Comcast Charges Family For Porn Rentals Made After They Canceled Service

Megalith

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
The customer isn't always right, but sometimes they are. Comcast was adamant a family was ordering porno until they returned their cable box—and the rentals and charges kept coming.

Comcast customers for eight years, Alyssa and Jason say their purchase history proves they do not order adult movies. We went to bat for the Overstreets, but Comcast pushed back with this email: "The box that is sending the authorization signal to order on-demand movies is the box that is assigned to the account." Fed up, these customers canceled Comcast and shipped back the equipment. The UPS receipt shows they returned the cable box April 7. Days later on April 10, 11 and 12, Comcast billed the couple for more adult movies.
 
Krazy925 said:
Comcast always screws you.
Click to expand...

In this case I think comcast isnt totally at fault. Someone Spoofed their cable box ID. I mean if you had an account with equipment on it and you saw the id number for the equipment on that account buying stuff, you would assume its okay. In addition, I am positive comcast gets many calls from people saying they didnt order porn when their spouse might find out.

The billing was going to be automatic based on the number on the cable box. Its such a weird issue, its going to take someone besides tech support or even their supervisor to properly fix it.

In the end, this issue was caused by someone else, someone who wanted free cable and free porn. Comcast has to deal with the fraud.
 
If ppv wasn't complete bullshit, I would actually use it. You can BUY dvds for cheaper.
 
FalconSS said:
In this case I think comcast isnt totally at fault. Someone Spoofed their cable box ID. I mean if you had an account with equipment on it and you saw the id number for the equipment on that account buying stuff, you would assume its okay. In addition, I am positive comcast gets many calls from people saying they didnt order porn when their spouse might find out.

The billing was going to be automatic based on the number on the cable box. Its such a weird issue, its going to take someone besides tech support or even their supervisor to properly fix it.

In the end, this issue was caused by someone else, someone who wanted free cable and free porn. Comcast has to deal with the fraud.
Click to expand...

My parents literally had the same issue. They finally had the option to rent PPV movies totally disabled. By the time it was finished they were so disgusted with Comcast they switched to DirecTV. Haven't heard a complaint from them since.

Comcast doesn't trust their customers and it shows. My parents had Comcast for close to 10 years and never once had ordered a PPV and suddenly they order UFC and Boxing PPVs during every major event for an entire month. Screw Comcast right in the 30 minute holds.
 
FalconSS said:
In this case I think comcast isnt totally at fault. Someone Spoofed their cable box ID. I mean if you had an account with equipment on it and you saw the id number for the equipment on that account buying stuff, you would assume its okay.
Click to expand...
If you provide the service and the hardware, shouldn't you be able to make it somewhat secure? or at least be certain of which house the request is coming from?
 
ChoGGi said:
If you provide the service and the hardware, shouldn't you be able to make it somewhat secure? or at least be certain of which house the request is coming from?
Click to expand...

Comcast called the situation unique and apologized for what happened. Comcast credited the Overstreets $240 for the movies and paid their final cable bill.

Sounds like it was an unusual situation - I agree they should have been taken care of thou.

Axe
 
Yeah, I read the article, I just assumed since it's Comcast they don't give a shit and didn't bother to check :)
 
Krazy925 said:
My parents literally had the same issue. They finally had the option to rent PPV movies totally disabled. By the time it was finished they were so disgusted with Comcast they switched to DirecTV. Haven't heard a complaint from them since.

Comcast doesn't trust their customers and it shows. My parents had Comcast for close to 10 years and never once had ordered a PPV and suddenly they order UFC and Boxing PPVs during every major event for an entire month. Screw Comcast right in the 30 minute holds.
Click to expand...
TBF, they might've had a sudden interest in UFC and boxing. There are such situations that would cause such to happen.
 
FalconSS said:
In this case I think comcast isnt totally at fault. Someone Spoofed their cable box ID. I mean if you had an account with equipment on it and you saw the id number for the equipment on that account buying stuff, you would assume its okay. In addition, I am positive comcast gets many calls from people saying they didnt order porn when their spouse might find out.

The billing was going to be automatic based on the number on the cable box. Its such a weird issue, its going to take someone besides tech support or even their supervisor to properly fix it.

In the end, this issue was caused by someone else, someone who wanted free cable and free porn. Comcast has to deal with the fraud.
Click to expand...

so they can provide an insecure authority system and blaime people that Comcast didn't secure enough ? Comcast system was brokenn, not the customers. Comcast had the fault, not the customers.
 
FalconSS said:
In this case I think comcast isnt totally at fault. Someone Spoofed their cable box ID. I mean if you had an account with equipment on it and you saw the id number for the equipment on that account buying stuff, you would assume its okay. In addition, I am positive comcast gets many calls from people saying they didnt order porn when their spouse might find out.

The billing was going to be automatic based on the number on the cable box. Its such a weird issue, its going to take someone besides tech support or even their supervisor to properly fix it.

In the end, this issue was caused by someone else, someone who wanted free cable and free porn. Comcast has to deal with the fraud.
Click to expand...

I don't understand how this isn't 100% Comcast's responsibility.
 
pothb said:
TBF, they might've had a sudden interest in UFC and boxing. There are such situations that would cause such to happen.
Click to expand...
Not after repeated calls to the contrary. This went on for ~3 months. What really baffled me was they didn't want to turn off the PPV because they thought they were going to get my parents to pay it. My parents won't even pay for HBO or any other premium service. Why would they suddenly change that?

Fuck Comcast I'm so happy I don't have to use them or help anyone with them.

They lost a $250/month customer over it.
 
My wifes grandpa used to buy that PPV "porn" and it would be itemized in the bill. The titles were hilarious.

Just making stuff up but it was like.

Little Red Riding In The Hood
Lord Of The Cockrings

I mean just obsurd titles like something out of Clerks.

*NSFW*

 
Krazy925 said:
Not after repeated calls to the contrary. This went on for ~3 months. What really baffled me was they didn't want to turn off the PPV because they thought they were going to get my parents to pay it. My parents won't even pay for HBO or any other premium service. Why would they suddenly change that?

Fuck Comcast I'm so happy I don't have to use them or help anyone with them.

They lost a $250/month customer over it.
Click to expand...
You didn't mention that they called about it repeatedly, previously.
 
Axehandler said:
Sounds like it was an unusual situation - I agree they should have been taken care of thou.
Click to expand...

Can happen easy enough. If a installer removes a box from one account, and uses it for another install instead of returning it to warehouse the PPV Manager still sees it at it's original location.
 
That would be negligence on the installer. Unless Comcast didn't have a procedure in place to prevent such things.
 
Yea, but I wouldn't put the problem on Comcast as a whole if it were a single employee that fucked up.

Sides, they have a ton of other legitimate problems that you can blame.
 
The only thing surprising to me in this thread is that last name. Is that common in perhaps Britain or something? I have literally never seen anyone with the last name "Overstreet".


Again as far as this article goes, Comcast being douchebags is a fact of life. They're probably going to roll out their gigabit service here before Google finishes up their service, but guess who I'm waiting for? Yeah, doesn't take much figuring.
 
pothb said:
You didn't mention that they called about it repeatedly, previously.
Click to expand...
"By the time they finished" was some context.

Also-- when has Comcast ever managed to get anything fixed after one visits/call?
 
Don't ask me, I never used comcast, all the stuff I know from their horrible experiences are from people I know. By the time they finished could be a single occurence... like you implied, they aren't exactly the best at fixing things quickly.
 
pothb said:
Don't ask me, I never used comcast, all the stuff I know from their horrible experiences are from people I know. By the time they finished could be a single occurence... like you implied, they aren't exactly the best at fixing things quickly.
Click to expand...
The amount of jealous I instantly felt for this statement. Trade me lives.
 
FalconSS said:
In this case I think comcast isnt totally at fault. Someone Spoofed their cable box ID.
Click to expand...

That's not necessary at all for this to occur. Before I canceled Concast, I switched out the old crackerbox cable box for an even larger, uglier crackerbox DVR cable box (that required that I access a secret developer menu during bootup just to turn captioning on or off but that's another story). When they gave me the new box, the person in the Concast Store botched the account numbers, assigning the box they had just given me to some random other person's account. I didn't notice what had happened until the next day when I studied the paperwork and couldn't understand why someone else's account info was on the piece of paper they gave me with the cable box.
 
FalconSS said:
In this case I think comcast isnt totally at fault. Someone Spoofed their cable box ID. I mean if you had an account with equipment on it and you saw the id number for the equipment on that account buying stuff, you would assume its okay. In addition, I am positive comcast gets many calls from people saying they didnt order porn when their spouse might find out.

The billing was going to be automatic based on the number on the cable box. Its such a weird issue, its going to take someone besides tech support or even their supervisor to properly fix it.

In the end, this issue was caused by someone else, someone who wanted free cable and free porn. Comcast has to deal with the fraud.
Click to expand...

Let's think this through for a minute...

1. Customer returns box to Comcast.
2. Comcast neglects to remove the box from customer's account and billing services
3. Customer gets billed for services from a box they were not in possession of
4. "Comcast isn't totally at fault." ??????????

Meanwhile the Comcast employee using this box ID for a few wanks has likely done this before and Comcast hasn't fixed their system.
 
Krazy925 said:
My parents literally had the same issue. They finally had the option to rent PPV movies totally disabled. By the time it was finished they were so disgusted with Comcast they switched to DirecTV. Haven't heard a complaint from them since.

Comcast doesn't trust their customers and it shows. My parents had Comcast for close to 10 years and never once had ordered a PPV and suddenly they order UFC and Boxing PPVs during every major event for an entire month. Screw Comcast right in the 30 minute holds.
Click to expand...

This is what happens when these monopolies are allowed to exist.

My cable bill (Cox) went up $35 this month (some of it due to them dropping the extra discount they gave me last year).
After waiting on hold, getting transferred multiple times, they finally hung up on me.
Then they had the nerve to email me a link to a survey. Gave them the worse review I've ever given any company.

I'd drop them, but I get zero reception on an outdoor antenna, and I can't even get slow DSL any more.
Last year I dropped the phone service due to the increasing hi prices and switched to a free internet phone service (just $4 in taxes each month)
Now I'm about to drop the cable TV service and replace it with Dish. Would save me over $20/month plus I'd get more channels.

This is how they treat a 20+ year customer. Any wonder why cable is losing customers?
 
So glad I dont have Comcast. I do have TWC for intarwebz, but I've only had one problem with packet loss at a node 49 miles away. I gave them every bit of info they needed on the nodr, and they had a FSE dispatched and corrected the issue in an hour.
I have DirecTV for tv service, and I love it. Even had two inches of ice on the dish this past winter and never lost service. The only time I ever gave them a call was to figure out how to force the Genie to use hardwire instead of WiFi.
 
I can hear Leo Getz now, "Never go to Comcast ... because they always EFF you at Comcast."
 
The problem here is that Comcast refused to do anything about it until there is solid evidence that Comcast was in the wrong. These people are actually lucky that Comcast cooperated at that point. Comcast could have continued on with no concern about being sued for fraud/ theft because of that damn arbitration clause.
 
Comcast only does something when the general public gets to see the shenanigans they are running.Ive experienced this recently myself. Watch out for those reps signing people up for two year contracts.
 
xFuryofFivex said:
Comcast only does something when the general public gets to see the shenanigans they are running.Ive experienced this recently myself. Watch out for those reps signing people up for two year contracts.
Click to expand...

The stupid contract setup is exactly why I don't have cable. There isn't a no bullshit option for TWC if people just want to sign up and use the service without surprises. Everything is a promo for 1 or 2 years and they can't tell me what the price will be when the promo runs out. I don't understand why this is difficult for them to have "normal" services and prices listed on the site.
 
Last edited:
Ocellaris said:
The stupid contract setup is exactly why I don't have cable. There isn't a no bullshit option for TWC if people just want to sign up and use the service without surprises. Everything is a promo for 1 or 2 years and they can't tell me what the price will be when the promo runs out. I don't understand why this is difficult for them to have "normal" services and prices listed on the site.
Click to expand...
I called them out on a twitter, within 12 hours i had a rep willing to help me with my plan. I had initially called customer support and spoke to retention about having the call pulled because i did not agree to a 2-year term with a early cancellation of $250. I wanted to downgrade, after hearing i would have to pay an early term fee, i told them i wanted to hear the call myself or i would be speaking to the legal dept. i was given the response "it takes 5-7 business days to pull a call" spiel. Working in call-center myself, i know it doesnt take that long. After hearing this, i went to twitter and it got resolved. then they messed it up by adding rental device, that i didnt need. ...end rant :). Like others have said, no other alternatives due to small town monopoly.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top