They Unplugged a Disabled Veteran's Medical Lifeline to Collect a Debt That Doesn't Exist
A 69-year-old, 100% disabled Army veteran's internet runs his medical devices. Comcast cut it three times over a phantom balance. That is not a billing error; it is a choice.
There is a difference between a mistake and a decision. A billing error is a mistake. Cutting the internet on a 100% disabled Army veteran - three times - while your own records show he owes nothing is a decision.
The facts here come from Comcast's own paperwork and the customer's bank. A 69-year-old, service-connected disabled veteran in the Vancouver, Washington area pays for a single internet line, in advance, every month. That line is not for streaming movies. It runs and monitors his medical devices and connects him to help when something goes wrong. Comcast has pulled the plug on it repeatedly.
What was he cut off over? A charge of $89.34 that the company billed, twice failed to collect - the bank rejected it as "Not Authorized" - and then reversed on its own statement. In plain terms, Comcast admitted in writing it never got the money, and kept demanding it anyway, stacking late fees, return fees, and "reactivation" fees for disconnections it never documents. By its own arithmetic, the man is hundreds of dollars in credit.
Every large company makes billing errors. What separates a company you can trust from one you cannot is what it does when the error is pointed out. This customer filed a formal Notice of Dispute in July. Comcast did not answer it. He filed a second in August. The response was another disconnection in September.
Strip away the account numbers and it is simple. A corporation that already paid a $2.3 million FCC fine over its billing practices decided the fastest way to collect a debt it could not prove was to switch off a disabled veteran's medical lifeline and wait for him to pay under duress. He did - once, in August, just to get his devices back on.
We ask companies that hold essential services - power, water, and now the broadband that carries medical care - to treat disconnection as the last resort, not the collections tool of first resort. Comcast reversed that order for a man who served his country and cannot safely be left offline.
The company can fix this today: zero the phantom balance, restore the discount it stripped, credit the overpayment, and put in writing that a disabled customer's medically necessary internet will not be cut over a disputed charge again. None of that requires a courtroom. It requires a company to decide that the human being on the other end of the line matters more than a line item it already knows is wrong.
Until it does, the record speaks for itself - and the record is Comcast's own.
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