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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

Man, only $74 for court costs. I think it probably cost a lot more to get there, but I do hope this creates precedent for ISP's.

They'll run this all the way up to SCOTUS if they have to. There is no way any of these companies are going to allow a "contract" to be deemed unenforceable by a judge and not fight it tooth and nail.

Well then either this will get overturned, or these contracts will need to be altered in the future, hopefully giving the ISP's more accountability for the quality of their services.

most courts have poor wifi

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.

The $74 was probably the fee to file and in small claims court you don't need a lawyer and judges generally give you pretty wide latitude. Show up on time, be polite and bring your evidence and you're pretty much good to go and have a good shot of winning if someone ripped you off. So it could be that was all they were out for court costs.

A contract is not allowed to violate the law but companies have you sign illegal contracts all the time, they are counting on you not calling them on it.

If you read the article it just said the type of contract was a "clickwrap" and that the judge said it was "unenforceable" but it never says for what reason. I would wager the contract had an illegal clause in it and that's what the judge took issue with, not that it was a click to agree style contract in of itself. For instance if the contract essentially says we can charge you for a service we never provide that could violate consumer protection laws or just be considered outright fraud.

technically the never never provided the internet so there was no contract

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.

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.

Antitrust laws: they need a comeback.

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...

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.

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.

This makes me think that the judge has had to deal with shoddy internet connections personally and was happy for a chance for a bit of pay back. I’ve had similar issues with pretty much every provider I’ve used until my current one which is actually providing what it promises. I’d love to get my money back for all the previous subpar service I’ve paid for

I thought it was me…that title hurts my brain.

{cough} Comcast {cough}

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.

I’m sure this guy isn’t a total pain in the ass to know.

I took Spectrum to SCC around 2014 because of a typo in their bills that stated my promotional rate was for 44 months rather than 24. Each month the paper bill promo rate counted down one month. At the end of 24 months, Spectrum increased my bill, stating the promo rate had ended. Calling them yielded no results, so I took them to Court and brought all paperwork proving my case. Their frustrated lawyer snapped "Why don't you go get service from another provider?" The arbitrator showed his enjoyment at my response of "I can't, because Spectrum has a monopoly where I live." I won and had the $99 Triple Play for 4 years lol.

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.

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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>Why don’t you go get service from another provider?

Jfc, you’d think an attorney for a corporate monopoly would have a little more self control in the court. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Haha agreed ! He was really mad about being about to lose the case. It was a slam dunk !

> 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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Overview: The Contract was annulled (it seems) because Spectrum failed to uphold the initial end of the bargain by providing a service of a much lower quality than what the customer paid for. The contract only allowed for a limited reimbursement, and his internet service had been dogwater the entire time. Every possible fix kept pointing towards Spectrum as being the source issue as to faulty hardware or wiring. Essentially, the gentleman paid for Champaign and Caviar but was given Malt Liquor and Cornbread by Spectrum. Because Spectrum didn't uphold their end of the bargain by providing him with the Champaign and Caviar he paid for, the judge ruled that the contract was unenforceable. This has set a precedent that ISPs must either come through with the service quality the customer paid for, or face potential legal repercussions. While I know that there are businesses out there that still operate by the Henry Ford school of "best goods possible, lowest price possible, highest wages possible", alot of these companies will most likely condense their top service to urban areas and offer nothing but mid level to low service to more rural or out of reach areas, or require additional hardware purchases on the part of the customer to facilitate the delivery of top service to a rural area.

The way around that is to condition access to serving denser areas by also serving less populated ones. So if they want to be able to service the good areas they take their share of the bad ones.

Can this case be used as precedent?

Still stuns me that I'm paying more for broadband internet in the US but the base speed remains the same as it was 25 years ago. LOL DOWNVOTED BY SOME COMCAST BOOTLICKERS. Look at South Korea's internet speeds.

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>I just paid the 50 cuz easiest way out.

That's what they count on

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.

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

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.

Interesting. I had no idea there was a monopoly over internet service in courtrooms.

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.

This guy is only spending $54.26 for internet per month?

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.

Was it Comcast?!

They're too used to not actually having to do anything except send threatening letters backed by the money of the big company they work for. Actually having to go to court and argue a case is something most of them haven't had to do in a long time I expect.

Fair enough. 👍🏼

Honestly, thanks for the grammar correction.

Not to change the subject slightly, but was it complicated to take them to small claims? Like how did you get to sue a corporation in your local court?

It was easy to file and cost me $20. I went to the Clerk's Office and filled out a form, paid the Clerk and got a notice in the mail of my Small Claims Court date. On the day of Court, I was surprised when I saw a number of other cases involving Spectrum on the electronic docket board. I went in with confidence that my paper bills proving my case was solid and quite enjoyed the experience.

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.

I really appreciate this insight. I have an issue with Geico that I wasn’t sure how to handle. But I think this has given me confidence that it can be done. Thank you!

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.

I hope you are able to follow through and win the case. Make sure your proof is solid, as losing might result in a judgment that you cover Geico's court costs.

With services like this I am always actively negotiating my bill / service speed when the contract is up. There is no way in hell I’m paying the listed rate on the ads they post when I see sales people trying to get more leads with better deals. And I’m in Canada where it’s heavily monopolized by a few companies.