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The Lies Comcast Allegedly Told Customers To Hide Full Cost of Service (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A new lawsuit filed against Comcast details an extensive list of lies the cable company allegedly told customers in order to hide the full cost of service. Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson sued Comcast in Hennepin County District Court on December 21, seeking refunds for all customers who were harmed by Comcast's alleged violations of the state's Prevention of Consumer Fraud Act and Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The complaint alleges, among other things, that Comcast reps falsely told customers that the company's "Regional Sports Network (RSN)" and "Broadcast TV" fees were mandated by the government and not controlled by Comcast itself. These two fees, which are not included in Comcast's advertised rates, have gone up steadily and now total $18.25 a month.
Comcast has responded to some lawsuits -- including this one -- by saying that the company had already stopped the practices that triggered the court actions. But Minnesota says that Comcast's lies about the sports and broadcast fees continued into 2017, which is after Comcast knew about identical allegations raised in a separate class action complaint filed in 2016. (That case was settled out of court.) When contacted by Ars, a Comcast spokesperson yesterday said that "our policy is to be very clear to our customers about the broadcast TV and RSN fees and [tell them] that these are not government-mandated fees." But employees make mistakes, the Comcast spokesperson said. "Employees may go off script and incorrectly characterize things, but that is not in line with our policy because [the broadcast TV and sports charges] are not government-mandated fees," Comcast said. According to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, Comcast agreed in November to pay $700,000 in refunds "and cancel debts for more than 20,000 Massachusetts customers" to settle allegations that it used deceptive advertising to promote long-term cable contracts.
Comcast has responded to some lawsuits -- including this one -- by saying that the company had already stopped the practices that triggered the court actions. But Minnesota says that Comcast's lies about the sports and broadcast fees continued into 2017, which is after Comcast knew about identical allegations raised in a separate class action complaint filed in 2016. (That case was settled out of court.) When contacted by Ars, a Comcast spokesperson yesterday said that "our policy is to be very clear to our customers about the broadcast TV and RSN fees and [tell them] that these are not government-mandated fees." But employees make mistakes, the Comcast spokesperson said. "Employees may go off script and incorrectly characterize things, but that is not in line with our policy because [the broadcast TV and sports charges] are not government-mandated fees," Comcast said. According to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, Comcast agreed in November to pay $700,000 in refunds "and cancel debts for more than 20,000 Massachusetts customers" to settle allegations that it used deceptive advertising to promote long-term cable contracts.
Is there no such thing as a corporate death penalty?
If any company has earned it, Comcast has.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
No one ever goes to jail.
and I was modded down.
So I guess you don't get to hear my story.
Fuck Comcast
Sure, all of these low-level Comcast employees just coincidentally lied to customers, thereby earning the top bosses at Comcast much more money. It's not like Comcast actually had a policy of lying to customers to bilk them out of more fees, right?
Comcast is evil.
I've complained about this for years. It's a line item on my T-Mobile bill specifically designed to make me think it's a tax. It was not disclosed when I switched carriers. It's not a tax. It's a fee T-Mobile charges, ostensibly to comply with regulations. You know, like every other bloody company on earth is required to
It's a cynical and immoral attempt to shift the blame for their high prices onto government taxes. As an added bonus it also undermines people's faith in government, which large corporations are happy to do since that discourages people from participating in Democracy, creating a power vacuum they can exploit for their own benefit.
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According to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, Comcast agreed in November to pay $700,000 in refunds "and cancel debts for more than 20,000 Massachusetts customers" to settle allegations that it used deceptive advertising to promote long-term cable contracts.
I am getting so sick of all these stupid settlements. For once, I just wish that our governments would see these lawsuits through to completion. Stop the settlements, where these corporate crooks get to say things like "Allegations were made...as redress for these grievances, Comcast agrees to..." nonsense. Get a judge to spell it out for them in just six simple letters: GUILTY. Once that's finally established, then we can really dig deep into their coffers and hit them with a financial judgement that has some teeth to it.
The trouble is that when an employer hires salespeople to sign up customers and offers them a financial incentive to sign-up as many people as possible, those sales people will do **whatever it takes** to sign-up as many people as possible even it means "making mistakes" along the way. Furthermore, the employer may suspect there are "mistakes" being made but since the sales staff is ultimately very successful at signing-up more and more customers which in turn brings in more and more revenue, they may turn a blind eye. Oopsy!
and they are running ad's saying ATT lies this way. While they do the same thing!
Comcast has responded to some lawsuits -- including this one -- by saying that the company had already stopped the practices that triggered the court actions.
Murder Suspect: "Yeah, I killed somebody once, but I'm not doing it any more, so you don't need to punish me."
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
But wait, AT&T does lie. So does that mean Comcast is right?
No wait that can't be, Comcast must be lying so that means AT&T doesn't lie. But I know AT&T lies!
Oh. . . my. . . god! Its all lies isn't it!
1. They will Overpromise.
2. They will Underdeliver.
3. They will Overcharge.
I have been dealing with Telcoms for decades now and this has always been my experience.
Corporatism != Free Market
To the people complaining that they were even allowed to settle? I think it really *is* an issue that the people hired to do customer support regularly go "off script" and say things that aren't true. And that's not something Comcast can really control 100%. Nobody pays much for labor for the telephone work, and people are gonna say whatever they can sneak past their supervisors if they think it'll get more sales and boost their metrics for a possible raise.
Comcast absolutely does suck. I'm a customer.... I know. But not everything is because corporate trains their people to lie to you.
Come on, Slashbots...gotta beat that net neutrality dead horse a few thousand more times.
They should have to change their name to concast
Even the print ad's hide the fees + others
airlines where foreced to show the full min price why can't hotels and cable co be forced to do the same?
They can do that because we consumers have very little recourse.
They are screwing you and you don't pay? Well, OFF to collections and your credit is dinged.
Sue? Nope! Binding arbitration with a panel stacked with industry insiders!
Just cancel and say, "Fuck it! As long as they are out of my life"? Nope. Off to the retention asshole who will harass you for an hour.
They could just rename those fees "Get fucked" and "Go fuck yourself" and it would amount to the same thing.
They are going to charge what they are going to charge.
So their punishment, is to return the money they stole. Truly, crime is the cost of corporations doing business.
If employees are given incentives to sign customers up to as many services as possible without monitoring, then management turning a blind eye to a bad practice may indeed be at play here.
Didn't Wells Fargo also initially blame the "surprise" fees on random rogue employees? Concast should know to inspect for such after Wells Fargo's "mistake" was revealed around 2012. They can no longer claim "we just didn't know" because Wells Fargo illustrated to the world the down-sides of un-monitored consumer sales incentives.
AT&T pulled that crap on us, signing us up to "phone insurance" among other weird fees without asking. When we pointed out the flaw, they were like, "Gee, how did that get on there? Somebody must have accidentally pressed the wrong button."
Yes the "Money Button".
Table-ized A.I.
Broadcast fees
Starlink and 1-web will have LOADS of new users when they hit America.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We where repeatedly told NOT to say anything like this, except for specific fees that AT&T was allowed to do this with. Very few are "mandated" to be charged back, but the feds do allow ones like "Universal Service Fund" to be passed along. Like, AT&T doesn't HAVE to, but they CAN; so they do. We had certain items they said are "required" like data for a "smart phone", although technically this isn't true but in practicality "average joe" customer would flip out once they got the first data bill "by the KB/MB", and the phone looses quite a bit of functionality keeping it all wifi only or whatever. But we had to make it VERY CLEAR that this was a "technical and contractual requirement of your phone".
People got fired very quickly if they tried anything like this; even the CWA union would say "your an idiot, goodbye" and not help you out. AT&T has a very nice "knowledge base" called "MyCSP" that pretty much has everything you ever need to say on any support call. Oddly enough, compared to other companies knowledge repositories and "how to documentation", MyCSP was one of the best I'd ever seen...and I've done tier 1 support for huge clients at HPE, IBM, MCI, and dozens of non-500 firms. HPSM (Hewlett Packard Service Mangler) made my soul bleed and cry myself to a alcohol-induced coma at night; it's "java-based fake web page" front end is the stuff of nightmares.
Seriously, there are SOOO many things wrong with internet in America. Expensive, and slow. Comcast, Century Link, ATT, Verizon, etc. ... NONE of them are worth a damn. The only one was Google and they stopped.
For those of you living with these nightmares, push your local gov to have an election to install fiber. Lots of cities around the nation have done this already.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Capitalism letting you down, all you need is more government !!
So they blamed employees huh! My bill went up by 20 dollars about a year ago. And it was printed right on my bill that my bill was going up by X amount (approx $20) because of mandatory broadcast payment fees.
;)
So I sure don't see how this could be spun as an employee training issue.
Just my 2 cents
Customers should not be so clueless about what there signing up for. Not just with Comcast, but anything you purchase, or sign up for as a service. I have been a Comcast customer for years, and while they are slippery in some of their charges. They do typically provide a written list of charges and fees. Its rather lengthy and probably confusing to some. I know for myself whenever I sign up for a new Comcast plan, they send me a itemized bill to approve before the plan goes into effect. It is either emailed, text or a verbal authorization. Not sticking up for Comcast, but in my experience with Comcast I have not had any recent issues with billing.
and "Broadcast TV" fees were mandated by the government and not controlled by Comcast itself. T
I still don't know how they have gotten away with this one for so long. A cable TV company... whose sole purpose is to broadcast TV... having a 'broadcast TV fee' on top of it's existing fee is like a gas station charging an extra 'petroleum pumping fee'.
This line is all too common, companies intentionally poorly train their employees or in some cases expect them to lie, because they know that most customers are equally unaware of the facts...
A good example of this is consumer protection laws in europe, which tend to be fairly strong and provide consumers with various rights for replacement of faulty goods, right to return etc. Under EU law for instance the warranty on goods is 2 years, not 1 as typically advertised by the manufacturers and any return shipping costs for faulty goods are the responsibility of the merchant not the end customer. Usually whoever you speak to first on the phone or in a store won't be aware of this, and will insist the warranty is only 1 year and you have to pay return shipping etc. This will usually fool most people, but if you demand to speak to a manager they will usually handle your complaint.
There should be laws on advertising however, any price displayed should be the price you pay - any non optional fees or taxes should be included in the advertised price.
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http://fuckyoucomcast.com
>> Comcast has responded to some lawsuits -- including this one -- by saying that the company had already stopped the practices that triggered the court actions
Well then.... Nothing should happen to me since I stopped murdering people once it was brought to my attention that I shouldn't do that.
Allegedly?
They didn't allegedly anything. It's a fact. They for a fact lied to us. I was told my bill would be $140 including my $50 opt-out fee for limited data cap. My bill is $180 before late fees.