CenturyLink requires Bondi’s attention.
Robin Brubaker thought she was going batty when every month for the last two years, CenturyLink jacked up the price of her television and internet service from the amount she originally had been quoted.
The Louisiana-based communications company gave her a price of $126.90 a month for internet and basic Prism TV when she and her husband moved into the Spruce Creek Country Club development near The Villages in July 2015.
Her first bill? $341.83. She called. The company’s retention department — she now calls those employees “The Handlers” — told her that nobody in the company possibly could give her a price of $126. The salesperson had made an error, and $158 a month was the best they could do, she was told.
Um, OK, Brubaker said reluctantly. Anybody can make a mistake. Then her bill went up again — and kept inching up month after month.
Brubaker, a 62-year-old retired volunteer coordinator at a camp for disabled children, started digging and found about 90 complaints from other residents, all with nearly identical descriptions:
The customer was quoted a price for a year, then billed a different price. The lower cost was always a “mistake” by a misinformed employee. Sometimes, the price rose, and customers were told that they had discounts — who knew? — and had failed to call to renew them.
“It is a shell game with them. It’s a lucrative business for CenturyLink to conduct themselves in this way,” said Brubaker, who quietly fought her personal battle every month until earlier this summer.
That’s when she saw a spate of consumer lawsuits filed in Idaho, Colorado, Nevada, Washington and California. The first was in mid-June when a CenturyLink employee claimed in a lawsuit in Arizona that she was fired for exposing unlawful billing practices to the
company’s CEO. The next week, a classaction suit filed in California detailed overbilling and pricing problems identical to Brubaker’s. That one seeks damages of up to $12 billion for CenturyLink’s 5.9 million subscribers.
Minnesota became the first state to sue CenturyLink last month when the attorney general filed on behalf of consumers, alleging CenturyLink employees “regularly misquoted” its prices, then billed higher amounts.
Brubaker has started encouraging neighbors to check their bills — especially those on automatic bill pay — and has hooked up with others fighting CenturyLink, too.
Brian Tillott, 82, has been begging Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi since January without success to investigate the company’s billing practices. Over a year, his bills ranged from $112.04 to $226.39 for the same service.
In March, he told Bondi in a July 12 letter, the company agreed to charge $112.04 for a year after it acknowledged it had previously overbilled him.
“By June, it had already started to creep up, and July is now at $127.43 — all without notification or reason,” he wrote. “It is obvious from our collective problems that this overcharging is the MO of CenturyLink and amounts to a criminal enterprise.” Yeow! “We work hard to ensure our customers are billed correctly,” CenturyLink spokesman Mark Molzen said. “When customers have billing questions, our goal always is to understand and resolve their questions. We also focus on how we can better serve our customers through their feedback, and as a result, simplifying our pricing has been one of our initiatives.” That, of course, doesn’t explain anything. This all comes at an awkward time for CenturyLink, which is in the midst of a $34 billion merger with Level 3 Communications that could boost the Monroe, La., company into competition with the big guys, such as AT&T, for lucrative business contracts.
CenturyLink’s spokesman told USA Today the company was “disappointed” the Minnesota attorney general publicly revealed what her office had found in a press conference rather than quietly discussing it with the company. The company felt any disagreement could have been privately settled.
Or not. Apparently, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson didn’t think continual overbilling was an accident after her office determined that CenturyLink’s pricing scheme involves more than 1,500 factors to consider when arriving at what to charge consumers.
Swanson sued on behalf of 35 consumers. Too bad she’s not in Florida. Aside from the 90 unhappy folks easily identified in Spruce Creek, folks in The Villages about five miles to the south are angry, too. Residents in the massive retirement community have posted nearly 10,000 remarks complaining about CenturyLink billing practices on just one of the resident websites.
These customers are nearly all 55 and older. Bondi needs to jump on this right now.
Apparently, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swan- son didn’t think continual overbilling was an accident after her office determined that CenturyLink’s pricing scheme involves more than 1,500 factors to consider when arriving at what to charge consumers.