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SiriusTurtle t1_j8y4ron wrote

Now if only we could bust up monopolies in EVERY town and/or hold the ISPs accountable for shitty service in monopolies when they know they can get away with it

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retrohGamr t1_j8z34gz wrote

CHARTER spectrum tried to throw me in collections for fictitious $118. took 3 months of fighting for it to be removed from my credit. they totally screwed my billing paperwork, thankfully a nice lady in billing sent me all the paper work where i submitted it with my appeal.

turns out they use to sell debt to collectors and would collect some of the collection money as well in a deal with collection agencies.

they were suppose to stop. i'm not 100% confident but my experience has been they have not stopped this disgusting practice.

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Koda_20 t1_j8zitt0 wrote

Shit I just paid a $50 bill from charter from an old account that went into collection somehow. I was fairly sure I was free of any charges and had never even had a debt collector call me before.

But I figure what are the odds a huge company like that gets that wrong and so I call and ask about what it was for and they told me it was from the final month of the service I had previously cancelled at another property, July through August.

Then I remembered I'd asked the person I handed my equipment back to at the store when closing my account to make sure I was all paid up with no future bills and they told me I was good. But I don't have that in writing so I just paid the 50 cuz easiest way out.

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TAOJeff t1_j9080lx wrote

I believe this is a massive issue in the USA, the debt that is being sold doesn't need to be verified as accurate (no-one on the collections side is liable for incorrect info, so no point in updating it) and also doesn't necessarily show enough detail to be able to identify the person who supposedly owes money. So if you have the same name as someone on the list and you get found first, you get to deal with the debt collector and have to prove that it wasn't you.

So in your case, there's no penalty for incorrectly saying you owed money when you didn't. Which there really should be as it should be counted as fraud.

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Atomic_Maxwell t1_j901hjc wrote

Literally same thing happened to me, back at the end of 2016– turned in my modem to Charter, asked if I was all good and making sure my account was closed because we were going to be out of the apartment, all seemed good. Then in early 2018, I started using Credit Karma to track my credit score and make it go from awful to not awful, and lo and behold I have something in collections from one Charter Spectrum.

I hope all the big Internet monopolies get a rude but humble wake up call someday soon.

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retrohGamr t1_j8zmmeg wrote

once you pay the collections account, you take responsibility for the debt :( it sucks how proactive and quick one needs to be to fix the mistakes of others, assuming these are mistakes...

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Koda_20 t1_j8zoivl wrote

Yeah it's whatever, though I didn't pay collections I called spectrum and paid them and they assured me they'd tell collections, I'm wondering if that too was a bad idea.

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Alexstarfire t1_j90pair wrote

> But I figure what are the odds a huge company like that gets that wrong

They are the ones most likely to get it wrong.

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Any-Plantain2028 t1_j919w01 wrote

>I just paid the 50 cuz easiest way out.

That's what they count on

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Koda_20 t1_j91bd28 wrote

yeah I don't even know what happens if I just ignore the debt, I assume my credit score suffers until I challenge it in court? Or how can I get the debt waived without significant time and money and energy going into it, and at that point I'm worse off than paying the $50 but society is a smidge better I guess.

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Any-Plantain2028 t1_j91blp6 wrote

Sad and true, basically as another person pointed out that's the issue. Essentially you as an individual are fighting an uphill battle with a giant corporation and have next to no real protections or a way to retaliate.

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Downtown-Cress-5202 t1_j9084ci wrote

Sprint did this to me, directions agent told me I was stupid for not paying and I told him it's not going to affect me at all which it didn't.

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jonsnowme t1_j91bgg9 wrote

Ugh I am fighting them for 191 they put into collections for a service I canceled at a 0 balance.

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SleepingJake t1_j8zhle4 wrote

I had a pivotal position at a WISP once, our CEO only cared about expanding the coverage zone as cheaply as possible so he could apply for more more grants - but the money never found it’s way back to bettering the service once it was heavily oversubscribed.

I was sick to my stomach when it was announced they would receive a SUBSTANTIAL amount of money in a federal grant - thankfully that flower never blossomed.

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Smtxom t1_j8zse68 wrote

My WIPS was great before I got Starlink. They responded to my support/questions around the clock and within 24hours. Any issues I had were immediately addressed and if it was an issue on my side they’d explain how with screen shots or some other evidence. Starlink is faster but shit customer service.

My WISP did ask if they could put a tower on my property. They offered free service. Wasn’t enough in my opinion so I told them no.

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AnonymousTowel t1_j91om4h wrote

I live in a town where COX is literally the only ISP here that offers gigabit speeds. It costs $150/month and its not even fiber.

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95castles t1_j9642ts wrote

Here in Arizona, Cox is FINALLY getting real competition and you can tell with all their attack ads now. Tmobile and Verizon have Cox spooked. I called to complain about the costs compared to the other services, they immediately increased my speeds while keeping my bill the same as before.

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Sagybagy t1_j92jqp4 wrote

We had a monopoly but it’s broken now that another company came along. Now they are freaking out because they are losing customers like crazy. Screw Cox communications. Shot tier service.

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Conscious_Yak60 t1_j94bqwq wrote

I remember my town the service was so piss poor and degrading over the years that we had service outage going all the way up to the local governments effecting several counties.

So the city was threatening to get the state AG involved, so the middle managers eventually got into contact with them, scheduled a meeting with the mayors and gave them essentially the customer service version of "deal with it".

We're now apporving Fiber to be installed from a company outside or the state.

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