Comcast Sued By The Subscriber It Got Fired

Comcast, the company many love to hate, was the subject of a somewhat bizarre customer complaint earlier this month. In case you missed it, the general plot revolves around a comedy of errors in which former subscriber Conal O'Rourke was hit with phantom charges that would not disappear and sent a lot of hardware he did not request. According to O'Rourke, he tried valiantly to have the issues corrected, but after months of effort and lots of promises, nothing was ultimately done about the issues. As a result, the at-the-time customer escalated the issue to the office of the Comcast Controller. Unfortunately for O'Rourke, Comcast decided to escalate the issue, too.

Comcast allegedly contacted O'Rourke's employer, the well-known accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCooper, which has served as a Comcast consultant. According to Comcast, Conal tried to use his employer as leverage to get better service for his problems — Conal, of course, denies the claims. The problem, however, is that Comcast decided to contact the accounting firm about Conal's issues.

Comcast told O'Rourke's employer that he was using his position within the company as leverage, leading to an ethics investigation and Conal being fired. Comcast won't release any call recordings or evidence to back up its claims that Conal name-dropped his employer, however, and neither company will release what information, exactly, was exchanged between the two.

As a result of the mess, O'Rourke has proceeded to sue Comcast for giving away personal information without his consent — a violation of the Cable Communications Policy Act. He is also suing the company for fraud and for applying charges to his account wrongly. Under the lawsuit, he is looking for more than $1 million in legal fees and damages.

SOURCE: The Consumerist