Comcast May Have Enrolled Thousands in a Near-Worthless Protection Program Without Their Consent (gizmodo.com)

Comcast has been embroiled in a legal battle since 2016 regarding potentially deceptive business practices surrounding its "Service Protection Plan" -- a $6 a month program which covered almost nothing. But as an amended complaint recently filed by the Washington state attorney general alleges, Comcast didn't just dupe customers, it may have signed them up for the plan without their knowledge. From a report: You might expect such a plan to, uh, protect the service a customer is paying for, by decreasing or eliminating the cost of repairs in the event something goes haywire. Not so! The fine print of the program excludes in-wall wiring and some outdoor wiring. This led the attorney general to conclude that the plan "simply covers the technician visiting the customer's house and declaring that the customer's equipment is broken."

Comments

Job killng regulations!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

High time we stop government from engaging in such high handed tactics. The Constitution specifically prohibits the government taking property away from people without due process and compensation. Corporations are people. The contract they have with their customers is their property with great revenue potential. Government can not stop corporations from bilking their customers. It is against free markets.

Just get government off my back,( so that the corporations can stab me there without any impediment).

Re:I'm sure they did

[Anonymous Coward]

This has absolutely nothing to do with wealth inequality. This has everything to do with a corrupt business that can afford to be caught performing deceptive or downright fraudulent charges because the fines do not outweigh the profits.

My wife, then going through law school, caught this charge on her first bill and challenged it with the regional manager. The manager literally said he couldn't find out how it go onto her bill (as-in, the system did not show an agent adding it) and claimed to have removed it. Whether that is true or not is anyone's guess given that it is Comcast. Low and behold, the next month rolls in and the fee was still there. Finally the next call and a more formal legal threat got it removed.

This is a problem with the complex systems that these massive businesses build to intentionally confuse their customers, which is completely accepted by the government that affords them their local monopolies, which leads to such things being "oops" moments until they're caught because the number that catch them are always lower than the number that do not. It's not generally because some lowly call center employee is adding these because they need to eat that night. The fact that you immediately blamed the working poor rather than the notoriously evil business is quite telling about your political spectrum and your intelligence.