Comcast broke law 445,000 times in scheme to inflate bills, judge finds

Enlarge / A Comcast van in Sunnyvale, California, in November 2018. (credit: Getty Images | Andrei Stanescu)

Comcast yesterday was ordered to refund nearly 50,000 customers and pay a $9.1 million fine when a judge ruled that it violated the Washington state consumer protection law hundreds of thousands of times.

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued Comcast in August 2016, accusing the nation’s largest cable company of tricking customers into buying a “near-worthless ‘protection plan’ without disclosing its significant limitations.”

Buying the $5-per-month plan ostensibly prevented customers from having to pay each time a Comcast technician visited their home to fix problems covered by the plan. But in reality the plan did not cover the vast majority of wiring problems, the AG’s lawsuit said. Moreover, Washington state attorneys said that Comcast led customers to believe that they needed to buy a Service Protection Plan (SPP) to get services that were actually covered for free by the company’s “Customer Guarantee.”