Comcast Paying $2.3 Million to Settle FCC Probe
11 Octubre 2016 - 1:20PM
Noticias Dow Jones
Comcast Corp. is paying $2.3 million to settle an investigation
by the Federal Communications Commission into whether the company
wrongfully charged customers for cable TV services and equipment
that they never ordered.
The FCC said in a statement that the fine is the largest civil
penalty assessed from a cable operator by the agency. At issue is a
practice known as "negative option billing," where providers charge
people for services or equipment that they didn't expressly ask
for. Such billing is prohibited under the FCC's rules, as it places
the burden on the customers to call their providers to dispute
charges and ask for refunds.
As part of the settlement, Comcast will have to implement a
five-year compliance plan to adopt ways to make sure consumers
consent to new services or equipment before charging them—including
by sending customers order confirmations separate from bills.
To be sure, the fine is small in comparison to other such
penalties the government has levied in recent years against phone
companies. AT&T in 2014 agreed to pay $105 million to settle
so-called mobile "cramming" charges, the practice of charging
subscribers for services they didn't order.
T-Mobile that year settled with the Federal Trade Commission to
pay at least $90 million on a similar issue.
In a statement, Comcast acknowledged that "in the past, our
customer service should have been better and our bills clearer, and
that customers have at times been unnecessarily frustrated or
confused."
However, the company noted that the two-year investigation found
"no problematic policy or intentional wrongdoing, but just isolated
errors or customer confusion." Comcast said it agrees that those
issues need to be fixed but doesn't agree with the FCC's legal
theory to levy a fine as a result of the errors.
Since last year, the cable operator has put an increased focus
on enhancing its customer service operations, and it said that many
of the changes the FCC has asked for are already well under
way.
The FCC was tipped off to the issue by numerous consumers who
alleged that Comcast had added charges to their bills for items
like premium channels, set-top boxes or digital video recorders
that they never ordered or, in some cases, specifically had
declined. Consumers said that they spent "significant time and
energy" attempting to remove the unauthorized charges from their
bills, according to the FCC.
"It is basic that a cable bill should include charges only for
services and equipment ordered by the customer—nothing more and
nothing less," said Travis LeBlanc, chief of the FCC's enforcement
bureau.
Separately, Comcast came under fire from consumers on Tuesday
when it experienced a "hardware issue" early in the morning that
resulted in voice, video and internet service outages in several
markets across the country.
Comcast said the outage, which lasted a few hours, affected a
"subset of customers" in markets including Texas, California,
Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Georgia. During that time, people
may have also had difficulty reaching Comcast's customer service by
phone. The company said its engineers "identified and resolved the
issue, and the services are returning to normal."
Several consumers took to Twitter Tuesday morning to complain.
One Twitter user, @Late2TheParty11, was annoyed at having a Netflix
session interrupted. "Almost done with #LukeCage and the rapture
decided to come for #xfinity across the country. Thanks #comcast.
#OUTAGE."
"We appreciate our customers' patience as we worked to fix this
and are sorry that we inconvenienced them," Comcast said.
Write to Shalini Ramachandran at
shalini.ramachandran@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 11, 2016 14:05 ET (18:05 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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