Comcast Fraudulent Billing, Harassment of Ex-Customers Southeastern Pennsylvania

We cancelled our Comcast service in February, 2008. While it's irrelevant to the billing problem, we cancelled because in the short time we had their bundled service (high speed internet and digital voice), we had four outages and horrible reception (phone).

As instructed by Comcast, I returned the modem to their local return/equipment center. I received a receipt, stating that I returned it and that I was owed $12.18, pro rata for the billing cycle.

Two weeks later I received a very nasty bill from a collection agency stating that I owed $300 for the modem. When I called the number, the CSR stated that it was just Comcast (masquerading as a scary collection service - tres professional, folks) and that upon looking up my account, he saw that yes, I had returned the modem and all was well, no need to worry.

Today, April 3, I received another notice, this one from Credit Protection Association, L.P. It is for the same $300 for the same modem. Its language is even more threatening and explains rather succinctly that they plan to turn this over to the national collection agencies in 7 days if payment isn't made.

I called the 800 number on the notice and put the account in dispute (it's only voicemail) and I also emailed Comcast's billing center. I plan to contact them in the morning to speak with someone live -- but I honestly hold out no hope that this will get resolved before it's sent to collections.

I am going to try to find an attorney that will look into a class action with this. These types of billing practices may well be passed off due to inexperienced call center folks or poor systems, but the fact is, for firms that practice this, it's often deliberate and highly profitable. It works much like insurance claims - for every 3 the insurance company pays, they deny 7. For every 2 of the 7 denied that are disputed, 5 claimees walk away with nothing, afraid or unwilling to challenge the denial.

Same idea here - for every 2 people who refuse to pay a debt they don't owe, there are 3 or 4 who will pay. Do the math on that... over the course of thousands of customers, it adds up. In this day and age, you simply cannot run a business without putting a decent billing system in place -- they can do it if they want -- they CHOOSE not to.

Bw
Deerfield, Illinois
U.S.A.