Illegal billing policies

This was one of the major annoyances I had with comcast. I'd call up and complain that there my internet was out. Then, after it came back on, I had to call AGAIN in order to get a credit for that outage.

I never had any problems getting credit for times when my service was out but it was really annoying to have to call back in order to get it. They pro-rate the refund based on the time between when you reported the problem and the time that they show it was fixed. They won't issue the credit when you call the first time because they don't know (at that time) how long service will be down. Since their system doesn't have anything set up to automatically issue a credit after service comes back, you have to call in and request the credit.

It's annoying, but, in my opinion it's the only thing that'll cause them to actually fix some of their problems. That's all I could think to do; hit them where it hurts, their pocket book.

Even that's probably just wishful thinking though because a credit of $10-$15 every couple months is still just a drop in the bucket compared to their $700,000,000+ net income

My issue with Comcast doesn't have anything to do with the internet service being out but rather sales tax the company may have illegally been charging for the last 4 years. Below is an email I sent to Comcast on July 25 that I have yet to receive any kind of real response to.

"I have a very important question for you. I''ve been a longtime cable &
HSI service customer long enough to remember the ISP tax refund you had
to pony up back in the 3rd quarter of 2004. If I remember correctly this
affected people who had service during any of the months between Dec.
2000 to Feb. 2004 & was due to TN''s tax on internet access being found
in violation of the Internet Tax Freedom Act (or perhaps
unconstitutional?).
Whatever the case, I ended up getting just under $100 in this deal.
After doing a little research I found that a moratorium was placed on
charging taxes for internet access or applying multiple taxes to a
single online transaction back in 1998. The ITFA was extended by
lawmakers in 2004 & set to expire on Nov. 1, 2007, only Dubbya threw an
apparent monkeywrench in this by signing H.R. 3678 -- the "Internet Tax
Freedom Act Amendment Acts of 2007" -- into law, which extends the
moratorium until Nov. 1, 2014.
Now, looking at my Comcast statements from 6/04-8/04 I see the same 4
surcharges that I do on the statement I just received this past weekend.
One of those is sales tax, which actually *increased* the month after
the ''04 refund. Supposedly the cable industry sued to stop the illegal
tax but I''ve never seen anything on any of my statements labeled
specifically as an ISP tax. My question is how do we as Comcast HSI
customers know we''re not still being charged the same internet access
tax & if we are isn''t another refund in order?"

A 'customer care specialist' named Carlos replied several hours later just to say he'd forwarded my comments to the appropriate members of Comcast's local development and management teams for further review and action to these charges. When I failed to hear anything further by July 29 I replied to Carlos' email to let him know I needed to know what forward progress was being made on my questions ASAP. After again getting nothing but the automated email to confirm they'd received my message I emailed Comcast again last Thursday morning. Since then I've had no communication except for a 2nd automated email to let me know they'd received the message.

Hopefully an employee here can be of more assistance than Carlos & whatever group he claimed to have forwarded my original email to. Time will tell.

Nothing's going to be said here either? It's now been 8 business days & 11 calendar days since I emailed Comcast about this issue. Still waiting for a response. Mark? Scott? livlab?

Well here we are another week later and still there doesn't seem to be anyone at Comcast who will touch my question. What's really going on? If nothing else can an employee who monitors this discussion at least fine me the contact info for someone within the company who might have a clue how to address this issue? Maybe someone who was involved in the refund arrangement back in 2004?

I've had pretty good luck getting questions answered via the corporate office. It's been a while but here's the contact information that I last used.

Comcast Corporation
1 Comcast Center
Philadelphia, PA 19103
PA Tel. 215-286-1700
Toll Free 800-266-2278

Thanks for that SpicyLemon. I actually found a way to contact Comcast's senior VP of customer operations through a comment in the customer service topic of this forum. I emailed him yesterday and received 3 calls & an email from a woman named Faye who works for the department that handles corporate complaints here in Nashville. She said she looked over my account and doesn’t show that I'm being charged any taxes for my online services. I asked her to explain exactly what the sales tax that I'm being charged each month is for then & she said she'd have to get her IS manager to send a breakdown of what that's for by email. We'll see how this plays out.

OK, for those who are interested here is the official explanation of what the sales tax is for that I got from Brenda Rowe, an I.S. manager with Comcast.

"Sales Tax 4.31 - This is the Sales tax on your Standard Cable Service, HDTV Equipment and the Franchise Fee of $3.53...The internet service is not being taxed in any manner by any state or federal authority."

I asked her if Comcast had ever considered (or would now consider) including this detailed information about all the taxes & fees they charge on customer statements. As it currently stands there isn't any explanation of what they're for or why customers started being charged for them. Until July '03 the only extra charge on my bill was state sales tax. She replied that Comcast is currently exploring a redesign of the statement to provide more detail and she'd pass my suggestion along to the appropriate parties.