Comcast Makes Billing Mistake & Charges Its Customers $25 To Fix It

Our reader “lattemanifesto” has quite the set of eagle eyes when it comes to making sure all is in order on her Comcast bill. It’s a good thing, too, as she discovered that there was an extra charge tacked on to it from the company, after they’d made a previous double-charging billing mistake.

Neither incident was important enough to notify customers, apparently.

Comcast is of course in our Worst Company In America tourney this year, going up against Time Warner Cable in the first round. They show how they earned that berth, as Lattemanifesto writes:

I noticed that my Comcast bill this month was about $25 more than usual. Upon reading the billing details, I saw a strange $25 “return item” fee. I called, and the Comcast billing representative explained that they had accidentally double-billed ALL customers who use e-billing. When they realized their mistake, they reversed the second payment. (It’s even listed on my bill — a second payment four days after the first payment was made, and then a “Payment Reversal” for the same amount.)

The $25 fee is for the payment reversal. Yes, Comcast charged every single one of their e-bill customers a $25 fee for the reversal of Comcast’s own double-payment error. The representative confirmed that this $25 fee was also a mistake, that my bill was wrong, and that I only owed the usual amount. Good thing I asked, because Comcast is not sending out corrected bills or notices. I could not find any mention of it on their website. I guess Comcast will be collecting an extra $25 this month from all the customers who don’t notice the mistake.

Check your bills and call Comcast, since it’s apparent they’re in no hurry to alert you to their mistake.

UPDATE: Wells Fargo contacted Consumerist with the below statement, taking the blame for any confusion.

“During computer system testing at Wells Fargo, an error was made that resulted in the duplicate transmission of Comcast customer payment files to Comcast. This resulted in duplicate payments or inaccurate charges being posted to the accounts of some of Comcast’s customers. Before the situation was discovered and remedied, Comcast customers may have seen online or received erroneous billing statements. This was an error made by Wells Fargo; Comcast had no role in this issue. All inaccuracies will be corrected, and the bank has made procedural changes to ensure this doesn’t happen again, and a letter of apology is being mailed to all potentially impacted Comcast customers.
We sincerely apologize to Comcast and the impacted customers for any inconvenience, and are taking all necessary steps to rectify this unfortunate, but isolated, situation.”

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