Because consumers love nothing more than having their cable operator drain their bank accounts dry, the folks at Bright House Networks apparently decided to just keep cashing thousands of customers’ checks over and over again.

One Bright House customer in Palm Bay, FL, tells FloridaToday.com [via DSL Reports] that her one check for $175.03 had been processed four times by the cable company, which has around 2.5 million subscribers.

Another customer in Melbourne, FL, says his $191 check has also been processed repeatedly by Bright House, taking at least $800 out of his credit union account in a short period of time.

The customer’s credit union says it knows of about 250 Bright House subscribers who have had the same issue. It blames the problem on a defective file provided by Bright House to the credit union.

“They told me they are working with Bright House to fix the problem,” says the customer, “but they can’t tell me when it’s going to be fixed. Meanwhile, I’m wiped out.”

Indeed, for some people, having four times the amount of their monthly cable bill withdrawn from their account at one time can cripple their finances, leading to overdraft fees, late charges, bounced checks at other businesses, and other problems.

“It’s horrible,” says the Palm Bay Bright House subscriber. “There are a lot of people out a lot of money.”

Bright House is pinning the blame on a third-party payment processor, and says it is working with that vendor and customers’ banks “to resolve a payment processing error. Corrective actions are underway and duplicate payments will be reversed and funds will be replaced.”

In a statement apparently aimed at playing down the scale of the problem while also irritating grammarians, Bright House claims that “Less than 3,000 customers are affected.”

The company says it may take 48 hours for the reversals of these charges to show up in their accounts.

Bright House customers with concerns about this issue are being asked to call the phone number on their bills, and to reach out to their banks and credit unions to make sure that any erroneous overdraft or other charges are also removed.

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