[ale] OT watch you cable tv bill

[Jeff Lightner]

They're not "overzealous" - they're "greedy".  Whenever there is a cash
incentive (or a quota) for selling certain services some people will do
it whether you ask for it or not because they get the credit on the
front end and no penalty on the back end.  

This kind of stuff used to be so common in telecom that they had names
for things like "slamming" and "jammig".   In the one you'd not ask for
your long distance carrier to be changed (or even call anyone about it)
but suddenly you'd get a phone bill showing XYZ Corp had replaced the
company you'd heard of and was charging you $12/minute for long
distance.   In the other the carrier's reps were adding services to what
you'd actually ordered.   

As recently as last year I saw this kind of thing on a Cingular account
for my sister in Chattanooga.  Essentailly what happened was a text
message was sent to the phone that said "send a reply to opt out" of
something like daily sports scores.   Since they didn't reply Cingular
started billing them $20/month for this "3rd party" service.   They
reversed it fairly quickly once I spoke to a supervisor there but their
original thing to my sister was "pay the bill and we'll reverse it
later".   As I pointed out to my sister and to the supervisor there
would be zero incentive for removing the charges once they'd gotten the
payment.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jay
To: ale at ale.org
Goodman
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 2:50 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] OT watch you cable tv bill

Comcast did the same to me I transferred my service to my new home in
November. No upgrades or changes in actual packages, just a transfer to
a
new address.   Seems a few over-zealous sales weenies will automatically
add this option to your account any time you make a change.  A little
shady if you ask me.   I called them up and they removed both months
charges for the paper guide and dropped the option without question.


You could always report this incident to Fulton County Cable Franchise
Management.

http://ww2.co.fulton.ga.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1&I
temid=97

and

http://ww2.co.fulton.ga.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29&
Itemid=97


> Watch out for your next Cable TV bill... A couple of weeks ago, I got
a
> catalog in the mail from my cable company they called their "Channel
> Guide" that showed a complete schedule of programming for the month of
> July. At the time, I thought nothing of it and tossed it in the trash.
(I
> have no use for junk mail) I just received my cable bill today and I
> noticed a small increase in the cable tv costs. Ordinarily I would not
> have paid any attention to this small increase and just thought it was
the
> annual rate increase... except, I had just subscribed to cable
internet
> and noticed a couple of minor errors on that billing and decided to
call.
> When I asked about the small increase in the cable tv costs I was
shocked
> to find out that they were actually charging me ($3.40) for that
> ridiculously useless paper catalog that I did NOT request.
>
>
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