Posted in Media on May 4, 2006|
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After a long and protracted battle played out in the local media, a 62-year-old teacher & grandmother has finally gotten Cablevision, the local monopoly, to agree to stop pursuing her for an
$1126 pay-per-view porn bill.
A retired teacher’s $1,126 cable bill for porn and gangsta rap she said she never ordered will be dropped.
Cablevision will give Claudia Lee, 62, full credit and an apology for all of the pay-per-view programs billed to the Warburton Avenue resident.
"We are continuing our internal investigation into this matter, but there will be no charge back to Ms. Lee," Cablevision spokesman Bill Powers said yesterday.
Lee said she was unclear what the company means.
"He said reimbursement. He didn’t say how much, he didn’t say how soon," Lee said. "I don’t trust them. They’ve got to show me some documentation, something in writing."
The Journal News’ coverage last week of Lee’s cable trouble prompted others to step forward with similar complaints.
This wasn’t an easy battle. The charges came not long after Mrs. Lee switched to the company’s service bundle, which included local phone service. When she had refused to pay the disputed bill, they threatened to cut off her phone service. She was forced to pay $779 to keep the phone on. If she hadn’t gone to the media, the company would have extorted every cent of the bogus bill from her.
How is this for arrogance? The company hasn’t even admitted to any mistake.
In a statement issued Wednesday, Cablevision said it was continuing its investigation, but it said that "As a courtesy to a long-standing customer, we have credited the account in full for all disputed pay-per-view orders and apologized to Ms. Lee for her negative customer experience."
This story does not surprise me about Cablevision. From their customer service on, they are a miserable, arrogant company whose directors, the Scrooges Dolans, are about as popular as root canal. The company owns a number of New York institutions, such as Madison Square garden, the Knicks basketball team, and Radio City Music Hall. This past Christmas, when the musicians at Radio City threatened to strike, the Rockettes danced to recorded music. In 2002, when their dispute with the Yankees deprived customers of Yankee broadcasts that season, we switched to satellite and never looked back.
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J. Philip Faranda
