If a small business, like a bar or restaurant, lies to a cable company and orders residential service instead of the more costly commercial offerings, it would make sense that the pay-TV provider might sue to collect the money it should have received. But what if the reason for the gaffe wasn’t intentional deception but a mistake by an installer?

That’s the question that a number of commercial DirecTV customers are asking after being sued by a law firm representing the satellite giant (which is coming under the ownership of AT&T). They claim this is just a money grab and that they never meant to deceive anyone.

The Dallas Morning News’s Dave Lieber has spoken to some business owners and reviewed others’ claims of being on the end of DirecTV collections complaints.

A lawyer representing several of these businesses alleges that a New York-based law firm that collects on DirecTV’s behalf trained the satellite company’s auditors to seek out small, often rural business owners who may be using residential accounts.

Even after DirecTV said it would stop paying the auditors to do this sort of search, the law firm went out of pocket and paid for the audits because each collection action could result in substantial amounts of back subscription fees being paid by the defendant.

The lawyer also contends that this collection firm deliberately targeted businesses with minority owners under the assumption that they would be less likely to challenge the action in court.

Lieber learned of these disputes when covering the story of a Garland, TX, restaurant that was facing a collections bill of $15,000 from DirecTV. Even after the third-party installer admitted that it had erred and that DirecTV should show some mercy on the restaurant owners, the company refused to relent.

The restaurant attempted to sue DirecTV over the dispute, and 18 other businesses attempted to combine their legal actions with this case, but because DirecTV’s agreement for commercial customers [PDF] has a clause that requires all disputes are resolved through binding arbitration, each business was ordered by the court to enter into the arbitration process individually in their respective home states.

For its part, DirecTV denies allegations that it’s deliberately targeting small businesses to make money off collections actions.

“The allegations are completely false,” a company rep tells the Morning News. “These business owners were violating federal law, our customer agreements and taking unfair advantage of neighborhood bars and restaurants who are paying legitimate commercial rates for programming. We are confident these baseless claims will ultimately be rejected.”

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