Sounds like my current experience, though I'm not quite so far along. We canceled phone service through Comcast and they DID shut it off. However, they never closed the cancel order, so they've still been billing us for the triple play package. On top of that, they ARE billing us for the services we wanted to remain separately, so we're basically getting double billed on the digital cable and internet. Our customer service response has also been a lot of, "we'll get back to you's" though every month we get a new bill the reflects no efforts to fix an obvious problem. Think we might be soon to send Mr. Roberts a message as well.

EECB time, plus a nice note to the local newsies never hurts any either.

Do what I did with DirecTV. Write a letter, stating the entire issue calmly and professionally. State only facts, and don't embellish with drama or hyperbole. State that you are not liable for these charges, this is their official notification of the fact, they should respond via mail only from now on, and should they choose to send it to collections or otherwise affect your credit, you will pursue your rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

This worked for me. After calling and stating my case regarding a bogus early termination charge many times, I was told I was SOL. After sending the letter, I got a nice one back saying they credited the charges. I got a $20 from them a month later for my credit balance.

FYI, there are severe penalties for companies who wrongly affect credit scores. I believe it's about $1000 per incident.

Assuming she hit a dead end with Comcast, writing her congressperson is an excellent approach. I've found writing my congressperson to be very helpful in resolving problems in highly regulated industries (phone, cable, banking, etc)

Charter just did this to me with a $5 sports package.

There may actually be a much easier way to resolve this. Most cable providers are granted "franchises" by the city they are doing business in. Check with your city, if you live outside the city limits your county, and file a complaint against them with the city. Usually you will be able to get your issue resolved very quickly this way.

I had new boxes delieved because the old ones were not recording, DVR, properly. Comcast sent out a contractor to drop off boxes that were not the model they had offered to send. We took them anyways because something is better than nothing, our next bill included two additional charges on our bill for extra DVRs.

I called them and explained the matter to the service rep who after about 10 minutes of button mashing informed me that they cannot deactivate the new DVRs because it will turn off our cable and since they couldn't do that it would remain on my bill...

I got her name and explained that I only had 2 boxes and that she could take a day to figure it out and I could call her back, but ultimately you can only charge me for 2 boxes.

I called back a week later and another person was able to credit our account. If the first lady needed more time that's one thing, but don't tell me that its not possible because you don't know how your system works.

Mr. Roberts not only is your service horrible but personally I feel that your company is the shining example of how bad it can get before forced reforms, be it government or other... imho.

The FCC needs to get the ability to regulate cable, so do state PUCs.

I had the same type of crap when we had Comcast in another city. They screwed up our bill and double billed us. Their solution was for us to go ahead and pay it and they would get around to fixing it later. Threatened to terminate our service unless we did even though they admitted it was their error. Ugh.

@BStu:

I hope your soon is by the end of the day as it is likely they will keep billing you and then proceed to send it to collections.

Cool that she sent the letter to her Congressman, given the failure of the FCC recently to regulate cable, I think Congress needs to hear about the problems that unregulated cable is having.

I canceled Comcast for my internet and TV; a few days ago I got a statement that they were going to be charging me $50 for December's cable bill. I called ans was told (I'll believe it when it happens) that the statement was wrong and I should be getting a check for the unused part of November.

ATT hasn't been much better...I'm still waiting for my rebate form for the modem.

@Murph1908:
$1000 per incident? That will surely put the fear of God into a company with a $25 billion revenue stream!

Unfortunately, writing your Congressman or Senator does not work the majority of the time in these matters. I used to work on the Hill and most of that correspondence gets sent back to the district offices and rarely looked at, especially in high volume mailing offices. Even if you are lucky and they do take the time to look at your complaint, it still takes much time to resolve it. You are better off contacting Exec regarding these matters.

It sounds like you've been turned over to a bill collector, which is why you're getting the "pay us now and we'll work it out later" thing. They have no intention of helping you work it out.

Here's what I would do:

File a complaint with your state attorney general's consumer protection division and cc the general counsel of Comcast's cable division. Be as concise as you can, saying basically:

(1) We ordered basic service
(2) Comcast installed a high-end service, which we have repeatedly asked them to cancel
(3) Comcast is demanding that we pay for the high-end service and is threatening to ruin our credit if we don't.

This is probably an unfair and deceptive trade practice. If you sue Comcast (and win), there's a good chance that they'd have to pay for your attorney.

That letter gets an A+ for clear, unemotional, effective writing.

Hope this couple gets some relief from Crudcast's evil machinations soon.

I also live in Arkansas (Little Rock) and have had many problems with comcast over the years.
The Attorney General (Dustin McDaniel) is a joke.
Have not seen him do one positive thing for consumers.
The PUC is in the pockets of comcast and will also do nothing.

I dropped comcast for dish/att and could not be happier. Amazingly, no problems with either vendor....yet.

Are they sending these notices by mail too? Remember, mail fraud is something that looks bad for a corporation too.

The Better Business Bureau might also be helpful. You might not get all of your money back, but you could get a reasonable settlement since they are basically an arbitrator.

Just so you know, the list of Comcast executive e-mail addresses is no longer valid. I just tried a little executive carpet bomb myself and they all bounced.

I recently tried setting up a new account with them only to discover that in 1994 somebody else had an account with my social attached.

Now, they want me to file a police report for identity theft as a prerequisite to starting up service!

Anyway, I tried to use the list to find out who thought that this was a good customer service procedure but all of the addresses bounced. with PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 13): 550 Mailbox unavailable or access denied

My mother had been a Comcast customer for years, but recently switched to Verizon's FIOS. After the Verizon tech "pulled Comcast's plug", my mom called Comcast to terminate the service.

Minor panic seemed to ensue on Comcast's end when they realized that the FIOS system was already hooked up, preventing Comcast from being able to talk her out of switching her cable provider. At this point, they tried a creative approach to keep the account open.

In 2002, my father passed away. Digging through their records, Comcast realized it was my father who had signed the contract over a decade ago. At this point, Comcast demanded to see my father's death certificate as a prerequisite to canceling the account. Comcast wanted proof my father was actually dead.

In the end, my mother prevailed over this tactic. But it did leave me wondering just how low Comcast will go to bully a customer.

Over the last year the number of complaints on consumerist towards Comscat has been amazing to say the least.

As it were, there are two companies I will never do business with as long as I live: Best Buy and Comcast.

@Ashcan: That's pretty low. I'm sure Comcast can go lower than that 'though.

Update - Not ALL of the addresses bounced. It only looked like it. I got some responses this morning.

So....can we have Consumerist send a bunch of the "Douche" t-shirts advertised under this story to Comcast?