CenturyLink Tries To Dodge Broadband Billing Lawsuit By Claiming It Technically Has No Subscribers
from the impressive-tap-dancing dept
Broadband ISP CenturyLink has been on the receiving end of an ocean of lawsuits accusing the company of billing fraud after a whistleblower (who says they were fire for bringing it up to management) revealed systemic efforts to routinely overbill users and sign them up for services they never asked for. And while CenturyLink tried to claim an investigation of itself found no wrongdoing (shocking!), State AGs like Minnesota's Lori Swanson say in their complaints (pdf) that they've found plenty of evidence proving that billing fraud was a routine occurance at the broadband provider.
Most of these lawsuits have since been combined into one class action suit. And CenturyLink has since developed a fairly creative attempt to dodge legal liability for its misdeeds: by claiming it doesn't technically have any customers. Technically CenturyLink has 5.66 million broadband subscribers as of last year, but a new brief filed by the company tries to argue it's not culpable because "CenturyLink" is technically just a holding company that manages 10 subsidiaries around the country:
"That sole defendant, CenturyLink, Inc., is a parent holding company that has no customers, provides no services, and engaged in none of the acts or transactions about which Plaintiffs complain," CenturyLink wrote. "There is no valid basis for Defendant to be a party in this Proceeding: Plaintiffs contracted with the Operating Companies to purchase, use, and pay for the services at issue, not with CenturyLink, Inc."
Customers signed up for business relationships with those 10 companies (Qwest Corporation; Embarq Florida, Inc.; Embarq Missouri, Inc.; Carolina Telephone and Telegraph Company LLC; Central Telephone Company; CenturyTel of Idaho, Inc.; CenturyTel of Larsen-Readfield, LLC; CenturyTel of Washington, Inc.; CenturyTel Broadband Services, LLC; and Qwest Broadband Services, Inc.), most of which are just holdover names left over by the company's 2011 acquisition of and earlier fusion with CenturyTel and Embarq. Domains for those companies all resolve to CenturyLink.com.
Because customers signed user agreements with those ten subsidiaries holding them to binding arbitration, CenturyLink lawyers argue that CenturyLink proper can't technically be sued for wrongdoing. You'll recall that thanks to AT&T and a 2011 Supreme Court decision, companies can now strip away your legal rights via fine print, instead forcing you into binding arbitration, where the corporation is victorious more often than not. And while the class action system is arguably broken (unless your criteria involves helping lawyers buy new boats), the arbitration system we've supplanted it with is arguably worse.
Needless to say, the plaintiffs trying to hold CenturyLink accountable for routinely ripping them off aren't impressed by the company's strategy:
"We reject these heavy-handed, anti-consumer tactics and the absurdity of these shell entities that CenturyLink claims to operate under," Meiselas said..."The arbitration clauses they're trying to enforce post-date the litigation," he said.
"The arbitration clauses they're trying to enforce post-date the litigation," he said.
Even with Supreme Court ruling ISP efforts to shovel users into binding arbitration isn't always successful, depending on state law. For example a US District Court judge in California recently ruled that AT&T couldn't force customers into binding arbitration because California law prohibits some aspects of mouseprint arbitration efforts. CenturyLink, meanwhile, is one of several U.S. telcos that have been hemorrhaging customers thanks to their refusal to seriously upgrade their aging copper networks at scale. Between that and the company's billing shenanigans (which include imposing fees for doing absolutely nothing), CenturyLink's effort to have zero customers may just prove successful yet.
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Filed Under: billing, fraud, subscribers
Companies: centurylink
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Yeah, the Supreme Court's ruling makes no sense when the First Amendment explicitly guarantees the right of the people to petition the government for the redress of grievances. Just another example of how corrupt the current Court is...
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Why not a church? No taxes then, and even harder to regulate.
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Must be important since he said it twice in a row :p
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I just hate it when management sets me on fire.
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"The arbitration clauses they're trying to enforce post-date the litigation," he said.
We heard you the first time.
(Sorry Karl.)
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Having been a CenturyLink customer in the past...
The web-site to access our CenturyLink e-mail addresses was "mycenturylink.com" which auto-forwards to "centurylink.net"
If all documents and web-sites use the single name CenturyLink, seems cut and dried to me.
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It's like the trick the labels pull when it comes to licensing/sales and how it changes based upon who they're dealing with.
When it benefits them, they have customers, lots of them.
When it doesn't benefit them, they don't have so much as a single customer.
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Nexus of alleged acitvity -> proper party to sue
Any arbitration agreement with the local operating company should be irrelevant.
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FTFY
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Online Assignment Writer
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