Slashdot Mirror
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.
Remember the bit about "non-violent offenders (thieves) shouldn't be jailed"? Already applies to white-collar crime.
Since we aren't allowed to go all frontier justice on lowlifes, modern society's best bet is preventative: avoid high-crime cities/neighborhoods, don't subscribe to cable, and avoid anything else that asks you put a lot of cash down up front (e.g., timeshares).
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You want to stop white collar crime? Start fucking shooting CEOs, lawyers, and politicians ... they're the real fucking crooks.
Whooo whooo whooo. . . bullets cost money. . . . . . how about a white collar battle royale?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
and I was modded down.
So I guess you don't get to hear my story.
Aw, I'm sure it was a great one too.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Yep, even worse I end up getting stuck paying it even though I'm not even using the cable TV because I'm using the "Broadcast TV" for free over the air instead of their degraded quality re-broadcast version. Why in the hell would I do that? Because internet plus useless TV is cheaper than just internet. Even with the fees.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Uhh, no. The cable TV company has many purposes. The initial purpose was to be a community antenna system -- which meant it served to carry the signals from broadcast stations to people who could not or did not want to install their own antennas. In those days, the broadcast stations were crying for a regulation called "must carry", which meant that a cable system MUST carry a broadcast station in their area. This was designed to remove the power to limit broadcasters reaching audiences. (If a cable system serving a large area chose not to carry your station, you lost viewership because cable customers are less likely to bother with antennas to get your station.) "Must carry" included a "at no cost to the cable company" clause, so any broadcaster invoking "must carry" could not be paid for the content.
Eventually, satellite-delivered services became the majority of cable TV programming. This is now a large part of the cable purpose.
To say that the sole purpose of cable TV is to broadcast TV is simply ridiculous. Cable TV has never been a broadcast service, and it has no "sole" purpose.
"having a 'broadcast TV fee' on top of it's existing fee"
You don't understand the purpose of the broadcast fee. It is not a fee for delivering cable programming to you. It is a fee that pays the broadcast stations that have chosen to opt out of the "must carry" rule and instead choose to charge the cable company for the privilege of carrying their content. It is a fee paid to the broadcast stations, passed along to the cable subscriber. The cable companies managed to get rules in place to make that fee visible to the consumer so they would know how much the local broadcasters are charging, instead of simply hiding it in the regular service fee.
It's politics. Whenever a broadcast station tries to up the fees or get contract language that the cable operator will not agree to, you will often see a crawl on that channel saying "Call station XYZ at (123) 456-7890 and tell them you want them to be carried on your Comcast service", or words like that. By putting the broadcast fees as a line item, people can see just how much they are being required to pay for "free" broadcast TV on the cable system, and induce them to side with the cable company in the contract battle.