Comcast is having a bad publicity month. Not only are they pushing for a merger with Time Warner Cable that no one wants, they’ve also had multiple incidents of terrible customer service, specifically people changing customer names on bills to “dummy” and “B*tch”. However, a recently released recording of a customer service call may just be icing on the terrible cake.
Reddit user robsonic2 posted a Soundcloud recording onto Reddit last Friday where a customer representative lied to the customer about data caps. According to robsonic2, “I called in to cancel my Comcast Internet Service after being charged $120 for coverage charges and the rep told me that every internet provider has data caps and that they are required by law.”
In the recording, the Comcast agent tells robsonic2 that “Every Internet Service Provider has data caps. It is mandated by the law”. On top of that, the customer representative declined robsonic’s request to have his internet turned off. Robsonic2 had to visit his local Comcast office to turn off his internet service.
However, this claim is false. Comcast confirmed in a statement to the press that there are no laws requiring the ISPs to have data caps, and Comcast cancelled their data cap in 2012. Comcast then went on to tell the Daily Dot that “We are currently conducting trials of a more flexible data usage plan in a small number of markets, and this representative’s statements are not consistent with the training and messaging we provide. We will work to retrain this representative and will reach out to the customer to clarify this information.”
While data caps were once a way to minimize bandwidth usage, most caps were applied in a way where consumers were fined for minute reasons. This lead some members of Congress to submit a bill that would restrict how data caps were used.