Bring exact change.

Mail them a check for $0.00. I'd like to see if it makes it to your bank.

Doesn't it cost money for them to process a VISA payment? WIN.

Write them a check for $0.00 and send it in.

Screw that, pay exactly $0.00 in urine-soaked pennies!

Mail them a check for $0.00. I'd do it.

I bet they'd do it too, extra service fees and all for terminating your service on a holiday.

Grab a video camera and go to one of the walk-in locations. Tape the hilarity that ensues.

The letter does not threaten to cut off their 911 service. It says that only 911 and 611 will be available once other service is cut off.

well, isn't that comcastic

c'mon someone had to say it.

I know a lot of people said send a check for $0.00. But since the number zero is nothing, does this imply that what Comcast really wants is a blank check? EVIL!

Let's hope this idiocy doesn't affect the OP's credit score.

Send in a bad drawing of a spider.

@Garbanzo: Until June 10, when all services are terminated.

I'm not sure if Comcast system is able to process a payment of $0.00. So instead of sending them a check for $0.00 as many readers have suggested, mail them a check for $0.01 instead.

Then, request a refund of overpayment to be mailed to you...

PS. When you get it, send a copy to Consumerist :)

In college my tuition bill was $0.00 after scholarships. I had to stand in line for an hour to pay it (and get the critical PAID rubber stamping) before they would let me register for classes. I learned after that to mail in my $0 payment ahead of time, so I didn't have to wait in line.

@Garbanzo:
Keep reading.

This reminds me of a very funny joke i heard once; about a series of threatening letters about a 0$ amount due. the Guy wrote a check for 0$ and mailed it and and the bank called to complain that it broke their computer system.

Does this mean if you pay your monthly bill before May 25 you will be disconnected? Because if you pay your bill, you will not have paid zero dollars.

@azzie: I was thinking this also. Make sure to request a refund for overpayment too because I think most companies will not issue a refund for a few cents. it will end up costing them money

@egogg: That would be the equivalent of handing someone a soggy or halfway ripped dollar bill. Send them a blank sheet of paper.

Damn, my program to divert the rounded-off portions of interest accrued is not working! Damn that Michael Bolton and his decimal places!

I bet there's a fraction of a cent still on his account that the mail merge program is not catching.

After all: .1 of a cent rounded up is 0 cents to a program set to the $0.00 format. It'll take a sharp CSR or high level support to clear that one up...

EECB this one. Don't let it slip through the cracks or they'll get stupid (EG, send it to collections and that will ding your credit).

Well, if this is the worst evil that comcast commits they definitely don't deserve to make it to the final round of the worst company in america....

@Nighthawke: How would you even get a fraction of a cent on your account, except via software error?

Send in a coupon. Those are typically worth 1/20 of 1 cent. Should cover it.

@johnva: Sorry, it cut off my comment for some reason...

I meant to add that if it is a software error, I don't envy them the task of getting Comcast to admit that. It will be a wall of "the computer can't be wrong" when they call in.

This is not the worst. Go back and read prior stories.

@Phillip Guyton Jr.: You need to work on your delivery.

@unobservant: I'm sure they probably charge a higher fee to use Visa than they actually get charged

@Garbanzo: I'm not sure how the law works for digital phone service, but cutting 911 is a big no-no. If a teleco were to try this i would guess the FCC or some emergency notice board would have some words for them.

@wchamilton:

Time is of the essence; don't mail a check, go to one of the walk-in payment centers and personally give them your check for $0.00. And be sure to get a receipt.

@Murph1908: How long should a company be responsible to offer you 911 service without compensation?

Sure would be nice if they had a walk-in office....could ask 'em for change on a hundred.

"Sorry, smallest bill I've got..."

@egogg: With no legs

@LiquidGravity: Forever, actually. Even cell phones do it.

Send them a check for $1. What is probably happening is that there is a $.009 or less amount on the bill. The screens of the operators are formatted to show $.01 or greater so they do not see it. The bill if formatted to print $.01 or greater so it does not print the amount. However, the program behind the scenes is told to look for anywhere there is an amount greater than 0. $.009 is greater than 0 and that means that activity needs to happen on this account. Computers can only see in shades of 1 and 0, either true or false. They cannot recognize special situations unless programmed to recognize these situations.

Sending $1will pay off this account with some left over. You can send a smaller amount but $1 will play it safe. It will pay off whatever small amount is out there and then they can send you back the remainder.

Time to snag out my piggy bank full of $0 dollar bills. I never thought I'd need them ;)

Why am I not surprised it's Comcast Maryland? Their customer service is atrocious, even by Comcast standards.

@johnva: That is it, exactly. Monetary amounts are often stored as floating-point values. These have a tendency to be off by very small amounts, the maximum error usually somewhat proportional to the magnitude of the number (i.e. .0000001 might be of by only .0000000000000001 while 1000000000000000000 might be off by 1 or 2). This lack of precision is a daily fact of life in computing technology, and usually is small enough to ignore and correct by rounding.

The problem comes in the logic that decides that the bill is delinquent. It should be looking at whether the balance is less than $0.01, rather than less than or equal to $0.00, in order to squash this sort of nonsense.

@Coyote: it goes through your internet, if that goes your phone service goes.

Send them one of these: [imgur.com]

@kc2idf: @johnva: I can see that. Any time you have a prorated portion of your bill, this would come into play. The explanation makes perfect sense, but given how often they have to prorate things, you'd think they'd have a decent number of angry customers with $0.00 bills and threats of service termination! Hope they kick some Comcastic ass.

@wchamilton: It would probably bounce. Then they would be hit with a massive interest rate on it.

@kc2idf: This is why competent programmers will usually store monetary values as an integer number in cents. (so $1.99 would be stored as the integer 199)

@Radi0logy: Wow. You're just never going to let that go, are you?

@kc2idf: You mean there are still programmers that dumb to use floating point numbers? A 64-bit integer could be used to process amounts up to $92,233,720,368,547,758.07 (and that's a lot of movies).

Oh I so wish this had happened to me, it would give me minutes of pure joy and entertainment as I found new and exciting ways to pay $0.00.

@kc2idf: If they're storing monetary values as floating point numbers in their accounting system, they need to fire their programmers. In accounting you should *always* used fixed-point math to avoid the exact problem you describe.

For the same reasons, good programmers who work with floating-point numbers learn to avoid using exact comparisons. Conditions like "if (amount == 0)" are bugs waiting to happen. Much better to use something like "if (amount < 0.01)".