Comcast Accidentally Receives Customer’s Rent Check, Cashes It Anyway

When a 79-year-old Comcast customer accidentally included her rent check with her Comcast bill, not only did the cable company cash the check — which was more than 10 times the amount of her bill and was made out to someone else — but it also refused to issue her a refund when it acknowledged the goof.

Instead, the woman tells KRQE-TV, Comcast offered to credit her the $235 rent check to her account. Since her monthly cable bill is only $20.69, that amounts to more than 11 months of service.

But that won’t help the elderly customer on a fixed income who had to scrape together another $235 to make her rent payment.

A rep for Comcast explained to KRQE that this happened because no humans at Comcast actually look at the checks they receive. The payments are just processed automatically. She admitted that similar mistakes have occurred before but claims the company has remedied those situations quickly.

Of course that doesn’t explain why that didn’t happen in this case or why Comcast — which can afford to spend $45 billion to acquire 10 million Time Warner Cable customers — couldn’t simply send the customer a check for $235.

Comcast says it has reached out to the customer to apologize and rectify the situation. The company is also planning to talk to the employee who told the customer she couldn’t get a refund.

Hey, at least that employee didn’t change her name to “A**hole.”

In the end — and once again, only after the media got involved — Comcast issued the customer a refund check and kept the $235 credit on her bill.

Maybe the customer should have just called the Comcast CEO’s mom.

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.