Senate investigation shows Charter overcharges cable customers

The pay-TV companies have millions of subscribers, and at times billing records don’t match customer equipment and service records, meaning that some users are billed for items they haven’t ordered, according to the panel’s report.

The reports claim both companies neglected to pay back their customers after overcharging them and that Time Warner Cable will overcharge their customers by a cool $2 million this year. Reports also estimate Charter has been overcharging their customers by more than $400,000 per month.

The two cablecos, which will soon be the same company under the Charter emblem, have been written up in a US Senate report as consistently failing to provide refunds to customers they knew had been mis-billed.

The report added that cable and satellite providers have acknowledged the need to improve their customer service, and “provided information to the Subcommittee regarding their efforts to identify and address customer pain points and improve the customer experience”.

“In my view, that’s a ripoff of OH customers”, he said of 40,000 OH customers the committee investigators found were overcharged by Time Warner.

Time Warner and Charter billing errors were mostly overcharges for equipment that its customers rent, including set-top boxes and routers. That means customers that paid for services they did not receive, never knew they were being overcharged, unless they noticed it on their bill and contacted Charter. McCaskill released a separate report detailing problems with customer service and complicated bills. The customer service representative admitted that the charge had become unwarranted.

“Mistakes happen and we understand that”, Portman said.

Some of the top members of Congress are calling out the cable and satellite TV industries after the publication of a blistering new report finding that tens of thousands of Americans are being overcharged for their service by these companies. In some cases, the overcharges were only about $10 a customer, but in others they were quite a bit more. The newly beefed up Charter, which absorbed Time Warner Cable, says it will conduct regular audits of billing practices and grant refunds to customers who were overcharged.

Some customers are actually undercharged, noted former TWC Chief Operating Officer John Keib noted.

She said that there was no current plan to introduce legislation, and that exposure of the pay-TV practices could lead to reforms.

McCaskill and Senator Rob Portman held a hearing with representatives from five cable companies, including Charter.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said the nation has many other big problems, such as the projected trillions of dollars in deficits for Social Security and Medicare, and questioned the importance of Thursday’s topic, noting, “We need to keep this hearing in perspective and not get carried away”. The Senator released an excerpt of a 26-minute call she made to have a charge removed from her cable bill. “Until then, we will proactively issue a one month credit to any customer that the current monthly process reveals was overcharged”.

“We have listened to what you have said”, he told the subcommittee.