Ars Technica reports that a judge ordered Comcast to pay a $9.1 million fine and refund 50,000 customers it tricked into subscribing to a worthless “protection plan.”
Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued Comcast in August 2016, accusing the nation’s largest cable company of tricking customers into buying a “near-worthless ‘protection plan’ without disclosing its significant limitations.”
Buying the $5-per-month plan ostensibly prevented customers from having to pay each time a Comcast technician visited their home to fix problems covered by the plan. But in reality, the plan did not cover the vast majority of wiring problems, the AG’s lawsuit said. Moreover, Washington state attorneys said that Comcast led customers to believe that they needed to buy a Service Protection Plan (SPP) to get services that were actually covered for free by the company’s “Customer Guarantee.”
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