Comcast took more than $1,000 out of a West Fargo, N.D., resident’s checking account, despite the fact she isn’t a customer and Comcast doesn’t offer cable service in North Dakota.

Becky Phelps is stuck in limbo after the cable giant took the money and is now dragging its feet refunding it, according to a report by Valley News Live. Customer service has proven itself unhelpful because Phelps cannot produce a Comcast account number she never had.

“They kept asking for an account number and I was like, ‘I don’t have an account with you guys. Why am I being charged?’,” said Phelps. The customer service agent quickly disconnects the call after that, leaving Phelps frustrated and out a lot of money. “That money was set for other bills. It’s made it really tough for us because we’ve had to dig into what savings we have, just to cover those differences.”

Her bank has run into a similar brick wall with Comcast reversing the charge, despite the fact the cable company now willingly admits her debit card information was probably stolen.

Comcast claims it has referred the matter to its fraud team, but little has happened since.

Banks strongly recommend if you see unauthorized purchases on your account, call the bank immediately and initiate a chargeback. Because Phelps’ debit card number was compromised, funds were immediately removed from her checking account. If the purchases appeared on a credit card, a customer service representative could start a chargeback and advise you not to pay the disputed amount. But it gets more complicated with debit cards because Comcast already has Phelps’ money.

Valley News Live reports Comcast stole $1,000 out of her checking account for cable service she does not have in a state Comcast does not serve. (2:44)

Washington’s Attorney General on Monday issued a consumer alert targeting Comcast for billing customers for its Service Protection Plan (SPP) without consent.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced in December new evidence obtained as part of his ongoing lawsuit against the cable and internet giant revealed that Comcast may have signed up more than half of all SPP subscribers without their consent. Since Ferguson filed an amended lawsuit, the Attorney General’s Office received more than 100 complaints from Comcast customers, including 74 about the SPP. Of those, more than 50 claim Comcast added the plan to their account without their consent.

Comcast markets the $5.99/mo plan as insurance against surprising service call fees or inside wiring replacement costs. But Ferguson accused Comcast of not clearly disclosing that its service plan does not cover one important and common expense customers with wiring problems could encounter — repairing defective wiring “wall-fished” inside walls. In many cases, SPP customers were told to hire an independent electrician to manage wall-fish installations and repairs.

Ferguson initially filed a $100 million lawsuit against Comcast in August 2016 alleging deceptive conduct and racking up more than 1.8 million violations of Washington’s Consumer Protection Act. More than half a million Comcast subscribers in the state subscribe to its SPP, delivering Comcast more than $73 million in revenue  from 2011-2015. Ferguson claims many customers were told they would be enrolled for free, only to later discover an ongoing $5.99 fee on each monthly bill.

“This new evidence makes clear that Comcast’s conduct is even more egregious than we first realized,” Ferguson said. “The extent of their deception is shocking, and I will hold them accountable for their treatment of Washington consumers.”

Ferguson

Comcast’s fight to keep Washington’s Attorney General from hearing how it markets its SPP

In May 2017, King County Superior Court Judge Timothy Bradshaw ordered Comcast to provide the Attorney General’s Office with “telephone calls that exist in which [Comcast] sold the SPP to Washington consumers.” In response to the court order, Comcast turned over to the Attorney General’s Office recordings of calls between Comcast and 1,500 Washington consumers whom Comcast signed up for the SPP.

The Attorney General’s Office analyzed a random sample of recorded sales calls between Comcast and 150 Washingtonians. Comcast did not even mention the SPP to nearly half the sample. Additional consumers in the sample explicitly rejected the SPP, but Comcast signed them up anyway. Consequently, Comcast enrolled more than half of these subscribers without their consent.

Even when Comcast actually mentioned the SPP on the sales call before signing consumers up for the SPP, Comcast continued to engage in deception. Comcast deceptively failed to disclose the SPP was a monthly recurring charge to 20 percent of the Washingtonians in the sample. Rather, Comcast often told subscribers the SPP was added for “free” to their account.

According to Comcast’s own data, more than 75% of SPP subscribers sign up via the telephone. Comcast operates call centers in Washington state, Colorado, Minnesota and Texas, as well as throughout the world in the Philippines, Mexico and Guyana. Comcast paid call center staff up to $5 for every SPP sale they made.

Comcast does not instruct its employees to send customers any information about the SPP via email, text message, mail, or refer the customer to Comcast’s website while the call is occurring and the customer is considering whether to enroll in the SPP. Rather, Comcast only provides oral representations about the SPP.

The Attorney General’s Office alleges this pattern of deception is a systemic issue throughout Comcast’s marketing and “sale” of the SPP, and represents potentially tens of thousands of new violations of the Washington state Consumer Protection Act.

Comcast had spent over a year fighting the Attorney General’s Investigative Demand notice that required the company to preserve and produce recordings between Comcast employees and customers who bought the SPP. In May 2017, Comcast’s attorneys finally admitted the company deleted 90% of the call recordings it was originally compelled to produce.

Damages

Ferguson is seeking full restitution of the $73 million Comcast collected from Washington subscribers along with penalties that will cost Comcast over $100 million if the company is found to be liable.

Ferguson is still enlisting affected customers in his legal effort. Check your bill — if you believe you’re being charged for the SPP without your consent, file a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office.

The Republican-pushed corporate tax rollback will bring a $14.4 billion increase in available cash flow for Comcast to use for future mergers and acquisitions or share buybacks by 2021, even as the cable company has no plans to share its tax savings bonanza with subscribers in the form of lower rates.

MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett noted Comcast will likely only spend the largess on two things — acquiring other companies to further concentrate the media marketplace or, more likely use its newly available cash flow on a blockbuster share buyback program, which will boost Comcast’s stock price and deliver dramatically higher bonuses to the company’s top executives.

Moffett believes Comcast is following in the footsteps of Time Warner Cable a decade ago, shortly after the company was split away from Time Warner, Inc. The former Time Warner Cable fueled interest in its stock by committing to keep its leverage at a stable 3.25 x EBITDA, which means it would not be spend a lot of money or take on a lot of debt to upgrade its cable systems, make expensive acquisitions, or cut rates for subscribers. As a result, Comcast’s free cash will quickly accumulate, which it will either use to buy other companies, return to investors in the form of a dividend payout, or buy back large numbers of shares of its own stock, making shares already owned by investors more valuable. Since most executive compensation packages tie bonuses to the share price of the company’s stock, and often include stock share awards for executives, top officials can take home tens of millions of dollars in bonuses.

The Trump Administration claimed the dramatic cut in the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% would create new investment, result in new job creation and higher pay. But at Comcast, its existing investment plans developed before the tax cut law was passed remain largely unchanged, the company laid off nearly 1,000 workers in the last month, and so far has only committed to giving qualified employees a one-time $1,000 bonus, which will cost the company a one time charge of less than $150 million — about 1.04% of Comcast’s tax cut cash haul.

Just shy of 10 years after FairPoint Communications acquired Verizon’s landline properties in the northern New England states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, both the company and its name are disappearing forever.

Consolidated Communications, which announced it would acquire FairPoint in December 2016, intends to put FairPoint’s name and reputation behind it, and is rebranding the phone company as Consolidated Communications with plans for significant broadband upgrades for its customers.

FairPoint bought the assets of Verizon’s landline network in the three northern New England states in 2007 for $2.4 billion. The transition from Verizon to FairPoint did not go well, and the company stumbled for years trying to keep up with billing and service problems and the need to continually expand broadband service to stay competitive, all while also trying to pay off the debts it incurred in the acquisition. The company failed on all accounts and declared bankruptcy in 2009, eventually emerging with a new business plan in 2011.

FairPoint’s performance post-bankruptcy has relied on cautious spending, cost-cutting measures and benefits cutbacks for its employees, which triggered a 131-day strike in 2014 among FairPoint’s union workforce — the longest walkout of any company that year. Replacement workers sent in to handle service calls and network maintenance were criticized by customers and lacked experience to manage New England’s rough winters.

By early 2016, executives claimed their “turnaround” plan for FairPoint had made significant strides. By that summer, activist shareholders were demanding FairPoint be put up for sale, in part to allow them to quickly recoup their investments in company debt that could not be monetized unless another company acquired FairPoint and assumed those debts.

In late 2016, Consolidated Communications did exactly that, acquiring FairPoint’s assets in northern New England and many other states where it operates small phone companies for $1.5 billion — a significant drop in value for assets that sold for nearly $1 billion more nine years earlier.

Rob Koester, Consolidated Communications vice president for consumer products clearly wants to put FairPoint behind him.

“It is a new beginning,” he said. “It’s a new chapter for us. It’s a re-dedication to our customers.”

Some of the biggest planned changes appear to be more job cuts. Consolidated recently eliminated FairPoint’s state president positions in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont and will depend on regional management instead. The phone company will also once again face negotiations with unions that represent much of its workforce later this year. Most expect the unions will not be friendly to anticipated company efforts to further consolidate and reduce benefits.

Promised broadband upgrades from speed increases come with few details, except a broad commitment to raise speeds for 300,000 internet customers over the course of this year — which represents about 30% of FairPoint customers. Spokeswoman Angelynne Amores claims there will be no price hikes for faster internet speeds.

But Consolidated will also be under the watchful eye of Wall Street, which does not want the company to invest too much in broadband upgrades until shareholders are comfortable with the company’s financial future. There are few business successes in wireline acquisitions and mergers these days, as Frontier Communications can attest from its purchase of Verizon’s network in Florida, California, and Texas.

Any upgrades cannot come soon enough for FairPoint customers forced to endure its DSL service as their only internet access option.

Michael Charter, a FairPoint customer in Jericho, Vt., lives just outside the state’s largest city, Burlington, where there are several internet service providers. But in his part of Jericho, FairPoint is the only broadband provider available, and it does not come close to offering actual broadband speeds.

Charter told the Associated Press his current solution is to buy two DSL accounts from FairPoint and divide up the load from his family’s streaming, internet browsing, downloading and telecommuting across two different accounts. His television and computers share one FairPoint DSL account hooked up to one router while other internet usage is confined to a second router connected to a second account. FairPoint is unable to bond the two connections together to increase speed, so two slow DSL lines is the best option for him for now.

Consolidated isn’t likely to make a lot of money taking over FairPoint’s residential and business landlines or DSL accounts. But it could earn substantial revenue from FairPoint’s extensive fiber network laid across the three northern New England states it serves. Companies and public institutions rely on fiber connectivity, as do cell towers — including the future swarm of 5G small cells expected to eventually be placed across the phone company’s footprint.

The phone company’s biggest rival is Comcast, which has some cable coverage in the region, but large sections of all three states are bypassed by Comcast and Charter Communications, which has a substantial presence in eastern Maine.

Comcast’s Business division has introduced the first automatic 4G backup internet connection service for commercial customers who experience an internet outage or network problem.

Comcast’s Connection Pro ($29.95/mo) offers automatic switching to a backup 4G LTE wireless internet service that will keep business customers connected to the internet until Comcast’s wired broadband connection is repaired and goes back online.

“Internet connectivity is critical for any business. Losing their connection – even shortly – can be disruptive,” said Jeff Lewis, vice president, data product management, Comcast Business. “Comcast Business understands that businesses need a redundant back-up solution to help stay connected and provide greater peace of mind in the event of a power or internet outage.”

The service targets small businesses and retailers and is marketed as a backup for cash registers/credit card point of sale terminals, email, and cloud services, and includes battery backup to maintain connectivity for up to eight hours in the event of a power outage.

Business customers can also access an online control panel to remotely monitor outages at individual business locations.