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Comcast cashes elderly woman’s rent check, refuses to give her a refund until busted by local news

Published Feb 12th, 2015 12:50PM EST
Why Is Comcast So Bad

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If you’ve ever accidentally received a check that wasn’t addressed to you, you probably did the right thing and either tried to contact the person who wrote it or just ripped it up and threw it in the trash. You, however, are not Comcast.

FROM EARLIER: Comcast’s customer service is so bad that it might end up undoing the TWC merger

New Mexico’s KRQE News 13 reports that 79-year-old Francis Wilson accidentally mailed in her rent check for $235 Comcast along with her $20 Comcast cable check. Despite the fact that her rent check wasn’t even addressed to Comcast, the company managed to cash it anyway.

To be fair to Comcast here, the company’s system is set up so any checks sent in get automatically cashed. So cashing the check in and of itself was an honest mistake… but what the company did after being alerted to this mistake was purely Comcastic.

Once Wilson contacted Comcast and told them what happened, the company refused to directly refund her. Instead, Comcast said it would reimburse her account to make up for the $235 she sent them in error, which means that she wouldn’t have to pay for her cable bill for the rest of the year. However, this also didn’t help her make her monthly rent and because she lives on Social Security, she couldn’t easily come up with quick money to make a separate payment.

As is usually the case with things like this, Comcast eventually did the right thing… after receiving negative media attention. KRQE says that “within an hour of… calling Comcast, a fix was in the works” and “the company gave her a $235 reimbursement check, $235 cash and a $235 credit on her cable bill.”

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.