Tampa Bay, Florida, area resident Alyssa Overbrook received an unexpected email from Comcast on the morning of March 30, thanking her for a pay-per-view order in the middle of the previous night. Being that she and her daughter had been asleep, and her husband Jason was not home at the time, she called up her cable provider to report that she had not authorized the purchase. That was when she discovered that the rental in question was not just any film, but an adult film.
Despite her insistence that she had not ordered the films, and that as customers of eight years they had not once ordered an adult movie, Comcast refused to listen and, over the next three weeks, the Overbrook family was charged for at least 20 more films of similar nature. At that point, Overbrook got ABC Action News involved, who was sent the following email when they reached out to Comcast for comment: “The box that is sending the authorization signal to order on-demand movies is the box that is assigned to the account.”
Comcast finally had to listen after Overbrook canceled her cable subscription and returned their box on April 7, yet they continued to be billed for adult movies on April 10-12. After finally looking into the issue, the cable provider chalked it up as a “unique” data stream error, and refunded the Overbrooks $240 for the movies and even offered to pay their final cable bill.
Touching, that all it took for Comcast to actually look into an issue was ghost porn being ordered from a disabled cable box. Perhaps it’s for reasons like this that something as simple as a “Comcast Cares Day” can go horribly awry.
(Via ABC Action News)