A woman who sent a sarcastic payment to the “Comcast Vampires” for “My Right Arm” is suing because she says Comcast employees posted a copy of her unredacted check on the internet. She says she was alerted to the security breach by a stranger from Colorado who received the check in an email that said: “This is too funny not to pass on. This is an actual payment we received via yesterdays mail.”
The woman says “attached was a copy of my personal check with my name, my address, my phone number, My account numbers, my signature… nothing was blacked out…Nothing! And a copy of my comcast statement.”
Here’s her story as she tells it, from the Comcast Must Die website:
My gripe with comcast started when i received my first bill after signing up for the Comcast Triple Play. $99 a month, right? No…It was an additional $30 on top of that because i was already a comcast customer. If you have cable in my area, yes, you have to be a comcast customer.
So my first bill was for $228. When i paid my bill i paid $200. Leaving a $28 balance to be tacked on to next months bill. When i had family visiting, my cable wasnt working for a few days, finally i called and the reason was because my account was past due. In order to get it turned back on i had to pay $169 (not my $28 balance)by phone immediately. So i did, electronically… and before i hung up the phone the tv was on again. That fast. Embarrassing.
So since i paid over the phone i disregarded my next payment and instead sent my check to the “Comcast vampires” and paid in the amount of “My right Arm and zero dollars” memo “Robbing customers blind”. Haha, i got my little dig in there, so i thought.
About 2 weeks later, i was out of town visiting family when my husband calls from home telling me that he just recieved a strange phone call from a woman in Colorado. We live in Pennsylvania. She just recieved an email that said “This is too funny not to pass on. This is an actual payment we recieved via yesterdays mail.” And attached was a copy of my personal check with my name, my address, my phone number, My account numbers, my signature… nothing was blacked out…Nothing! And a copy of my comcast statement.
Immediately, i called my bank, then comcast, then the police. I had to cut my visit short to come home and take care of this situation. That was last August. Since then i have filed complaints with the BBB, Attorney General, and the FTC. I have searched for an attorney to file a case against them. No Luck. There are 3 Consumer Rights attorneys in Pittsburgh. I am afraid of the whole identity theft thing. A comcast employee put all of my personal information out there, its just a matter of time in my eyes. They have given me so much runaround, i dont even want to go there. I even spoke to a comcast security agent that couldnt even tell me her last name, she just had an Agent ID B!<. How ridiculous is that. She gave the the number for the comcast legal dept, 1-800-871-6298 and fax, 1-720-267-2794. She claimed that she had reported the incident and it was now out of her hands.
Nothing has been done, i have had to change my bank account, get new checks, and constantly keep an eye on our credit report. They issued me credit for 3 months of services.
A few people got fired, but that doesnt help me any. For all i know, the email could still be circulating. Now i am not sure where to go now. I just know that this incident could haunt me for years to come. And i still write my checks out to the comcast vampires.
The Associated Press says Comcast has no comment.
Woman sends Comcast check for ‘my right arm’ [Post-Gazette]
(Photo: cmorran123 )
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In no way was this that woman’s fault. Yeah she wrote the funny check, but that doesn’t give Comcast the right to post her personal information on the internet. That is so messed up.
@Karyuu: It’s disappointing, and all the finger pointing to this woman really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I don’t speak for the others, but I have two fingers, one for each of them.
I can commiserate with this. I too live in Pittsburgh, and the local Comcast offices are impossible to deal with. It took me three months to resolve an issue with them where they were applying my payments to the wrong account, and simple mathematics were apparently too complicated for the customer service reps. Eventually I got lucky and found one with a brain, on Easter Sunday!
@BlondeGrlz: Indeed. I must agree.
You guys think “my right arm” is bad? You should have seen what I wrote on some of my Merlin/Sallie Mae financial aid loan checks. I’d always meant to send them a full color 8×10 of me flipping the bird for their break room when it was paid off, but I never got around to it.
Keep in mind these are companies in which “Kevin” from India threatens your mother over the phone at 10pm if you’re late on a (12.5% rate) payment in which they’ve added an additional few thousand after a few month forbearance in which you were unemployed.
(I think if you knowingly take a job with a company like this, you should expect this behavior.)
This lady seriously needs to get a grip.
Sure, Comcast Employees were wrong in what they did. But she handled everything, wrong. Quite frankly, I would hate to have her as a customer.
@DarrenO: F*CK YOU. None of the employees at Comcast had the right to do what he/she did.
I’m no lawyer but I’d bet whoever scanned that cheque and sent it around did something illegal.
It seems that none of you, or the lady for that matter, has heard that if she has a problem with a cable company not doing the right thing has many options. She can call her local authority who regulates the cable company locally(in Pennsylvania it would be her borough or township). Also she can call the FCC, or, when I have an issue with Comcast, I call 1-800-Comcast. I get someone who speaks English and can help.
When you do something stupid like this, usually things you dont want to happen are the result.
@Charred:
What you posted was information dealing with CPNI…customer proprietary network information. That has nothing to do with this. CPNI…thats like the company has to ask you to look over you recent phone history, in order to use that information to sell you unlimited long distance and stuff like that. That secret network information…nothing to do with banking or finances…nice try though at being the “smart guy”
So, let me get this strait, Comcast is this big evil corporate monster. When someone finally speaks out against them, albeit humorous, you people put her down? I’ll tell you something, she’s got more balls then any of you nay sayers. It almost leads me to believe that Comcast has an entire department whose sole purpose is to discredit unhappy customers when they see them speaking out.
Sounds like Comcast needs to be burned down. Give Diane Craig a call. She’s all for burning down private property because the voices in her head told her to.
I live in the same area, and Comcast is the only choice for cable around here without paying more for horrible service from Dish or Direct. Comcast is aware of this and does whatever they want to to their “valued customers”. I once called with a complaint, and was told that there was no phone number for the corporate office. How very interesting that the company who provides phone service HAS NO PHONE. I share your feelings about Comcast, get a lawyer and nail them. They will pay big to keep you quiet.
@nursethalia:
Totally missing the point, you’re just splitting hairs. It’s still a crime, right? The thief still shouldn’t have done it, right? It’s still wrong, isn’t it?
Checks are risky instruments. Best to pay for everything with a credit card and then transfer money from your checking account to pay that bill. Take it from me: I just had my identity stolen. The only reason why my life as I know it isn’t over (and it’s pretty nightmarish at the moment) is because I froze my credit, meaning the thief could only ass-rape my Bank of America account, but she wasn’t able to open instant credit accounts at Wal-Mart, Target, and Kmart, among others. She tried – I got the rejection letters in the mail. If you can do it — freeze your credit in your state — I highly recommend it.
If I posted private information I had access to on the internet every time someone was ignorant to me, there’d be a lot of private data out there. Was she mean? Yes. But the first rule for people who have access to private data is to keep that data as private as possible. It’s one thing to show this around the office to a couple coworkers who also have signed confidentiality agreements, but to EVER send it electronically OFF-SITE is amongst the more disturbing breaches of data privacy I’ve ever heard of, and so easily remedied by simply blanking out some fields.
At the same time, since no actual damages have been reported, she might be best to just let it all go for now because Comcast has the lawyers to win a case like that.
God I can’t believe the number of morons on this thread. Hello McFly it’s against the law for comcast to release personal information.
I didn’t read all the comments so I’m sorry if I say something that has been already said.
I agree that this woman acted like a doofus. She probably shouldn’t have sent the check without considering what would have happened to it. Even so, she shouldn’t have had her info published to the world at large, which is something that she didn’t expect to happen.
Do I believe that Comcast was in the wrong here? Absolutely, without a doubt, as I believe most here do as well.
However, I think the dispute with this stems from the fact that her trust was betrayed. It’s a foregone conclusion that when you give a check out to someone, they have your account and routing numbers. Everything, it seems, to wire money out of your checking account. However, we take that for granted because we trust that the companies that we write checks to won’t take advantage of that and get more money that we owe them.
When an employee of Comcast published that check to the Internet, people that she didn’t authorize to see her check saw it. She now cannot control who saw the check and who didn’t. That’s the problem I think she and others have with this.
Legally, though, unless some schmoe out there in Internet-land tries to use it to steal her identity, which appears unlikely as she closed her checking account, the OP doesn’t have a leg to stand on in a lawsuit.
Just my thoughts.
Cheers!
She started the prank and gets pissed when it rolls around to her.. she needs to get a life and stop acting like a 4 year old baby.