Lauren Ritchie: CenturyLink’s lawsuit foe is daunting.

CenturyLink customers across Central Florida complained to the Orlando Sentinel in August that their bills jumped higher every month, they were paying for services never ordered and they were quoted one price and billed another.

Things are bad when the local newspaper writes about a company, quoting frustrated and angry seniors waving their bills. They’re worse when a pit bull of a lawyer steps in.

Poor CenturyLink. The same attorney who got neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman off on charges that he killed an unarmed black teen is taking on the communications giant, and he’s got a whole pack of hungry dogs behind him.

Orlando lawyer Mark O’Mara has spent recent months kvetching with about 25 other attorneys across the country who also have filed similar lawsuits against CenturyLink, many over highpressure selling tactics and unpredictable bills.

The result: All of these suits, ranging from Oregon to Florida, have been rolled into a single giant class-action suit with O’Mara as one of the lead attorneys. That’s especially fortuitous for fed up CenturyLink customers in the region who will have easy access to one of the lawyers.

Take, for example, Robin Brubaker, who was promised a price of $126.90 a month for internet and basic Prism TV when she and her husband moved into a development near The Villages in 2015.

Her first bill was $341.83. After that, the amounts varied each month, but they never were the same twice. She and her neighbors howled their frustration to the newspaper and appeared in an August column detailing their problems. Since then? “Everybody involved here is just fine,” Brubaker said. “My bill has not changed one iota. “It’s like it never happened.”

Like it never happened … Ah, yes. Of course. Stung by bad press, CenturyLink sprung into action, immediately fixing bills so that angry customers forget their annoyance and choose not to get into a lawsuit.

Too late. The cadre of lawyers already has 20 complainants and several thousand are expected to join the suit in the next three or four months.

Already CenturyLink is fighting behind the scenes — and O’Mara is growling over it.

About three weeks ago, the company sent notices to customers advising them that if they have a dispute with the company they must go through arbitration rather than file a lawsuit. The notice, which probably ended up in the garbage of 99.99 percent of customers, gives them the opportunity to opt out of this requirement. Please raise your hand if you did so. Anybody see their neighbors waving?

The arbitration requirement is the weak spot in the plaintiff ’s

case, O’Mara said. CenturyLink’s most vulnerable area is in its sales force.

“I would tell you anecdotally that they have extraordinarily aggressive sales tactics upselling people stuff that they would never use,” he said.

CenturyLink spokesman Mark Molzen wrote in an email: “Our position is clear — we aim to operate our business with honesty and integrity.”

He said the company will “vigorously defend ourselves.”

Many class-action suits against big businesses end up with the consumer getting useless coupons or a check for $4.33 or a deal on another item if they purchase something. Lawyers make money, and consumers are no farther ahead.

O’Mara said his goal is to get several months of free internet — maybe even a year — for customers treated shabbily.

CenturyLink’s downfall, he predicted, will be the demographic of customers who typically don’t complain or scrutinize their bills: seniors.

“The very population that they thought they could abuse easily — these senior citizens — there is a percentage retired at home and paying really close attention to their bills,” O’Mara said. “If my dad got a bill that was 18 cents off, he’d say ‘It’s the principle of it.’ ”

First, however, the lawyers must begin collecting complainants. Have you had bills that are baffling? Whose amounts bounce all over even though the service hasn’t changed? That contain charges for services never ordered?

A consolidated complaint including customers from a variety of states is to be filed in Minnesota, likely in January, after the lawyers sort out various legal mumbo-jumbo. It will include complaints not only from consumers but from stockholders who say they have been harmed by CenturyLink’s bad management practices.

One thing O’Mara is learning as he listens to story after story of billing problems:

“I think CenturyLink thought these people [would] never know.”