Canceling Comcast might end up costing thousands of dollars
Think canceling Comcast is hard and annoying? Try to stop them from hitting your credit report with fraudulent claims.
I love how at the end of every ISP customer service call, the bored customer service representative says, ‘Thank you for choosing <insert ISP name here>’, as if there was a real choice. There really isn’t a clear competitive choice in most areas. One ISP offers reasonable speeds, the other offers reasonable prices. Regardless, you will pay for a television service you will never use.
When I moved to Florida in 2014, I chose Comcast as my provider, because the competition couldn’t offer the ‘blistering fast’ 30 mbps for nearly $100 a month. Sure, because they offer that speed for 15 second bursts, that is what they can sell us, and that’s a load of crap, but I digress.
Eventually, I arranged to move, and I gave Comcast a month of prior notice that I would be moving out of the service area in late October and needed to cancel the account. No problem, they passed me along the chain through customer retention escalations, I stuck to the plan and managed to cancel after just one disconnection, totalling only 10–15 minutes of phone time.
If only it was that simple.
The next Comcast statement tried to bill me for November. I called, disputed, and their customer service rep assured me it was off my account. Got another bill long after returning the equipment, they were still after November, and now wanting to be paid for December. Again, I called, disputed the charges, and again, I was assured by the rep that the matter was resolved and I owed no money.
In December, I got a letter from a collection agency, looking for $250 from Comcast. No details were available regarding why I owed this money. They had nothing except the word of corporate personhood. One call to the collection agency disputing the charge, and it disappeared.
Until I tried to prequalify for a mortgage. That fraudulent charge went on my credit report, and raised the interest rate on the loan I was offered. Had I taken the loan, this would have led to THOUSANDS of dollars of additional interest fees. All so Comcast could extort a couple bucks.
Like all of us, I’m pretty busy and not been going after resolving my credit report, so I would have forgotten the issue. Except today, I received another letter, from another collection agency, demanding $125.
Of course I called. Disputed. Again, no information regarding where this charge came from. I fully expect another collection agency to contact me in another 3 months, asking for $75.
I’ve submitted this to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. http://www.consumerfinance.gov/. As part of this process, you suggest a ‘fair’ resolution, included below. It is somewhat dramatic to suggest a ‘Ma Bell’ style breakup, but how long must we, the people, remain complicit while private profit-seeking invades every aspect of our lives? It’s Craptastic!
Dissolve the internet provider monopolies and provide it like a public utility. This is a breach of the public trust when it comes to providing a service which is essential to commerce. My business, specifically, requires internet access, and to force me to deal with a provider which I have repeatedly had fraudulent experiences with is not a free market with competition providing a barrier against customer abuse.
This resolution is an extreme response for my single, isolated case. However, I am convinced, by several pieces of evidence, that this is an established pattern of fraudulent business practices, which is likely to affect thousands of consumers and businesses.
1) Customer representatives are unable to adequately resolve customer charge disputes, despite their own systems telling them the account is resolved.
2) The 1 month and 6 month delay combined with a precise 50% reduction in amounts collected on indicate this is not random, but a precisely derived pattern, designed to maximize returns.
If you investigate this and find it to be an established business practice of fraudulent behavior, which exploits the credit bureaus, collection agencies and the public for a tiny bit of private profit at an external cost which eclipses gains by 10–100x, I do not find dissolution of Comcast an extreme resolution in the least.
This sort of unchecked corporate behavior is precisely where the government needs to intervene. It is important that the response is not only punitive, but serves as an example for what is not tolerated.
It is beyond the agency of any citizen or business to adequately resolve this. I paid for the improvements to the telecommunications infrastructure with telephone taxes in the 1990’s, upon which Comcast has built it’s internet business. As a business person, I work extremely hard to ensure my clients and customers are content. America is built upon hard-working businesses, not exploitative monopolies who abuse the public for a modicum of profits.
