Comcast will have to pay a fine to settle an investigation they jipped customers.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau announced this week that Comcast Corporation will pay a $2.3 million fine to resolve an investigation that they wrongfully charged cable television customers for services and equipped that they those customers never authorized.
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The Philadelphia headquartered company, according to a statement by the FCC, was prohibited aganist charging subscribers for services or equipment they did not affirmatively request, a practice known as negative option billing. Negative option billing burdens customers with the responsibility of contacting a cable company to
dispute the charges and obtain refunds.
“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 FCC reportedly began investigating the case after receiving numerous complaints from consumers alleging that the company had added charges to their bills for unordered services or products. 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.
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Comcast, as part of the settlement announced Tuesday, will implement a five year compliance plan which will instruct them to adopt processes and procedures designed to obtain affirmative informed consent from customers prior to charging them for any new services or equipment. In addition, Comcast will offer to customers, at no cost, the ability to block the
addition of new services or equipment to their accounts.
As an additional element to the multi-million dollar settlement, Comcast will implement a detailed program for redressing disputed charges in a standardized and expedient fashion, and limits adverse action (such as referring an account to collections or suspending service) while a disputed charge is being investigated.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Comcast acknowledged in a statement that their “customer service should have been better and bills clearer, and that customers have at times been unnecessarily frustrated or confused.” However, the company noted that the two-year investigation found “no problematic policy or intentional wrongdoing, but just isolated errors or customer confusion.” Comcast said it agrees that those issues need to be fixed but doesn’t agree with the FCC’s legal theory to levy a fine as a result of the errors.
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The settlement is is the largest civil penalty assessed from a cable operator by the FCC.
