Slashdot Mirror
Washington State Sues Comcast For $100M Over 'Pattern of Deceptive Practices' (komonews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Washington State has filed a lawsuit against Comcast to the sum of $100 million, accusing Comcast of "engaging in a pattern of deceptive practices." It claims that Comcast's documents reveal a pattern of illegally deceiving its own customers for profit. KOMO News reports: "The lawsuit (PDF) alleges more than 1.8 million individual violations of the Washington Consumer Protection Act. The Attorney General's Office says 500,000 Washington consumers were affected. The lawsuit also accuses Comcast of violating the Consumer Protection Act to all of its nearly 1.2 million Washington subscribers due to its deceptive 'Comcast Guarantee,' Ferguson said. The lawsuit accuses Comcast of misleading 500,000 Washington consumers and deceiving them into paying at least $73 million in subscription fees over the last five years for what the attorney general says is a a near-worthless protection plan. Customers who sign up for Comcast's Service Protection Plan pay a $4.99 monthly fee to avoid being charged if a Comcast technician visits their home. But the plan did not cover wiring inside a wall, the lawsuit says. The Attorney General Office says 75 percent of the time, customers who contacted Comcast were told the plan covered inside wiring. Customer service scripts, which the Attorney General's Office said it obtained during its investigation, told Comcast representatives to say that the plan covers calls 'related to inside wiring' and 'wiring inside your home.'" According to KOMO News, the lawsuit is seeking more than $73 million in restitution to pay back Service Protection Plan subscriber payments; full restitution for all service calls that applied an improper resolution code, estimated to be at least $1 million; removal of improper credit checks from the credit reports of more than 6,000 customers; up to $2,000 per violation of the Consumer Protection Act; and that Comcast clearly disclose the limitations of its Service Protection Plan in advertising and through its representatives, correct improper service codes that should not be chargeable and implement a compliance procedure for improper customer credit checks.
Don't most large companies just budget for this amount as a lawsuit settlement fund for any new initiative? Seems like pocket change for most big guys, especially since they probably have billions in liability insurance stashed away for just such a purpose...
Who buys protection plans for a service? If the service doesn't work, Comcast needs to fix it on THEIR dime, or the service gets cancelled. After all, their dime is YOUR dime, because you are paying a monthly fee for the service.
Without punitive damages (loss of right of ways, permission to do business) they will laugh this off and keep right on going.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Nice to see some real money for these violations. $100M certainly wont bankrupt Comcast, but hopefully it will make them sit up and take notice.
The Comcasts of the world are the backbone of the U.S. economy, the job creators, shining examples of the free market at work. And yet again, we have government coming in to ride rough-shod over a company with a long history of innovation and customer service. If only there were a candidate who was a real leader when it came to business. Then we'd see things change for the better...
...OK. I give up. I can't type with a straight face anymore.
Where I live in Seattle, they provide service to the other side of the street, but not to mine. The city has blocked them from digging and adding new pedestals, so they can't. Since there's no fine for not offering service, it's cheaper for them to just lose the profit from the ~20 houses than it is to fight the city. Comcast needs to start being fined so they have an incentive to fight to provide service. CenturyLink has the same problem so they haven't been able to upgrade to higher than 1.5 Mbps DSL on my street.
You want the city to force Comcast to fight the city to provide service that the city won't allow them to provide?
Is this some sort of job creation program for lawyers?
Why oh, why every single effing company in this whole wide world is doing the very same mistake over and over again? Are terms of service and the education of sales and service people so impossibly difficult in every single country this has happened?
"So, for just $4.99 per month, you get peace of mind knowing that you won't be charged for a service call."
"So if the service I pay you for doesn't work, you'll charge me to fix it unless I pay you even more every month?"
"Er, um, no, your normal monthly charge does not include service calls. That's an extra charge that you can avoid for only $4.99/month!"
"You mean that if your service doesn't work, you'll charge me for the service that you're not providing and then you'll charge me again to restore the service?"
"Exactly! Wait, no, that would be insane. We would only charge you for a service call if there is a problem with your house wiring, which is up to you to maintain."
"So for $4.99 per month, you'll maintain my house wiring in addition to your equipment?"
"Well, no, um, but, well, I guess? I don't see what else we could be charging you for."
Sorry it isn't convenient for you to have various companies tear up OUR streets so you can get your 1gpbs fiber. If you want it so badly, move. Leave my streets alone.
Places should not be able to hide under fine print & a system of contractors / sub contractors.
It's seems like reps where saying one thing but the fine print stated something different. Now maybe when it's 1-2 reps the company should not take full responsibility but when it's poor training / a big hit your sales numbers or your out push / miss leading scripts and or sales pitches then company needs to take responsibility.
Also 200 fix codes just shows how messed Comcast's back end is and how easy it is for a tech to pick the wrong ones.
Now the AG needs to also sue comcast contractors / sub contractors just they can't pin the blame on them or say we did not do that but jay's cable service llc did it / get there documents under discovery.
$2,000 per violation of the Consumer Protection Act. Shouldn't that be more like $2,000,000 per violation?
That's not much of an incentive to keep companies from screwing customers.
The correct amount is that which will depress the stock value. Only then will the investors take action to purge management of the vermin that infests it now.
$100 million or a $1 Billion, whatever it takes.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You literally have a stadium named after Comcast's competitor in Seattle... How do they have a city-granted monopoly?
If you need to tear up the streets to lay a bit of extra fiber, I suspect you have some really odd streets ...
If the corporation has rights and is considered a entity, can't the state declare that the entity has revealed itself to be a habitual violator and undesirable corporate citizen and remove its' utility protections ? Systemic violation and internal documentation that enforces unfair/illegal practices should be rewarded with 'shunning'
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The interesting side is believing some story that the city won't allow them. Everytime I've encountered that story it generally of the order of "the city wouldn't let us install a pedestal that electrocuted anyone that touched it" or "the city wouldn't let me drape a cable across the pavement" or some other equally asinine reason. The city wants Comcast to provide service, but just like any other entity they have to comply with the laws. Typically what happens is that Comcast decides complying with city ordinances, the same ones everyone else has to comply with is too hard and that they need to change.
It's a bunch of hogwash, the real reason Comcast doesn't provide service to that street is likely every building on it has signed exclusive agreements with centurylink, which would be the reason the DSL speed is so shitty, why upgrade when you can just pay the landlords money to exclude the competition. Then when someone calls to complain do the typical and blame the local government.
Dayum, you sound like our Prime Minister - http://www.news.com.au/technol... Just a reminder that he is the one responsible for changing the planned national rollout of 'fibre to everywhere possible + wireless & satellite where not' to 'whatever old tech we find and throw at the wall'.
I had ISDN in 1998 (in Edmonds to connect to my servers in the Westin Building) but is that still a thing except for 23B1D DS1 circuits for office phones? Maybe some uses in broadcast radio RPU setups, but really? Are you using a 2B1D 128Kb/s line?
I just hope that you five developers are using terminal SSH to "develop" with. Otherwise your live is hell.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Otherwise known as business - why single Comcast out?
Requiem for the American Dream
I remember calling BS on this when I had Comcast Comcast is a bad actor.
Big pharma is just buffering up the cash to deal with the inevitable 1-800-BAD-DRUG lawyers and class action suits. I'm pretty certain they'll cure cancer but the cure may cause ouchy hangnails in 0.0001% of patients, and 1-800-BAD-DRUG will put them out of business.
With modern equipment, they don't need to tear up the roads. I guess they're called horizontal drills. They used them all around my city. Not even traffic interruption while running lines under the road.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Comcast failed to install Internet for 10 months then demanded $60,000 in fees
Bet this guy wishes he had paid Comcast's paltry $500/month "we won't sue you after we fuck you over" protection fee. They don't push that one quite so heavily. You have to know and ask about a special promotion code.
The state AG announced the lawsuit the day before the primary election. Bob's definitely looking to make friends!