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.

Comments

Good for him!

[XxtraLarGe]

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.

Comcast tried to steal $50 from me

[schlachter]

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.

Re:Comcast tried to steal $50 from me

[Solandri]

The *only* reason to offer some sort of price promotion later instead of just giving you the discount up front and making you sign a contract (even for three months of service) is so that they can roll the dice on customers signing up after being enticed by the promotion, and then not claiming the promotion. Rebates work the same way. Why is it that we can pass a thousand consumer protection laws about credit card interest rates and privacy disclosures, but can't just ban the blatant rip-off of rebate promotions?.

Actually, rebates serve two different purposes. It allows the manufacturer to pass along a price cut to the final buyer without affecting its contract pricing with distributors and retailers. And it allows manufacturers to make price cuts (sometimes rather large ones) without having all of the product bought up by middlemen - e.g. eBay resellers who quickly snap up all of the available inventory at the lower price and list it on eBay at close to the original price (rebates are typically limited to a certain number per household address).

The rebate companies hired by manufacturers to run the rebate programs work as you say. They get paid a lump sum by the manufacturer, and get to keep anything left over after paying out the rebates. So they have an incentive to stall, lose, and deny your rebates. But the reason rebates exist are legitimate and have nothing to do with ripping off consumers. In fact the second reason actually helps consumers (by cutting out flippers who drive up the price).

Re:TWC are (surprise, surprise) crooks and thieves

[JeffOwl]

How about a compromise? Make the last mile providers utilities and require them to allow other ISPs to sell on their infrastructure. Since the infrastructure in many areas was a government granted monopoly when it was put in, regulate the rates that they can charge ISPs, but let the ISPs compete on prices, speeds and features. I remember when DSL was this way and I thought it worked pretty well.

Comcast tried to bill me for my own modem

[watermark]

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.

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