Comcast broke the law 445,000 times to inflate bills

[Aclion]

Are you actually reading what I'm posting?

The FCC had a law that prevents companies from not treating all data as equal. Trump's administration came in, appointed Ajji Pai. Ajji Pai took that law away.

Now they can choose to not treat all data as equal, meaning downgrading customers internet speeds to other sites to artificially give there own sites what would be a speed boost.

We've all read it. It just has fuck all to do with this news story.

[Aclion]

Are you actually reading what I'm posting?

The FCC had a law that prevents companies from not treating all data as equal. Trump's administration came in, appointed Ajji Pai. Ajji Pai took that law away.

Now they can choose to not treat all data as equal, meaning downgrading customers internet speeds to other sites to artificially give there own sites what would be a speed boost.

We've all read it. It just has fuck all to do with this news story.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

Hey look, Comcast broke the law beacuse there greedy.

But with the removal of NN they have a legal way to be greedy.

I think you’re missing that people aren’t advocating not doing anything. What they don’t agree with is how Tittle,Title II is being employed. Nor do they approve of Comcast’s behavior.

Note: tittle, Nana? Seriously?

That's the thing, it isn't being employed at all, and now there is a rather glaring way to abuse consumers legally.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

Are you actually reading what I'm posting?

The FCC had a law that prevents companies from not treating all data as equal. Trump's administration came in, appointed Ajji Pai. Ajji Pai took that law away.

Now they can choose to not treat all data as equal, meaning downgrading customers internet speeds to other sites to artificially give there own sites what would be a speed boost.

We've all read it. It just has fuck all to do with this news story.

"Comcast broke the law out of greed, here is a way that they can be greedy and sadly do it legally. Also here is who is to blame for that way being legal"

Seems relevant to me.

[Saiwania]

ISPs handle a relatively small part of Internet infrastructure. They don't handle datacenters or the physical fiber optics which make up the physical backbone of the Internet, those are handled by other companies, an ISP's job is minuscule in comparison, they let you access the Internet and use the infrastructure built and funded by other people.

More or less it's like if you had a toll at the end of your driveway.

That makes an ISP have even less control over what happens as opposed to if they own more of the path in the middle. They have to pay another company which pays another company, and so on- just to carry traffic. An ISP isn't going to charge less than what they're being charged and etc.

I recall that internet to my location was unavailable for upwards of over 8 hours a few years back, and that made Cox Cable look bad, but they could do nothing about it but complain to their provider if they were having problems. Apparently an important link from Ocala, Florida was accidentally cut, and service for the entire region I was in wouldn't be available until that was fixed.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

I think you’re missing that people aren’t advocating not doing anything. What they don’t agree with is how Tittle,Title II is being employed. Nor do they approve of Comcast’s behavior.

Note: tittle, Nana? Seriously?

That's the thing, it isn't being employed at all, and now there is a rather glaring way to abuse consumers legally.

Are you 100% sure it isn’t?

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

That's the thing, it isn't being employed at all, and now there is a rather glaring way to abuse consumers legally.

Are you 100% sure it isn’t?

Last I checked NN was repealed, so yes.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Are you 100% sure it isn’t?

Last I checked NN was repealed, so yes.

Excuse me but when was NN repealed? It was never legislated.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

Last I checked NN was repealed, so yes.

Excuse me but when was NN repealed? It was never legislated.

June 11, 2018

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Excuse me but when was NN repealed? It was never legislated.

June 11, 2018

Ah, I missed that. I thought there was a directive not to enforce it but there hadn’t been any legislation on it yet.

[Estanglia]

They should probably get a harsher punishment than $9 million. That just seems way too little for breaking the law 445,000 times.

I think you’re missing that people aren’t advocating not doing anything. What they don’t agree with is how Tittle,Title II is being employed. Nor do they approve of Comcast’s behavior.

Note: tittle, Nana? Seriously?

That's the thing, it isn't being employed at all, and now there is a rather glaring way to abuse consumers legally.

But the abuse mentioned in the thread title and the cited article (and what appears to be the topic of this thread) is not this now-legalised way to abuse customers, unless the title and cited article are irrelevant to the intended topic of this thread (net neutrality), which makes it seem odd that they're even here in the first place.

Unless it's intended to be some sort of tangent opening ("Hey, here's a shitty behaviour! Wouldn't you hate it if it was legalised? Well, another shitty behaviour is!"... etc.), which makes me wonder why set up the title and OP sauce to not be the discussing topic.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

They should probably get a harsher punishment than $9 million. That just seems way too little for breaking the law 445,000 times.

That's the thing, it isn't being employed at all, and now there is a rather glaring way to abuse consumers legally.

But the abuse mentioned in the thread title and the cited article (and what appears to be the topic of this thread) is not this now-legalised way to abuse customers, unless the title and cited article are irrelevant to the intended topic of this thread (net neutrality), which makes it seem odd that they're even here in the first place.

Unless it's intended to be some sort of tangent opening ("Hey, here's a shitty behaviour! Wouldn't you hate it if it was legalised? Well, another shitty behaviour is!"... etc.), which makes me wonder why set up the title and OP sauce to not be the discussing topic.

I guess out of the two my op was intended to be the latter.

It was ment for one broad topic with two specific topics.

Broad being ISP greed and specific topics being this crime and how ISPs can leagly do some bad shit.

[The South Falls]

They should start at 1, and add .5 (1, 1.5, 2) for each legal violation. That should at least come close to mimicking the practice for OSHA violations, and teaching them to right the problem.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

They should start at 1, and add .5 (1, 1.5, 2) for each legal violation. That should at least come close to mimicking the practice for OSHA violations, and teaching them to right the problem.

Yes.

Also beacuse ISP's have been proven to be untrustworthy NN should be put back in place.

[Petrolheadia]

They should probably get a harsher punishment than $9 million. That just seems way too little for breaking the law 445,000 times.

This is likely just one of the cases where every bill has been counted as its own case to boost the law enforcement statistics.

445,000 slightly higher bills is not as big of a crime as the number would suggest.

[Pax Nerdvana]

They'll get away with it because they can afford good lawyers, unfortunately.

[Estanglia]

They should probably get a harsher punishment than $9 million. That just seems way too little for breaking the law 445,000 times.



But the abuse mentioned in the thread title and the cited article (and what appears to be the topic of this thread) is not this now-legalised way to abuse customers, unless the title and cited article are irrelevant to the intended topic of this thread (net neutrality), which makes it seem odd that they're even here in the first place.

Unless it's intended to be some sort of tangent opening ("Hey, here's a shitty behaviour! Wouldn't you hate it if it was legalised? Well, another shitty behaviour is!"... etc.), which makes me wonder why set up the title and OP sauce to not be the discussing topic.

I guess out of the two my op was intended to be the latter.

It was ment for one broad topic with two specific topics.

Broad being ISP greed and specific topics being this crime and how ISPs can leagly do some bad shit.

Ah, that makes more sense.

Sorry, the title and OP confused me somewhat.

[-Ocelot-]

This is how the free market works. Americans defend their free market economy, right? Let the megacorporation crush you. Why should it be otherwise?

[US-SSR]

But they're totally focused on customer service, they even say so themselves in their ads?

[The Rich Port]

Comcast gets a bad reputation because it's one of the larger providers. In markets where they aren't the only one in town, I read that Comcast is relatively great. I think I'd rather have them than Cox Communications.

Do people know what Cox's "Panoramic Wifi" actually is? It's marketing BS for renting a router from them instead of owning your own, but Cox wants to fool people into believing that its a separate service that gives you "wall to wall" wireless for $10+ extra a month. And Cox aggressively tries selling it and if you know what's what (like myself) you really have to keep refusing and telling them that no- you got your own compatible router and modem.

Yes, Comcast service can be bad- but it simply isn't true that their service is always the worst. Comcast internet is said to be more reliable than CenturyLink's for example. There will be some ISPs that just can't deliver bandwidth reliably but chances are that Comcast can, because they're one of the nation's largest and have the deep pockets for deploying good internet infrastructure if they're so inclined.

ComCast service are also, you know, criminals, but, that doesn't matter to you, I guess, cuz you didn't mention it?

[Nilrahrarfan]

arstechnica sause

Comcast deception leads to refunds and $9M fine, a fraction of the amount sought.

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.

The AG announcement said:

The court found that Comcast added the SPP to the accounts of 30,946 Washingtonians without their knowledge, and did not tell an additional 18,660 Washingtonians the true cost of the plan. The court ordered Comcast to refund affected consumers, and pay 12 percent interest on the restitution. The amount of restitution is unknown at this time, but is expected to be significant. The court ordered Comcast to issue the refunds within 60 days and report to the state on the specific details and amounts.

Comcast enrolled customers without consent
Comcast violated the consumer protection law "each time it enrolled a Washington consumer in the SPP without their consent and each time it charged a Washington consumer for the SPP following enrollment without consent," the judge wrote.

The judge's ruling further said:

Comcast's unfair or deceptive acts of enrolling Washington consumers in the SPP without their consent, and charging for the SPP following unauthorized enrollment, affected the public interest. Call recordings produced by Comcast show that over one third of Washington SPP customer accounts subscribed via telephone were subscribed to the plan without their consent between July 2014 and June 2016. Pursuant to the parties' stipulation and SPP subscription data produced by Comcast, at least 20,128 customer accounts were subscribed without consent between April 2015 and June 2016 alone (a time period during which Comcast made 71,944 new SPP sales to Washington customers) and 10,818 additional customer accounts were subscribed without consent between July 1, 2014 and March 31, 2015. Numerous consumers were injured in the same manner, i.e., they were subscribed to the SPP, and charged for the SPP, without their consent, and Comcast's subscription practices for obtaining affirmative consent remained unchanged from 2011 to mid-2017.

Washington had alleged that Comcast misled 500,000 Washington consumers and deceived them into paying at least $73 million in subscription fees over a five-year period. Washington state attorneys argued that Comcast committed 1.8 million violations of the Consumer Protection Act, saying that Comcast made false claims regarding the scope of its service protection plans to 700,000 customers and "deceptively represented the scope of its Customer Guarantee to over 1.17 million Washington consumers."

Ferguson also alleged that "Comcast deceived consumers even when mentioning the SPP, telling them the SPP plan was 'free' when they signed up, when in fact, Comcast would automatically charge them every month after the first month."

Recordings of sales calls showed that Comcast often enrolled customers in the service plan even when customers "explicitly rejected" the offer, Ferguson's office said.

Comcast not saved by arbitration clause
Comcast claimed that the court can't order refunds because of the arbitration clause it puts in customer agreements. But Judge Bradshaw wrote that "[t]he State's authority to seek restitution, however, is not derivative of the rights of the individual customers, but is rather intended to benefit the general public."

The judge didn't accept the AG's request for refunds consisting of all service protection plan revenue. "The restitution amounts contemplated here are the actual improper charges, less prior refunds and service call expenses," the judge's ruling said. The ruling covers service-plan sales between Dec. 25, 2013 and July 1, 2017.

Although yesterday's ruling fell far short of what Washington requested, Ferguson's office said that it still set a record. "The nearly $9.1 million penalty represents the highest trial award in a state Consumer Protection case, even before including restitution," the AG's office said. The previous record was $4.3 million, which was "awarded to the state after a 2016 trial in Ferguson's case against Living Essentials and Innovation Ventures over the company's misrepresentations about 5-hour Energy," the AG's office said.

When the lawsuit was filed, Comcast said it had already fixed the problems raised by the attorney general. But Ferguson said that he filed the lawsuit because negotiations with Comcast didn't produce a big enough settlement.

It's not clear whether Comcast will appeal the ruling, but the company appears to be happy it doesn't owe more.

"We're pleased that the court ruled in our favor on several of the attorney general's key claims and awarded less than 5 percent of what he was seeking in damages," Comcast said in a statement to Ars. "The judge recognized that any issues he did find have since been fully addressed by Comcast through the significant investments we have made in improving the customer experience and consent process, and that throughout Comcast acted in good faith. We will continue to make significant investments in how we serve our customers because it is the right thing to do and are fully committed to our customers in Washington."

Providing a "service" that mostly does nothing, forcing people to add this useless "service" to there plan, only paying a fraction of what they should really pay.

All this and more coming from one of America's top ISPs. That, thanks to the Trump administration appointing Ajit Pai to the head of the FCC, now has the power to not treat all data as equal.

But don't worry, you can totally trust corporations who brake the law 445,000 times to screw you over to not screw you over.

100% trust here guys. They definitely will not abuse this power to make you pay more for the same service you where already getting. Nope. Not at all.

What say you NSG?

Comcast is the Soros of internet companies: they get rich off of gullible victims and fund leftist propaganda, while censoring anyone that dares to disagree with them.

[Kowani]

arstechnica sause

Providing a "service" that mostly does nothing, forcing people to add this useless "service" to there plan, only paying a fraction of what they should really pay.

All this and more coming from one of America's top ISPs. That, thanks to the Trump administration appointing Ajit Pai to the head of the FCC, now has the power to not treat all data as equal.

But don't worry, you can totally trust corporations who brake the law 445,000 times to screw you over to not screw you over.

100% trust here guys. They definitely will not abuse this power to make you pay more for the same service you where already getting. Nope. Not at all.

What say you NSG?

Comcast is the Soros of internet companies: they get rich off of gullible victims and fund leftist propaganda, while censoring anyone that dares to disagree with them.

Why would Comcast fund leftist propaganda, Considering said propaganda would hate their existence as a company and call for their dissolution or otherwise negatively affect them?

[Nilrahrarfan]

Comcast is the Soros of internet companies: they get rich off of gullible victims and fund leftist propaganda, while censoring anyone that dares to disagree with them.

Why would Comcast fund leftist propaganda, Considering said propaganda would hate their existence as a company and call for their dissolution or otherwise negatively affect them?

They own MSNBC, which exactly that type of leftist propaganda.

[Kowani]

Why would Comcast fund leftist propaganda, Considering said propaganda would hate their existence as a company and call for their dissolution or otherwise negatively affect them?

They own MSNBC, which exactly that type of leftist propaganda.

“MSNBC”
“Leftist”
Go learn some proper political theory, will ya’?

[Telconi]

They own MSNBC, which exactly that type of leftist propaganda.

“MSNBC”
“Leftist”
Go learn some proper political theory, will ya’?

You do understand it's possible to be a leftist and not be a turbo-crazy-run-over-student-protestors-with-tanks leftist right?