Don't waste tax payer dollars taking up court time for your own stupidity and ignorance.