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Plaintiffs From Seven States Sue Comcast For Misleading, Hidden Fees (dslreports.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from DSLReports: Back in 2013 Comcast began charging customers what it called the "Broadcast TV Fee." The fee, which began at $1.25 per month, has jumped to $6.50 (depending on your market) in just three years. As consumers began to complain about yet another glorified rate hike, the company in 2014 issued a statement proclaiming it was simply being "transparent," and passing on the cost of soaring programmer retransmission fees on to consumers. There's several problems with Comcast's explanation. One, however pricey broadcaster retransmission fees have become (and keep in mind Comcast is a broadcaster), programming costs are simply the cost of doing business for a cable company, and should be included in the overall price. Comcast doesn't include this fee in the overall price because sticking it below the line let's the company falsely advertise a lower rate. Inspired by the banking sector, this misleading practice has now become commonplace in the broadband and cable industry. Whether it's CenturyLink's $2 per month "Internet Cost Recovery Fee" or Fairpoint's $3 per month "Broadband Cost Recovery Fee," these fees are utterly nonsensical, and inarguably false advertising. And while the FCC can't be bothered to take aim at such misleading business practices, Federal class action lawsuit filed this week in California is trying to hold Comcast accountable for the practice. Plaintiffs from seven states -- including New Jersey, Illinois, California, Washington, Colorado, Florida and Ohio -- have sued Comcast alleging consumer fraud, unfair competition, unjust enrichment and breach of contract. What's more, the fee has consistently skyrocketed, notes the lawsuit. Comcast initially charged $1.50 when the fee first appeared back in 2013, but now charges upwards of $6.50 more per month in many markets -- a 333% increase in just three years.
Based on what I've seen in other cases, it seems to me like those fees are broken out so that a finger can be pointed at someone else and used for leverage. In other words, "Don't like that cost? It's all the FCC's fault", or something like that.
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Let's be clear, all these fees exist as a way to hide the true cost of the service.
One that irritated me a lot was paying a property tax fee for a rental car at DFW airport. Why is this so bad? Because, had I not rented the car, the company would have still been required to pay that property tax. In other words, the tax wasn't directly tied to my rental of the vehicle. Why not charge a fee for the property taxes on their HQ? Or charge a fee for the salaries of the employee who checked me in and gave me the car keys?
Taken further, every service is going to cost 1 cent and the rest will be "fees and taxes". Perhaps at that point the FTC might step in?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Just wait for the junk like DNS, DHCP, etc server fees on HSI.
And they will say you must pay for them even if you use your own DNS or even have static ip.
Right now they force people with static ip to rent there hardware + pay the static IP fees.
Now if they move to IPTV will they force an HSI gateway on people and make tv only subs pay for HSI to get TV?
GAS stations show the full price why can't comcast?
CenturyLink just increased my $1.99 per month "Internet Cost Recovery Fee" to $3.99.
I grilled the rep trying to retain me about why this wasn't just a cost item, and should be part of the fee. But that's the wrong thing to do. The sales schelps are just doing a job. They neither know or care about the issue, they just want to hit their targets.
I'll let them know with my wallet next week when i cancel. And continue the round robin between the two carriers here. I'm not very interested in satellite, so two is the number.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
That makes Comcast qualified for Vice President.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm amazed there's no you-can't-sue-you-have-to-go-to-brinding-arbitration clause.
Bark less. Wag more.
This is great. I can't wait til the obligatory settlement is approved and we get coupons or slightly reduced rates on additional services. They will settle, and whatever they pay out will not amount to much for the average consumer. Just like with Ticketmaster, where they got off with only having to give out some tickets to events of their choosing, many of which would have gone unsold anyway, and many consumers who were wronged got absolutely nothing. Unfortunately the only way to truly make things right and punish shitty companies is to file your own suit, spend a ton of money on it, and take them to trial.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
You'd think stations would be happy Comcast et al. rebroadcast their content as their commercials reach more people. More people watching means higher advertising revenue. But no, these stations also get their rebroadcast fee too. How irritating.
GAS stations show the full price why can't comcast?
Uh, GAS stations can be bullshit artists too.
Dunno how many times I've seen an advertised price for gas that turned out to be the cash price, with any other form of payment coming out 10 cents more per gallon. And naturally this is not advertised clearly every time; you usually have to read the fine print on the pump itself to understand why the pump price is suddenly "wrong".
So don't believe their fake arguments about regulatory costs.
It costs much much less in places with a lot more regulation.
Of course, those places don't overpay the top execs ....
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Ship something by UPS and there's often more in additional fees than the actual delivery charge. There's also no collusion between them and Fedex. They just coincidentally raise their prices and restructure fees the same amounts and the same ways at the same time every year.
That's nothing. There's one gas station that I pulled into while running low on fuel that advertised one price, and when I looked more closely, it was a dollar more per gallon for using a credit card. I drove on and risked running out of gas just to avoid rewarding them for such egregious abuse.
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It's just small monthly fees.
TV Fee: 39.95
Fee Payment Fee: 1.50
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee 1.25
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee Levy: 1.25
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee Surcharge 1.25
Fee Payment Fee Recovery Fee Premium 0.25
Equipment Fee: 9.95
Equipment Fee Recovery Fee: 0.25
Equipment Fee Insurance Fee: 0.25
Government Fee: 0.25
Credit Card Payment Fee: 0.25
Non Cash Payment Fee: 0.25
Late Payment Fee: 0.25
Early Payment Fee: 0.25
And people wonder why cable TV is dying...
I have only seen that for diesel. Truck tanks large enough to reward for cash purchases.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
sounds like a tax, doesn't it? It's suppose to. It's on my T-Mobile bill and it's a fee T-Mobile tacks on because they can and because they know most rubes will blame the gov't.
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There is no inflation! There is no inflation !!!!! Give the seniors a .031 increase in Social security checks while Comcast raises a price 333% in three years.
Then base the inflation rate with gasoline as a factor but only when gas prices go down. When gas prices go up make certain that they are not part of the index. Anyone feeling a bit screwed by all of this?
I would have at least put a gallon in, to assure myself that I would make it to a better station. They probably make less money when you only put a small amount of gas in, because of fixed costs of the transaction.
In that case, they are charging you extra for something that actually costs them extra. The credit card companies actually do take a percentage of what you pay for themselves, they just hide the umbrella by charging it to the merchant rather than the cardholder.
The real problem fees are the ones like Comcast hides that you will never not be charged.
It is eminently fair and proper for a company to. Break out costs they have no control over.
Freight companies, taxi cabs, and airlines all imposed 'fuel surcharges' when the cost of fuels skyrocketed up 100%+ a few years ago.
Ken
A higher price for credit purchases of gas is extremely common in the US, I don't know of any gas station that charges the same price for cash or credit. See, the margin on gas for the station owner is tiny, and giving the credit card processor 2-3% of each gallon sold wipes out a big part, if not all, the profit in a gallon of gas.
The 3% a credit card processor charges comes out to about 6 cents/gal at current prices - and that's fairly typical for the spread between cash and credit prices on gasoline.
Ken