Comcast got me fired after billing dispute, says CA man

[rhoenix]

Speaking over lunch last Friday, a Northern California man named Conal O'Rourke laid out what admittedly sounds like a crazy story: a year-long billing dispute over his home Comcast service that ultimately resulted in Comcast getting O'Rourke fired from his job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) in nearby San Jose earlier this year.

But O’Rourke arrived to last week’s lunch meeting with Ars with an astonishing amount of documentation: he has pages and pages of Comcast invoices. He has a spreadsheet, photos, notes, business cards, and complaint letters. He and his lawyer, Maureen Pettibone Ryan, happily provided digital copies of these materials to Ars, which we have re-published with his permission here.

As a result of his firing, O’Rourke has hired a local attorney and is now threatening to file a lawsuit against Comcast if the company does not agree to his demands, which include "a full retraction and apology, his re-employment with his former employer, and $100,312.50" by October 14.

A rogue $26.25

O’Rourke first moved to California in early 2012 after 20 years of working for Andersen Consulting (later Accenture) in Connecticut, most recently as part of the corporate controllership division. During his career, O'Rourke developed skills in accounting, financial analysis and auditing—skills that proved useful in his eventual dispute with Comcast.

In February 2013, he moved to a new place in San Jose and signed up for TV and Internet service with Comcast, since the only other competitive service, AT&T’s U-Verse, was not available in his building.

"I was roped into Comcast and with Comcast, my problems soon began," O'Rourke said.

His first issues began when, after six weeks of service, he had yet to receive a bill.

After eventually receiving his first bill in April 2013, O'Rourke noticed a number of problems. For one thing, his name was misspelled (an issue that never got corrected).

More importantly, O’Rourke noticed that Comcast was charging him for three "additional HD outlets" for an extra fee of $26.25 a month. He also was charged for cable boxes that he says he never activated (he planned on moving two additional TVs later on into his condominium), after allegedly being promised that he wouldn’t be.

Finally, as part of a promotional deal, O'Rourke says he was promised HBO and other premium channels for nine months, but they disappeared after just three.

O’Rourke said he called multiple times to try to get these issues resolved. When they weren’t, he finally walked into his nearest Comcast store in San Jose.

There he met with the assistant store manager, who gave him a business card and provided his personal cellphone number. "He promises me that it will all be addressed and that we're going to look at it," O’Rourke said.

Then the real problems began.

$1,820 in equipment he didn't order

For the next few months, O’Rourke says he was under deadlines at work and could not address issues with Comcast.

By October 2013, O’Rourke said that his Internet speeds suddenly dropped off, becoming "unworkable."
"I had contacted them regarding lack of responsiveness and performance issues; sometimes my service wouldn't be usable and I had to hotspot in with AT&T," he said.

Again he called, and again, Comcast promised to correct his problem—sometimes by sending technicians to his home—but according to O'Rourke, the company never did.

O’Rourke spent part of November and December 2013 traveling overseas, so he was surprised when he returned home to find several boxes at his doorstep containing "12 pieces of equipment" and a December 2013 monthly bill for over $2,000—including $1,820 in equipment that he insists he did not order.

According to the December 2013 invoice, O’Rourke was charged for devices including an "AnyRoom Hub" ($420) and a "Pace Host" ($110). On December 30, 2013, carrying these various boxes back, O'Rourke walked into the same San Jose Comcast store to return the gear and get his issues resolved.

When he took a service ticket at 1:59pm, he discovered that he was Ticket #395 but that the store was only on Ticket #251. Rather than spend his afternoon at the store, O’Rourke came up with a plan.

"They close at 7:00 pm, so I thought, I'm going to go at 6:45 pm, then somebody will have a fire underneath them to address the problems," he said. "I had had it up to here."

A Comcast employee named Matt Doblias ended up helping O’Rourke, took back the equipment, and cleared the charges. But that still didn’t get to the root of the errors that had now persisted for months. (Ars sent an e-mail to Doblias, which bounced.)

"I provided Matt with the detailed spreadsheet in person, and he asked if I could send it to him and he would take a look," O’Rourke said. The next day, December 31, he did so, but Doblias "responded that the spreadsheet never came through. I sent it again, then at the end of the day I asked for follow up and never heard back."

O’Rourke got irritated.

"On January 11, 2014, I was frustrated because I was felt that I had done everything," he said. "I sent [Doblias] an e-mail that I was hopeful would ignite him to do something. What I did was [show Doblias by e-mail that] I sarcastically wrote a letter [Comcast Senior Vice President Lawrence Salva], recommending Doblias for the Employee of the Month award. I wrote it up but didn't put in the mail. I wanted to give [Doblias] an opportunity to fix the problem."

The letter included lines like:

The reason why I have chosen to nominate the San Jose center is simple. Their blatant disregard for the customer has made resolving my issues next to impossible. This behavior has proven to be quite profitable as I, like most customers, just throw their hands up in exasperation. However, now that I am no longer exasperated I intend on following up on my concerns.

But O'Rourke heard nothing, and the billing errors persisted—resulting in Comcast allegedly sending a collections agency after him.

"On February 5, 2014, [Comcast] said my account was two months past due and at that point pushing $300," he said. "I don't order pay-per-view and I explained [to the collections agency] that that can't be right, and they were insistent, and I walked them through it."

By this point, O’Rourke had yet to receive an errorless bill, he said, despite having been a customer for nearly a year. The following day, he decided to contact Lawrence Salva, Comcast’s controller, who oversees the division of the company that deals with accounting. He spoke at length with Salva’s executive assistant, describing his litany of problems. After the call concluded, the assistant said that she would have another Comcast employee contact O’Rourke directly.
"An hour later I got a second call from an individual who doesn't identify herself [except as Evelyn] but says that she's with Comcast," he said. O’Rourke asked her if she knew why she was calling, to which she responded that it had something to do with missed appointments.

"I laughed, because they missed so many appointments I don't even know which one she's talking about," he said.

When he tried to explain the situation, O'Rourke said that Evelyn began to berate him.

"She said, ‘What color is your house?!? Tell me the color of your house!’" O’Rourke remembered. "She went on a tirade and said, ‘Just answer the question!’" (O'Rourke lives in a condo complex.)

"I told her that I was angry and said, ‘You need to do your homework before you pick up the phone,’" he told Ars. "I told her I was going to call back to Salva's office. That's what I did. And I expressed my concern and said, 'You have sloppy accounting, you don't take anything seriously, and I should go to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.' That's the regulator that makes sure that accounting is done properly. I think that some of my terminology would have indicated that I wasn't a layman. I worked for 20 years in corporate comptrollership. These errors become material after a while."

Unbeknownst to O’Rourke, however, his call apparently set off alarm bells within Comcast.

According to O'Rourke, someone within Salva’s office immediately began conducting Internet research on him and determined that he was a PWC employee. A letter written by O'Rourke's lawyer describes what allegedly happened next:

Because Comcast was a major consulting services client of PWC’s, someone from the Controller’s office contacted Mr. Joseph Atkinson, a partner in the Philadelphia office of PWC, and falsely told Mr. Atkinson that Mr. O’Rourke had invoked his employment with PWC in an attempt to somehow obtain leverage in his negotiations with Comcast. Mr. Atkinson informed Mr. O’Rourke that the client was very valuable, was the Philadelphia office’s largest client with billings [REDACTED], that the client was very angry as a result of Mr. O’Rourke’s complaints, and that Mr. O’Rourke was not to speak with anyone from Comcast. While all of this was happening, Comcast continued to communicate sporadically and ineffectively with Mr. O’Rourke, setting up two service appointments that they missed without explanation on February 7, 2014 and February 11, 2014.

O'Rourke says that on February 7, 2014, he was subjected to an internal PWC ethics investigation as a result of the call. On February 18, O'Rourke was terminated. O'Rourke's letter says that he was "shocked, humiliated and ashamed based on the unjustified loss of his job. He sought counseling and was prescribed medication to address his emotional distress."

O’Rourke told me that his firing came as a complete shock. "I was totally taken aback," he said. "I was numb. I was absolutely numb."

On March 10, 2014, O’Rourke finally cut all ties to Comcast. "I begged AT&T to give me service, and they did—it only took a week," he said.

On July 28, O'Rourke's lawyer Maureen Ryan sent an initial demand letter to Comcast. On August 18, Comcast’s senior deputy corporate counsel, Thomas Nathan, responded to Ryan, telling her that Comcast had not received Ryan's letter in time to meet her deadline for action. So Ryan sent a second letter.

As the new demand letter states, O'Rourke wants $100,000 in compensation—and he wants to return to his old post at PWC in San Jose. Why ask Comcast about a job at PWC? Because, Ryan tells Ars, PWC believed Comcast and "we didn't feel that contacting them would do any good until Comcast retracted their defamation, or until we get the tapes through litigation."

Comcast declined to respond to specific questions about O’Rourke’s case, with a company spokesman saying only that "our customers deserve the best experience every time they interact with us. We have previously apologized to Mr. O’Rourke, but we will review his lawyer’s letter and respond as quickly as possible."

PWC spokeswoman Caroline Nolan did not respond to questions.

"Totally egregious"

In the months since his firing, O’Rourke has discovered the numerous public complaints against Comcast—which have only enraged him further.

"I think they're totally egregious," O’Rourke told Ars. "I think they're the most unethical, dishonest bunch that I've ever encountered. I would like to see them investigated for repeated overbilling. It is a very common occurrence."

In September 2014, he even went as far as sending a 10-page letter to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), detailing not only his story but articulating his deep concerns about Comcast’s practices on a broader scale.

"I think that they need to be made aware of how they conduct business and most importantly I think that the consumer needs to be protected and protection is not going to come in the form of them gobbling up somebody else [like Time Warner Cable]," O'Rourke said. "That's not what's going to happen. If I was not able to convince AT&T to provide service I would be left without anything. I feel that they [Comcast] are a bully. They used their money to unfair advantage—that is just absolutely wrong. There's a flagrant disregard for how they conduct themselves."

Just... wow.

[rhoenix]

An update:

Comcast has publicly apologized to the California man, Conal O’Rourke, who accused the company of getting him fired from his former position at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in the wake of a yearlong billing dispute. The apology comes less than 24 hours after Ars published an article detailing O’Rourke’s documented allegations.

"What happened with Mr. O’Rourke's service is completely unacceptable," Charlie Herrin, a company senior vice president, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. "Despite our attempts to address Mr. O’Rourke’s issues, we simply dropped the ball and did not make things right. Mr. O’Rourke deserves another apology from us, and we’re making this one publicly. We also want to clarify that nobody at Comcast asked for him to be fired. We’re also determined to get to the bottom of exactly what happened with his service, figure out what went wrong at every point along the way, and fix any underlying issues."

Herrin is the same new Comcast executive who said late last month that improving customer service was his "number one priority."

As a result of his firing, O’Rourke hired a local attorney and is now threatening to file a lawsuit against Comcast if the company does not agree to his demands, which include "a full retraction and apology, his re-employment with his former employer, and $100,312.50" by October 14.
On August 18, Comcast’s Senior Deputy Corporate Counsel, Thomas Nathan, responded to the first demand letter sent by O’Rourke’s attorney, Maureen Pettibone Ryan. Nathan told her that Comcast had not received Ryan's letter in time to meet her deadline for action.

Nathan's response letter, however, does acknowledge that "Comcast communicated to PWC that a person claiming to be a PWC employee had called our chief accounting executive's office with complaints about his cable service and bills and yelled at our employees who tried to assist him."

Neither O’Rourke nor his attorney immediately responded to Ars’ request for comment.

UPDATE 2:43pm CT: Maureen Pettibone Ryan, O'Rourke's attorney, e-mailed Ars and expressed disappointment at this public apology.

We view this apology as more of a public relations strategy than a public apology. Comcast has yet to contact Mr. O’Rourke through his lawyers at Dhillon Law Group Inc. with this apology, which calls its sincerity into doubt. Furthermore, we would note what is missing from the apology.

First, Comcast has not promised to investigate its involvement in Mr. O’Rourke’s termination or to release the e-mails or taped calls that would prove that he is telling the truth and that Comcast defamed him to his employer.

Second, Comcast’s claim that “nobody at Comcast asked for him to be fired” does not resolve the matter. While we disbelieve this statement, even if it were true, the Controller’s office at Comcast knew when it made the ethics complaint to PWC that if PWC believed the complaint, Mr. O’Rourke would be terminated. Comcast made false and defamatory statements about Dhillon Law Group Inc.’s client to his employer, knowing the outcome would be termination, and we will not allow that to stand.

Mr. O’Rourke does appreciate that more than 18 months after Comcast first made errors on his bill that it is willing to investigate the matter. Mr. O’Rourke and his attorneys hope that this investigation will be productive, unlike the other investigations Comcast repeatedly promised to perform over those 18 months.

Ryan reiterated that the October 14 deadline for O'Rourke's demands still stands.

[frigidmagi]

I'm glad that it looks like he'll get a good ending but I'm gonna say bluntly that there are many more people who get squashed because they didn't get public attention.

[rhoenix]

I'm glad that it looks like he'll get a good ending but I'm gonna say bluntly that there are many more people who get squashed because they didn't get public attention.

Agreed. What isn't mentioned in either article is that most people wouldn't have the know-how to do what this man did - and because they don't, it's somehow their fault for being screwed. That places the onus on ordinary folk, who don't have access to teams of lawyers and such, to hold big businesses accountable.