Broadband ISP CenturyLink Accused Of Wells-Fargo-Esque Scam That Bilked Millions From Customers

from the the-height-of-creativity dept

If there's any real creativity in the broadband sector, it often has little to do with the actual products and services offered. More often than not, the real creativity in the sector involves finding ingenious new ways to bilk consumers out of additional money, or charge them significantly more money for the exact-same service. Whether talking about hidden below the line fees or arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps, the lack of real broadband competition has resulted in a gold rush -- at least when it comes to creatively-misleading charges.

CenturyLink (the end product of a series of telecom sector mergers involving Embarq, Qwest and CenturyTel) has already pursued usage caps and overage fees, as well as an incredibly misleading, unnecessary and nonsensical "Internet cost recovery fee" it tacks on to the bottom of every broadband bill. But the company is now being accused of taking things notably further. One former employee has filed suit in Arizona, accusing the company of signing up subscribers for a rotating crop of services they didn't want and didn't order -- simply to help company reps meet sales targets.

Former customer service agent and case plaintiff Heidi Heiser says she and other support reps began noticing that consumers were being signed up for lines or services they didn't order, and that company higher ups didn't seem to much care:

"When a customer complained about an unauthorized charge, customer service and sales agents like Heiser were directed “to inform the complaining customer that CenturyLink’s system indicated the customer had approved the service,” according to the complaint, and as a result “it was really the customer’s word against CenturyLink."

In telecom these kinds of high-pressure sales tactics aren't particularly uncommon. T-Mobile was accused of turning a blind eye to a similar tactic last December. AT&T and Verizon have been similarly charged with turning a blind eye to third party "cramming" -- or signing consumers up for often fraudulent services consumers didn't order -- because carriers have consistently received a cut of the revenues. AT&T, in fact, was busted actively making its bills harder to understand to help obfuscate the scams and keep the money from them rolling in.

In this case, the CenturyLink whistleblower says she was fired shortly after drawing attention to the tactic on an internal company message board. Rather unsurprisingly, CenturyLink -- which is currently trying to close a merger with Level 3 Communications -- was quick to insist they'd done nothing wrong:

"CenturyLink "holds itself and its employees to the highest ethical standards" and has "an Integrity Line in place, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Mark Molzen, a spokesman, said in a statement. "This employee did not make a report to the Integrity Line and our leadership team was not aware of this matter until the lawsuit was filed. We take these allegations seriously and are diligently investigating this matter."

But Heiser, who says she began getting increasingly uncomfortable as the Well Fargo scandal unfolded late last year, notes that she did bring the tactic to CenturyLink executives' attention -- but was allegedly told to "stay positive and not to mention her concerns again."

Filed Under: broadband, customer service, fake orders, scams
Companies: centurylink