Comcast's billing department can bite me.

On 5/6 I paid my cable bill online, via the Comcast website, using an electronic check. I’ve done this several times before (to the point where my checking account info is stored on their site), and have never had a problem.

On 6/2 I get my next bill in the mail from them, and it shows nearly $200 as past due! That’s twice the normal bill! So I check it, and they show that my electronic check was “returned” on 5/20.

On 6/3 I call my bank to find out what happened, because at all times there has been plenty of money in my account to cover this electronic check; they say it was never even presented for payment. So I call Comcast, and the lady says, “Yeah, you must have typed something in wrong when you submitted it. That’s why you were only charged a $5 return fee instead of a $30 bounced check fee.” I’m annoyed, but I know there’s a chance that the error was, indeed, mine, so I figure ok fine.

On 6/4 I mail Comcast a check for nearly $200.

What do I get in the mail today? A notice that if they don’t receive $200 by 6/13 my cable will be disconnected! Three fucking days after I found out that it was overdue!

Now, I know that my payment is in the mail so I have nothing to worry about (though you can bet I’ll be watching my account online to make sure it’s credited). But I was already in kind of a crappy mood when I got the mail, and it pisses me off to be treated like some kind of delinquent bill-skipper, and to have my service (and therefore possibly my fucking credit) threatened, just because they couldn’t bother to tell me that the fucking electronic check didn’t go through. Two weeks ago. Four weeks after I submitted it. They show it credited to my account on 5/6, so they know I made a good faith effort to pay the damn thing … why the histrionic “we’re going to shut you down!!” bullshit?

Comcast’s billing department can bite me. :mad:

When you say “e-check” does that mean that you paid it via Comcast’s website, giving your checking account #, etc., or did you pay it via internet banking?

If it’s the latter, then it’s possible that the bank sent a physical check to the vendor because the vendor isn’t set up to receive e-transfers. I’ve found that when the bank does this, there are quite a few companies who process the payment late because the monkeys who open the mail don’t know what to do with them. Although your name and account number are printed on the check, it is not accompanied by a return slip. I believe they must send it to another dept for special processing because it’s always cashed days after it was scheduled to be paid.

If this is what happened, someone may have gotten lazy and just sent it back instead of spending time to actually look at the check. Not your fault. Simply call the bank that does your internet banking and say “Comcast is saying that they never received payment for this. I scheduled the payment to be made on x date.” They’ll take it from there. Banks are pushing for more e-payments because it makes their lives much easier than processing paper checks.

Of course, I’d check to make sure that the account number, etc. are correct and continue to do e-banking. Don’t let them push you around.

Oh god. Cable billing.

A number of years ago, I sent a check to my cable company. They received it but didn’t cash it. I kept getting overdue notices. I kept calling. They kept saying “Oh, never mind, we received the check.” They kept not cashing it. Notices. Calling. Acknowledgment. Nothing. Notices. Calling.

They never did cash it. They disconnected my cable. I still get bills from them.

Jsgoddess, that’s just … just … :eek:

The other thing that pissed me off was that the June payment showed as past due, too, instead of just the May payment. Somehow, in Comcast billing land, a screwup with one bill made me two bills late … including a bill that I hadn’t received yet. They made the June payment late before it was even due – it’s billing from the future! :rolleyes:

Like I said, I paid via Comcast’s website. I don’t use internet banking, I only make online payments directly to vendors who are set up for it. This is the first time I’ve had a problem with any online payment, to anyone.

Nah, they won’t push me around. :slight_smile: The “past due” payment (for both months) got sent as a paper check via the USPS, just to be on the safe side, but when I get the July bill I’ll pay via their website again.

These pricks billed us for months after we disconnected - then had the temerity to send the ‘unpaid’ bill to a collection agency. The agency backed off after we sent them a letter, sent a letter to the BBB and threatened action.

Comfuck eventually wiped it, but we never got anything even remotely approaching an apology

I got worse. I sent them a check for $80, which they cashed, receiving $80 from my bank. They credited me for $10. It took six months(!) to straighten it out. Unreal, just unreal.

Just wait until it goes to collections and gets on your credit report. The “stops affecting your credit” timer stops when the collection agencies report ages off, so this could smash up your credit at just about any time and stay there for a while.

I had a similiar problem with an old cable bill. It took many calls between the collection agency, the credit bureau, the cable company, and an old landlord (to get proof I wasn’t living there at the time) to get that off my credit report…

Did you call them and tell them about the mailed check? I used to work in “receivables management” for a cell phone company, and the standard line for a customer who says they mailed a check is, “Payments made through the mail can take up to 14 days to post to your account.” :eek: Meaning, that even if they get your check before your cutoff day, it still may be sitting on some worker bee’s desk waiting to be processed. Sometimes they can put a “freeze” on your disconnect, if you have mailed a payment and it posts within the 14 day allotment. Good luck. FWIW, I pay my cable bill on monthly recurring debit (and my cable company is not Comcast, they swallowed the local a couple of years ago, but sold out here fairly quickly).

I guess I’m unclear about what website payments are. I thought you gave your ABA number and account number and the funds were taken directly out of your checking account. How they can “return” this to the bank when it’s worked before is a mystery to me. Obviously the vendor info is correct because it’s their website. The only variable is your bank’s ABA number and your checking account number. Do you have to type in this info each time you use it? If so, what a crappy system. If not, then they owe you an explanation as to why this particular time the process failed. Before I paid one cent in late fees, I’d escalate my customer service call to the freaking President of the company if I had to.

On a side note, allow me to introduce you to online banking. Many banks offer it for free these days. All vendors accept it because if they don’t accept e-transfers, the bank will mail them a check. You can schedule payments to be made any business day of the week and you have proof that you paid it on time. You can schedule recurring payments so that your mortgage (and cable!) will never be late. You can schedule to pay a minimum amount each month so that even if you forget to pay a credit card bill, you won’t get socked with a late fee. Many vendors will e-mail your invoice so that the process is completely paperless.

Best of all, if a vendor says that they didn’t receive payment, you can call CS and they will go to battle for you. No need to get your blood pressure up.

Can you tell I love online banking?

I used to have Comcast. I got an ad for WOW Cable that would give me cable plus wireless internet for $10 less then I was paying for just cable with Comcast.

I called Comcast to see if they could give me a deal. When I explained the deal Wow was giving, the customer service person said, “Well we have wireless internet for only 19.99 per month. Shall I sign you up?” Completely oblivious to the fact that I just explained I could get the same thing from another company for $30 less.

I cancelled the service.

Odinoneeye, in what freakish fold of the universe do you hail from where you have two cable companies competing for your business? The rest of us slobs have two options, but they boil down to cable or no cable.

Damn monopolies.

Comcast is one of the few monopolies that I think really abuses its position. Here is my latest story:

A year ago I get a call at dinner offering a cinemax promotion. I take it. Three days later Cinemax comes on only one of my televisions. I call and find out those are the terms of the promotion so I cancel. I never bother to check to see if I’m still getting it. I have an assistant who pays bills that typically won’t have disputes. 9 months later I see I’m still being charged for Cinemax. I call up and tell the rep this and she says she can definitely get me credit for six months but will try and get credit for entire time and that she’ll call me back. I never get the call back. I’m a busy guy. 3 months later my assistant tells me I’m still being charged for Cinemax. I call back and another guy tells me he can only give me 6 months from today. I tell him the story and he says he’ll talk to his supervisor and call me back. 3 weeks go by and I don’t get a call back. I call again and ask for a supervisor. I explain the story in detail and she says she’s taking notes but that her computer is down and that she’ll have to call me back. It’s been a week so far.

You forgot DSL, at least for data services. You may have other options (including a conventional dial-up) for data, too. Plus, there’s digital satellite for your television.

As I’ve posted here about hundred times previously, if a cable operator has a “monopoly” in your area, talk to your city council, or county commissioners. They’re the folks who grant a cable operator their franchise to operate in any discrete geographical area. Those guys may be personally just as unsatisfied as you are with the current service. They can investigate the willingness of alternative cable companies to “overbuild” your area. Even better, tell 'em you want them to look into the potentialities of Fiber To The Home. Lots of activity in this technological arena right now. If these clowns won’t address your concerns, unelect them at your earliest opportunity; support a candidate who’ll do something for you. I know that’s not really a short term solution to your woes, but it is an avenue, sometimes fruitful, which can be investigated. You’re not doomed to live with a shitty scenario forever.

I live just north of Detroit. About a freakish a fold as I can think of.

I’m sorry, I just don’t know how else to describe it: I provide my routing and account numbers, and the funds are taken directly out of my checking account. Just like a check, only it’s online (I even have to give them a check number, and then I void the corresponding paper check). It’s an electronic check. I do this through Comcast’s website.

You asked whether I used internet banking or Comcast’s website, and I used Comcast’s website. It’s a website payment.

I don’t get it, either. I have the option of typing in my checking account information each time, or using the same information that I entered for the previous transaction. For the payment in question I used “saved” information, so I truly don’t get why it didn’t go through. It didn’t get returned to the bank, though; the problem is that the transaction didn’t happen in the first place. As I said, when I called my bank they said that check had never been presented for payment.

I don’t think the $5 fee is worth fighting Comcast over. Their customer service is notoriously horrible, and frankly I’d rather just pay it. If something like this ever happens again, though, I’ll be less zen about it. :wink:

Well, mine does not. :slight_smile:

Really, though, I don’t need it: most of my creditors allow free online payments, so I only have to use 3-4 stamps a month. And as I said, this is the first time I’ve had any kind of issue with an online payment.

Heh. We had our account set up for auto-pay. Then we moved–just a couple miles away, with the same phone number, so it shouldn’t have caused any major problems, but they lost our auto-pay in the process (and also somehow managed to change the phone number on our account to my husband’s cell, which caused some problems when trying to get into the account info), which we didn’t discover until our internet (but not, strangely, the cable TV) got cut off. I mean, auto-pay is supposed to make things easier, so we didn’t closely monitor our checking account every month to make sure the payment had been deducted, and didn’t notice that it hadn’t. They also didn’t send us a bill in the mail, or a cut-off notice, so we really didn’t realize anything was wrong. Sheesh.

You can do that? I can’t where I live, and yet they keep trying to get me to buy their internet service. Why, when I can pay nearly anybody else via their websites, would I want internet service from a company that doesn’t have internet paying?

CLARIFICATION: When discussing online banking with PunditLisa, I said that my bank – which is actually a credit union – does not offer it for free. However, I neglected to distinguish between online banking and online bill paying: I’ve been using online banking forever (for free), it’s the online bill paying that isn’t free. :slight_smile:

That does seem a little ridiculous!

What kills me are two particular bills that I can’t pay online: my computer loan through Dell (Dell! enough said!), and my car loan through Bank of America. The latter encourages online payments on every envelope and statement I get from them – but when I went to their site to sign up, it turns out that you have to have a checking account with them in order to make any payments to them! I’m not about to create a second checking account that I don’t need just to avoid $0.37 every month, so I mail those payments. (If you’re wondering how I got a loan through them without having an account there, the financing was arranged for me by the place where I bought the car.)

The only bills I can’t pay online are:[ul][li]one store credit card[/li][li]Dell[/li][li]Bank of America[/li][li]rent[/li][li]water (quarterly)[/ul][/li]I could go paperless for the above if I signed up for PunditLisa’s online bill paying, but the $1.48-$1.85 I spend in stamps per month is cheaper than the $3.00/month my credit union charges for bill paying. So I’m not gonna. :slight_smile:

Okay, how about this: My checking and saving accounts are with Citibank, which has excellent online service, but I can’t pay online, not even a simple transfer between accounts, to my mortgage with Citifinancial, their bloody subsidiary!

But, my friend, what is your time worth? Is it not worth more than $1.52/mo.? :slight_smile: