FCC: Comcast Routinely Charges Customers For Hardware, Services Never Ordered
from the earning-your-awful-reputation dept
When you're among the worst ranked companies for customer service in America, you consistently need to find new ways to ramp up your game if you want to take malicious incompetence to the next level. Enter Comcast, which despite constant promises that it's getting better, routinely keeps finding itself in the headlines for immeasurably shady business practices. Earlier this year, for example, the company was sued by Washington's Attorney General for charging users a $5 per month "Service Protection Plan," then routinely and intentionally charging users for repairs that should have been covered under it.This week, America's least-liked companies is finding itself in the headlines for another misleading practice: errantly and routinely billing customers for hardware or services they never ordered. According to a new FCC announcement, Comcast will be paying the agency $2.3 million to settle an investigation into the behavior. According to the FCC, Comcast apparently likes to charge customers for premium cable channels, hardware, or other services the customer never ordered and may have expressly refused:
"The Commission received numerous complaints from consumers alleging that Comcast added charges to their bills for unordered services or products, such as premium channels, set-top boxes, or digital video recorders (DVRs). In some complaints, subscribers claimed that they were billed despite specifically declining service or equipment upgrades offered by Comcast. In others, customers claimed that they had no knowledge of the unauthorized charges until they received unordered equipment in the mail, obtained notifications of unrequested account changes by email, or conducted a review of their monthly bills."This being Comcast, the FCC notes that impacted customers had to spend "significant time and energy" removing the charges from their bills. After all, this is the company that routinely refuses to correct its own mistakes unless the practice in question gets significant media attention.
While not specifically mentioned in the FCC's announcement, Comcast also has a long, proud history of charging customers who own their own modem a $10 rental fee anyway. This has been a problem customers have faced for years, yet seems to never stop occurring no matter how many complaints or regulatory wrist slaps the cable giant receives. In this case, the FCC states the obvious:
"It is basic that a cable bill should include charges only for services and equipment ordered by the customer—nothing more and nothing less," said Travis LeBlanc, Chief of the Enforcement Bureau. "We expect all cable and phone companies to take responsibility for the accuracy of their bills and to ensure their customers have authorized any charges."The problem of course is that Comcast likely made significantly more than $2.3 million on this scheme. And the FCC may also want to hold off on the celebration; while the FCC did give Comcast a wrist slap in this instance, there's also a long-standing practice of Comcast and other ISPs and cable companies using misleading below-the-line fees to jack up the advertised rate of both TV and broadband services. And then there's the ongoing issue of Comcast's expanding and anti-competitive usage caps and overage fees, which nobody at the FCC seems all too concerned about.
So while it's good the FCC is cracking down on this kind of fraud, it's just tap dancing around the opening of a very deep, dark rabbit hole of dysfunction, one that has long-since passed from minor inconvenience into legend.
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Hit hard or don't bother
Until the fines at the very least equal the amount the company made from screwing over their customers the only message those fines send is 'Hosing over your customers is and will remain highly profitable, even if you get caught doing it.'
Pathetic fines are quite possibly worse than no fines at all because they remove the uncertainty that might keep a company in check. If a company has to worry about a potentially devastating fine for crossing the line then they might restrain themselves from doing so blatantly, but when they know that the worst they will face is a laughable fine that might end up costing them 5-10% of what they gained then that restraint goes out the window as there's essentially no risk, but plenty of reward to act as incentive.
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Re: Hit hard or don't bother
Not only that, but this is again a SETTLEMENT to end the INVESTIGATION. Paying a token amount so no one finds out how bad/widespread/egregious the offense actually was. That, as much as bribery, should be illegal in itself.
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Re: Re: Hit hard or don't bother
They are as dirty as comcast is.
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Re: Re: Hit hard or don't bother
Don't you wish that you could ever get a deal as sweet.
Corporations are now more than people; heck, now we treat them better than people.
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Re: Re: Re: Hit hard or don't bother
In fact, in light of the SCotUS decision, my guess is that "ONLY" corporations are considered people by all Government entities.
Why, do you ask? Because there's nothing in any of the laws that specifically entitles "humans" or "homo-sapiens" to be classified as people.
With only one legally binding decision granting corporations status as "people", none of us, as human beings, matter to the government anymore.
The exception to that rule is of course the "alphabet" corporate officers that make up the top 1% of the top 1% of this country. What's really sad is that the corporations, as people, do not have to worry about things like, oh murdering their customers by releasing defective products.
They get hit with a civil fine, less than a flea's bite to them, they can continue releasing deadly products with impunity.
What should happen is that those Corporate officers, board members and majority stockholders, you know, the "humans" that make all the decisions, should all be held accountable for any and all laws broken.
Defective product kills a human being, all of the identified "humans" inside the company get to spend life in prison.
Evil Company #666 steals from millions, all of the identified "humans" inside the company get to pay out 10x or 100x what was stolen to the humans that were stolen from.
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Re: Hit hard or don't bother
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Re: Hit hard or don't bother
Since laws all seem to need a catchy title, call this one "The Crime Does Not Pay Act:" Any business found guilty of violating the law in a way that increases revenue must face a mandatory minimum fine of 100% of the gross revenue received through their illegal dealings.
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Re: Hit hard or don't bother
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*Funny thing if you want to go that route, historically Comcast generally donates fairly equally to both parties, and depending on whether you're looking at the PAC numbers or general they're either donating significantly or slightly more(35%/65% D/R, or 48%/52% D/R) to the republican candidates this time around, but like any company buying politicians they're 'smart' enough to spread the wealth around so they have 'employees' in office no matter who gets elected.
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The funny thing is, in my experience, the people whining about campaign/foundation contributions would also be the same people whining that a government agency correctly punished a private corporation for its wrongdoings.
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Do you have a citation for that? A quick Google returns a lot of right-wing conspiracy blogs/sites and those I recognise as being even remotely credible list the contribution as being in the $5-10k range. However, right-wing outlets Fox and NewsMax are listed as donating 5 or 6 figure sums. (example link: http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton-foundation-donors-include-dozens-of-media-organi zations-individuals-207228)
"Nothing to see here, move along."
Not without a real basis to the claim, no.
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People are routinely charged and overcharged using faulty metrics and for services not rendered. The FCC should be the one stepping in for the rampant fraud that arguably is comparable tot he robosigning scandal five years ago.
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The new fee will be 25% higher than the previously charged unnecessary hardware fees you were paying.
What about a fee for throttling? A fee for the monitoring and administration of bandwidth caps? And a fee to ensure privacy -- that is for Comcast to keep private the other ways it is screwing you that you don't yet know about.
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Taxes and Fees
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Re: Taxes and Fees
An all too common business practice. Almost no business includes taxes and fees in the advertised price.
"It is basic that a cable bill should include charges only for services and equipment ordered by the customer—nothing more and nothing less," said Travis LeBlanc, Chief of the Enforcement Bureau."
Right there he comes right out and says it! Cable bills should not include added-on taxes and fees.
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Re: Taxes and Fees
At the time we thought it really lazy of them and we thought there were advantages for us, but shrugged and did it their way.
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Re: Re: Taxes and Fees
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Re: Re: Re: Taxes and Fees
It's my theory that this is a major reason why some Americans are so fundamentally opposed to taxes to the point of demanding their quality of life be reduced in order to pay less. It causes them problems every day of their lives so they despise it, whereas Europeans tend to be more focused on how much value they get vs. the actual figure because it causes them zero problems (see also the way income taxes are filed by the majority).
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Only one way to stop it
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Re: Only one way to stop it
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This behavior sounds very familiar
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New industry standard
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I'm lucky to have Google Fiber. $70 a month. No fees, no taxes, no add-ons, no hidden charges. Just straight up $70
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#GoogleFiberCoolKidsClub
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Its not like consumers can go to a different provider...
Its not like corporations will suddenly begin to behave fairly...
Its not like watchdogs who could enforce the rules are allowed to have that power...
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No, no, no. You see, punishment isn't supposed to fit the crime, it's supposed to inversely fit the criminal. Big, rich criminal = little punishment. Little criminal = big punishment. Understand now?
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So, taxes?
Why would I want the FCC to have more control?
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Re: So, taxes?
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