Comcast Broke Law 445,000 Times In Scheme To Inflate Bills, Judge Finds (arstechnica.com) 48
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast yesterday was ordered to refund nearly 50,000 customers and pay a $9.1 million fine when a judge ruled that it violated Washington state consumer protection law hundreds of thousands of times. Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued Comcast in August 2016, accusing the nation's largest cable company of tricking customers into buying a "near-worthless 'protection plan' without disclosing its significant limitations." Buying the $5-per-month plan ostensibly prevented customers from having to pay each time a Comcast technician visited their home to fix problems covered by the plan. But in reality, the plan did not cover the vast majority of wiring problems, the AG's lawsuit said. Moreover, Washington state attorneys said that Comcast led customers to believe that they needed to buy a Service Protection Plan (SPP) to get services that were actually covered for free by the company's "Customer Guarantee."
In yesterday's ruling, King County Superior Court Judge Timothy Bradshaw found that "Comcast violated the Consumer Protection Act more than 445,000 times when it charged tens of thousands of Washingtonians for its Service Protection Plan without their consent," Ferguson's announcement said. Each wrongful monthly charge was a separate violation, so there were multiple violations per customer. Washington state attorneys sought more than $171 million, asking the judge to order Comcast to pay $88 million in restitution to customers and $83 million in fines. The $9.1 million fine Comcast was ordered to pay is a fraction of the amount sought by Washington. But Comcast's refunds to customers are separate from the fine, and it's not clear exactly how much they'll amount to.
In yesterday's ruling, King County Superior Court Judge Timothy Bradshaw found that "Comcast violated the Consumer Protection Act more than 445,000 times when it charged tens of thousands of Washingtonians for its Service Protection Plan without their consent," Ferguson's announcement said. Each wrongful monthly charge was a separate violation, so there were multiple violations per customer. Washington state attorneys sought more than $171 million, asking the judge to order Comcast to pay $88 million in restitution to customers and $83 million in fines. The $9.1 million fine Comcast was ordered to pay is a fraction of the amount sought by Washington. But Comcast's refunds to customers are separate from the fine, and it's not clear exactly how much they'll amount to.
What a good day (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:What a good day (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a good day (Score:4)
Indeed. Every business counts fines, court costs, and settlements as nothing more than the cost of doing business. As long as none of these affects the bottom line, and they don't, then its cheaper to continue to do business this way.
You want true re-form, then make business leaders responsible for criminal charges of their company. Send the CEO and his minions to prison. Seize assets related to the criminal activity.
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Nine million dollars is a rounding error to Comcast.
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That sounds like socialism!
A government takeover of assets
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A good day would be if the state prosecutor's office arrested Comcast's board of directors for running a criminal enterprise and charged them all with 445,000 counts of theft.
This sounds like a fine time to apply RICO laws.
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What a good day.
Perhaps.
But I'd still like to use my AK (on them)
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Correct. You need to make a profit while f*ing people over.
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"You need to make a profit while f*ing people over."
And make them want your special type of fucking. We call that good business.
That would be liarism. Capital is a thing (Score:2, Insightful)
The word you're looking for is "fraud".
Capital is a specific thing. It's money/value (mostly retirement savings) that is being put to work to produce MORE value. For example, building fiber networks, factories, ships, etc.
The idea of capitalism is that those who choose to put their money to work as capital rather than spending every cent of it get some of the value that the capital produces.
So for example the standard advice for decades has been to save and invest 15% of your income, because you will get o
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>information arbitrage, more accurately, drives most market profitability
One of the things that doesn't get much air time outside of economics class:
Profitability is a sign of market failure. A smooth functioning free market generates no profit - everybody gets paid a fair wage (or expected return on investment) for their contribution, and not one penny more. Profit - i.e. income beyond the value of your contribution, is a market inefficiency, and in a free market it would vanish almost immediately as s
Re:Comcast. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Triple damages if intentional, which it was.
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Comcast is only responsible for the wiring to the junction box on the outside of your house and they can't charge you for repairing it
The wiring coming into your house from junction box mounted on the outside of your house is considered your property, so they can charge you for any repairs they do.
The wiring plan was sold as if it covered everything that could go wrong withthe wiring you own, but that was a lie (which is why they lost the case).
until the executives enter prison... (Score:3, Insightful)
This will continue. Because no one sees prison this is never taken seriously.
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Oregon PUC fines them almost every year, and makes them alter their bills, and it hasn't stopped them from doing it again yet.
But refunds are real.
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What's the cash value of a person's life? There should be some conversion factor, shouldn't there? To compare the magnitude of crimes that kill people directly, against those that steal the value of their lives? Government's put a value on a human life all the time, they have to in order to weigh the cost/benefit ratio of any action that's not 100% safe for everyone (i.e., all of them). The EPA values it at $9.1 Million, the FDA at $7.9M, the DoT at $6M. Or between 192 and 292 years of median income.
By t
No fair (Score:2)
What about us customers who weren't stupid enough to buy the protection plan? We want a cut too!
Cox next... (Score:2)
They did this to me without permission. I caught it and they refunded me for several months of this bogus charge.
But Cox is far away in my rearview mirror.
Google Fiber 1GB (actually, Webpass, RF to a nearby building with fiber, pretty trouble-free consistent 900+mbps both ways), Apple TV, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, OTA antenna with Tablo 4-channel recorder.
The Webpass is "free". The HOA pays $30/month/unit.
Who is gonna pay this (Score:2)
Not Comcast.
Really? (Score:2)
Isn't that 445.000 times wire fraud?
How about some jail time for a dozen managers?
WARNING TO COMPANIES: (Score:2)
This case, and the size of the fine, should stand as a warning to all companies that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated and WILL NOT BE PROFITABLE unless you anticipate at least a 10% chance that you will get away with it.
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RICO Crimw (Score:2)
There is *no way* that this sort of scheme could not have been discussed at board level, with the resultant profits being tracked at board level. There is no way that the company's Lead Counsel could not have known about the specifics, either because staff working for them were involved in drafting the terms of the agreements, or because the proposals were discussed in senior management meetings.
There will thu