MOUNT VERNON – At a recent Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) in Washington, D.C. hearing on the cable and satellite TV industry’s billing and customer service practices, U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) discussed the investigative report released with Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) which reveals that two cable companies have consistently failed to provide refunds to customers whom they knew they overcharged.
Portman said, “The Subcommittee reviewed thousands of documents, and interviewed countless witnesses, to learn more about the consumer practices of five of the largest pay-TV providers: Comcast, Charter, Time Warner Cable, Dish Network, and DirecTV. Together, these companies serve more than half of all American households, and nearly three-fourths of those that pay for television programming. Our joint report outlines troubling findings about the practices of two cable companies that have consistently failed to provide refunds to customers who they know they have overcharged, including thousands of people in my home state of Ohio.”
Portman continued, “During the course of the Subcommittee’s investigation, we discovered something about refunds I found hard to believe. As everyone with a cable or satellite subscription knows, when your bill arrives every month, it often has a long list of charges on it: A base charge for your TV package; maybe $10 extra per month for HBO; and equipment fees and surcharges for the set-top boxes you rent.
“Given how many millions of people get television service from these companies, it’s inevitable that from time to time a customer will wind up being charged for something by mistake. The same thing happens sometimes in the grocery store check-out aisle. Mistakes happen—we all understand that.”
Portman is concerned that some compannies find out they’ve been overcharging someone for equipment they don’t have but then do not make it right.
Portman said, “Specifically, when Time Warner Cable discovered the overcharges, it only dealt with the problem prospectively. It took erroneous charges off customers’ bills going forward, but did not provide any backward-looking refunds and did not even provide notice to customers so they could investigate the problem themselves. They just kept the money.”
Based on data provided to the Subcommittee, Time Warner Cable will overbill its customers nationwide an estimated $2 million for equipment charges in 2016, and, even after discovering those billing errors, will fail to do the work required to offer a full refund.
Time Warner Cable has recently been acquired by Charter Communications. So Portman says he is hopeful that the new company will work quickly to fix this problem.
“As a result of the investigation, Charter and Time Warner Cable have taken steps to improve their practices. Time Warner performs a monthly audit to find overcharges. Going forward, the company will provide an automatic one-month credit to all customers for each piece of overbilled equipment or service, and it will provide notice to overbilled customers so they can determine whether to request a credit or refund.
Portman said, “That is a good start but it does not make customers whole. Time Warner Cable has not yet committed to do anything for the 40,000 Ohio customers, for example, who were overcharged last year.
Charter (formerly Time Warner Cable) spokesman Mike Hogan of Columbus said, “In May of 2016, Charter completed its acquisition of Time Warner Cable. At just a little more than 30 days post-closing, Charter has been advised that TWC currently catches and corrects any overcharges on a monthly basis. We will put controls into place to catch such instances daily, as we now have installed at Charter, but that will take approximately 60‐90 days. Until then, we will proactively issue a one month credit to any customer that the current monthly process reveals was overcharged.”