Comcast will pay millions after the judge found him illegally screwed up 445,000 times

Comcast has breached the Consumer Protection Act 445,000 times, a Washington state court Thursday said. The decision comes from accusations by the state attorney general that the telecommunications giant has hired tens of thousands of customers for a monthly shit program without their consent.

The decision of King County Superior Court Judge Timothy Bradshaw in the lawsuit filed by Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson orders Comcast to pay approximately $ 9.1 million in penalties – the highest case as of the Consumer Protection Act, according to his office – in addition to restitution to the thousands of customers who subscribed in a non-consensual way to the plan.

The Comcast Service Protection Plan costs $ 6 per month (it was $ 5 per month until just before Ferguson filed his complaint)) and actually covers the expenses of a technician coming to your home to inform you that something is wrong. That's pretty much all it has covered, because of the many caveats detailed in the fine print of the program. It's a monthly cost that pays you nothing, yet Comcast added it to 30,946 Washingtonian accounts without informing them, according to state authorities, who said they were not providing 18 660 Washingtonians accurate information on the cost of the program.

In the space of about five years, from 2011 to mid-2016, just for Washington customers, Comcast has generated more than $ 85 million in revenues from the service protection plan, according to the office of Ferguson. In May of last year, just before Ferguson's lawsuit, Comcast had indicated on its website that the plan "was no longer available for new subscriptions".

"Comcast has refused to accept responsibility for its blatant conduct which resulted in the Washingtonians losing money every month for a product they did not want or were not asking for", said Ferguson in the press release. "Instead of doing things for the Washingtonians, Comcast has sent an army of corporate lawyers to court to try to avoid liability."

Of nearly half a million violations, 240,588 involved non-registered clients and others, either to not inform customers of the monthly cost or to misrepresent them, according to the decision. The judge ruled that Comcast should reimburse all customers affected by its practices, but it is unclear how much it will cost society when all is over. Comcast has 60 days to grant refunds.

As Ars Technica points out, the $ 9 million fine can be a state-level record, but it only accounts for a fraction of the revenue generated by the unnecessary monthly "service" . However, you must win every possible victory. get.

Updated 18:05: "We are pleased that the Court has ruled in our favor on several of the principal claims of the Attorney General and granted less than 5% of what he claimed as damages," said a spokesman for Comcast. to Gizmodo in an email. "The judge acknowledged that all the problems he had discovered had since been fully resolved by Comcast thanks to the considerable investments we had made to improve the customer experience and the consent process, and that throughout Comcast we had acted in good faith. We will continue to make significant investments in the way we serve our customers because it is the right thing to do and we are fully committed to our customers in Washington. "