Senators hit providers for pay-TV overbilling

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators blasted Comcast, AT&T, Charter Communications and Dish Network over millions of dollars in pay-TV billing overcharges, promotional pricing, bill haggling and other loathed customer service practices during a hearing here yesterday.

The hearing aired the findings of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which reviewed 93,000 documents and spoke with dozens of company executives over the past 13 months. Senators said the companies should simplify bills, be more transparent and refund overcharges.

Time Warner Cable and Charter, which recently merged, faced the harshest criticism on billing overcharges. A committee report released yesterday stated 40 percent of Comcast customers who called with problems with bills could not resolve them on the first call in December 2015.

Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the committee's ranking Democra t , who had pushed for a public hearing for two years, told the executives she had been personally frustrated with cable charges. She challenged the practice of adding fees for regional sports networks and local broadcast-TV stations to bills, and making those fees appear like mandatory government charges on bills.

Ohio Republican Rob Portman, the committee's chairman, said the inability of Time Warner Cable to refund overbilled charges amounted to a “ripoff” for consumers. The committee estimated Time Warner Cable and Charter will overbill customers nationwide $7.2 million this year. There was no estimate of Comcast's overcharges. Comcast said its billing-error rate was 0.3 percent.