Comcast has broken the law 445,000 times in a ploy to inflate bills, judge

Yesterday, Comcast was ordered to pay back nearly 50,000 customers and pay a fine of $ 9.1 million when a judge said that he was breaking hundreds of thousands of times the Washington State Consumer Protection Act.

In August 2016, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson had sued Comcast, accusing the country's largest cable operator of persuading customers to buy a "protection plan" almost worthless, without revealing its significant limitations. "

The purchase of the $ 5 per month package apparently prevents customers from paying each time a Comcast technician travels to their home to solve the issues covered by the package. But in reality, the plan did not cover the vast majority of wiring problems, the prosecutor general's prosecution said. In addition, Washington State lawyers have stated that Comcast had led customers to believe that they had to take out a Service Protection Plan (SPP) to get services actually covered for free by the "Customer Guarantee". " of the society.

In his ruling yesterday, King County Superior Court Judge Timothy Bradshaw estimated that "Comcast has violated the Consumer Protection Act more than 445,000 times by charging tens of thousands of Washingtonians for its plan to protect the service without their consent, "said President Ferguson. Each illegal monthly bill was a separate violation, so there were several violations per customer.

Washington State lawyers have asked for more than $ 171 million, asking the judge to order Comcast to pay $ 88 million in compensation to its clients and $ 83 million in fines.

The $ 9.1 million fine that Comcast was ordered to pay represents a fraction of the amount claimed by Washington. But the repayments to Comcast's customers are distinct from the fine, and it's unclear exactly how much they will cost.

The AG announcement said:

The court estimated that Comcast had added the SPP to the list of 30,946 Washingtonians without their knowledge and had not informed an additional 18,660 Washington of the actual cost of the plan. The court ordered Comcast to reimburse the consumers concerned and pay a 12% interest on the refund. The amount of the refund is unknown at the moment, but should be important. The court ordered Comcast to issue refunds within 60 days and report to the state specific details and amounts.

Comcast registered customers without consent

Comcast violated the Consumer Protection Act "whenever a Washington consumer was registered with the PSP without his consent and whenever he billed the PSP of a Washington consumer after his registration without consent, "wrote the judge.

The judge's decision further stated:

Comcast's dishonest or deceptive acts of registering Washington consumers with the PSP without their consent and charging the PSP for unauthorized registration affected the public interest. The call records produced by Comcast show that more than one-third of Washington's SPP customer accounts subscribed by telephone were subscribed to the plan without their consent between July 2014 and June 2016. In accordance with the parties' data regarding the subscription and SPP subscriptions generated by Comcast, at least 20,128 accounts receivable were purchased without consent between April 2015 and June 2016 (during which Comcast completed 71,944 new PSP sales to Washington customers) and 10 818 additional customer accounts were purchased without consent between July 1, 2014 and March 31, 2015. Many consumers were injured in the same way, that is to say., they were subscribed to the SPP and billed for the SPP, without their consent, and Comcast's underwriting practices to obtain affirmative consent remained unchanged from 2011 to mid-2017.

Washington had alleged that Comcast had misled 500,000 Washington consumers and cheated them by charging them at least $ 73 million in subscription fees over a five-year period. Washington State lawyers have claimed that Comcast had committed 1.8 million breaches of the consumer protection law, claiming that Comcast had made false statements about the scope of its protection plans of serving 700,000 customers and "misrepresented the extent of its customer guarantee to more than 1.17 million consumers in Washington."

Ferguson also alleged that "Comcast misled consumers even by mentioning the SPP, telling them that the SPP plan was" free "when they enrolled, whereas in fact, Comcast automatically billed them all. month after the first month ".

The sales call records showed that Comcast often enrolled customers in the service plan, even when customers "explicitly rejected" the offer, the Ferguson office said.

Comcast unsecured by arbitration clause

Comcast asserted that the court can not order reimbursement because of the arbitration clause that it introduces into customer contracts. But Bradshaw JA wrote that "the power of the state to seek redress itself does not stem from the rights of individual customers, but rather aims to benefit the general public."

The judge did not accept the claim for reimbursement from the AG, made up of all revenue from the service protection plan. "The amounts of the refund envisaged here are the really abusive charges, less the previous refunds and expenses for service calls," the judge said in his decision. The decision covers sales of service plans between December 25, 2013 and July 1, 2017.

Although yesterday's decision is far from meeting Washington's request, the Ferguson office said it still set a record. "This fine of nearly $ 9.1 million represents the highest award at trial in a consumer protection case, even before restitution," the AG's office said. The previous record, which stood at $ 4.3 million, was "awarded to the state after a lawsuit in 2016 in the Ferguson case against Living Essentials and Innovation Ventures for its misrepresentations about energy over 5 hours, "said the AG's office.

When the complaint was filed, Comcast stated that she had already resolved the issues raised by the Attorney General. But Ferguson said he had filed a lawsuit because the negotiations with Comcast had not resulted in a sufficiently large settlement.

We asked Comcast if it would appeal the decision and update this article if we get an answer.