Charter’s $7 Billion Penalty For Murdering An Elderly Customer Reduced To $262 Million
from the murder-costs-extra dept
Last August, cable giant Charter Communications (Spectrum) was slapped with a $7 billion lawsuit after one of the company’s cable technicians murdered an 83-year-old customer after hours. The lawsuit (pdf) claims that Charter had eliminated a more rigorous screening process when they merged with Time Warner Cable, letting the employee and his history slip through the cracks.
By September, that tally had been dramatically reduced to $1.1 billion by a jury. This week the cable monopoly managed to strike a settlement with the family for $262 million, all of which will be covered by insurance. Still, the courts found that Charter was responsible for gross negligence, and had forged documents to try and force the family out of the court system and into binding arbitration:
“Charter Spectrum attorneys used a forged document to try to force the lawsuit into a closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and damages for the murder would have been limited to the amount of Ms. Thomas’s final bill,” the law firm said.
Back in the early aughts, when I wrote exclusively about the broadband sector, you couldn’t go a week without a story about a cable broadband technician falling asleep on the job, blowing up homes, occasionally murdering people or getting arrested for torturing and spray painting kittens.
The problem was several fold: one, these companies’ executives were so fixated on growth for growth’s sake and pleasing Wall Street, they routinely failed to scale their investment into customer service. They also really adored using a series of low-quality, low-cost subcontractors both for the cost savings, and because the layered proxy relationships often offered reduced liability for fuck ups.
US cable broadband customer service has improved some in the years since, but not by much, as there remains little incentive to meaningfully improve thanks to market failure and federal regulators that generally lack the courage to stand up to monopolies with any consistency.
The cable sector still has some of the lowest customer service ratings in any industry in America, a true feat in a country where banks, insurance companies, oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, and airlines exist.
Filed Under: broadband, cable, cable technician, customer service, high speed internet, installation horror stories, murder, telecom
Companies: charter, charter communications
Comments on “Charter’s $7 Billion Penalty For Murdering An Elderly Customer Reduced To $262 Million”
And this is why I get paranoid anytime I have to have anyone come into my home. Not that I’m afraid they’re going to murder me, but these companies are often so lax about who they hire to enter peoples homes I have no idea if they’re casing my place to steal from it later.
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Note that woke ideologues support “ban the box”, that is, forbidding employers from checking whether prospective employees have criminal records.
Re:
What does woke mean to you and why would you use it in a comment when it is not necessary?
One could easily address one’s concerns with the hiring process without introducing some political bullshit terminology.
You are not in HR are you?
Re: Re: The woke-poky
Cops get to quit before being fired and move to a job 20 miles away. The BG checks usually are not done.
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“BG checks usually are not done.”
Is there any data to support this?
There are several lists which attempt to track said bad cops, making the background check even easier.
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Re: Re:
Wokeness is a constellation of hard-left false and harmful beliefs, divorced from reality. Woke ideologues generally believe in the entire panoply while normal people believe in none of it, which is why referring to woke ideologues is useful; it places the pernicious idea into the category in which it belongs. “Ban the box” follows the usual woke ideological goal of helping the dregs of society at the expense of the people they prey upon, including policies of defunding police, letting arrested ex-convicts out of jail, and trying to generally keep criminals out of prison.
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“Wokeness is a constellation of hard-left false and harmful beliefs, divorced from reality”
Got any real world examples?
blah blah blah … wait a sec, yer a bot.
A trollbot
Re: What?
Outside of Fox News, do you have any actual evidence that this is being pursued? Or is this another fever dream the right came up with to make you scared of “woke ideologues”?
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I hate to do this, but people are definitely talking about reducing or eliminating background checks. The blunt approach advocated by some in the left is to remove the criminal backround check entirely. Citing statistics about re-offending and the hiring of former criminals. That rarely gets anywhere, for the obvious reasons the troll is gesturing to.
MOst policies deriously discussed instead talk about moving criminal history to later in the interview, rather than as an inital screening. When the policy was passed in CA, they prevent employers from asking about criminal history in the application. The idea being that once a job is offered, the employer will want the employee and will balance the employees positives, the reasons they want to hire the employee, with the criminal conviction, and assess any risk.
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“The blunt approach advocated by some in the left is to remove the criminal backround check entirely.”
Sure, it’s always The Left isn’t it?
wtf does that even mean? The Left.
Just another meaningless term to use in disparaging others.
Hypocrites love this shit don’t they. The republican party does not do any background check of their potential candidates or campaign workers, they end up with batshit crazy idiots in office and yet it is The Left that is responsible.
Re: Re: Re:2 Define
The term “Left” is as moronic as the term “Right”.
Both pretend the US political system is a or b.
It’s an ideal that you fit into a party. It ignores the large social socialist libertarian movement. The liberals that are conservative on defence, facially liberal conservatives, etc.
Entrenched Politicians, and people glued to one of three stations on cable, forget that this country was always decided and never fit any preset classifications.
The last two presidential elections are prime examples. A large contingent of out-of-party voted against Clinton and she lost.
But a large portion of the population voted against trump the following election and Biden took the win.
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So no evidence, then? As a lifelong conservative, idiotic nonsense like this is why I’d never vote Republican. You people really are morons, desperately and constantly changing the subject to how “wokies” and “leftists” are terrible, but never, ever offering any type of solution for anything, let alone any actual evidence to back up your bullshit.
(Also, if you bothered learning anything at all about political science, you’d know that there really is no “far left” in the US. Hell, there’s barely even a “left” except by the most tortured, asinine standard.)
Re: Re: Re:2
The American “Left” is basically anyone even a planck unit left of the Republicans.
And if you know what the Republican Party has become…
Re: Re: Re:2
Youve shat on a leftist. Just so you know. Look up my history. I understand we don’t have a party aligned with global political left in Congress. But we do have political activists on the left. The Bay Area where I live is a battleground ideologically. And globally center-left (social democrat) ideas are discussed locally in politics more extensively than at the federal or state level.
My state and local governments have put up several different bills/proposals to address the issues of a criminal background check in employment. While many policies being discussed involve decriminalization, various proposals to deal fix the background check itself have come to the fore. Some outright banned asking about it unless it was a position of public trust (requiring a DOJ fingerprint Background check). Others try to balance concerns on liability by changing various aspects of the check. This is a concept under discussion.
I guess this never happened:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/21/california-alameda-county-landlords-background-checks#:~:text=A%20California%20county%20has%20become,discrimination%20against%20formerly%20incarcerated%20people.
The unhinged AC refrenced this law (Ban the Box) in particular:
https://www.littler.com/publication-press/publication/upcoming-changes-californias-law-regarding-criminal-background-checks
Maybe go through my history. These proposals aren’t coming from center right democrats. They are filtering up from globally left wing activists to local candidates who might not themselves be leftist, but are courting the support of the anti-carceral, anti-police left that undergirds dem support in the bay area.
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One thing the left and right loose with the globalist mindset is reason within our system.
Relative:
Sure, to much of Europe (sorry buddy, most of the planet is much further than our system, right or left), we’re conservative. It to former Spanish and French colonies in south east Asia were extreme liberals. Same with Western Asia. We’re twisted liberals and Europe is disgusting.
Just something to think about.
Within our relative bubble, the presidential semi-parliamentary republic known as the United States of America, we are one of the most diverse active no -totalitarian systems in the world.
This country has hundreds of parties. 5 of which presents candidates with a chance of winning when they move into one of the two electable parties for candidacy.
This country has literally the FULL Spectrum. From liberal anarchism to militant religion.
For all our problems, this country really does tend to get along well enough. Sure things could be better. But mimicking other countries is not going to help.
We need to peruse the best of foreign actions and Americanise it.
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Does woke mean imagined policies that you can use to attack those of a different political persuasion?
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Re: Re:
No. It means real ones.
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As far as employment goes, “ban the box” doesn’t eliminate criminal background checks, but delays them until after the employer makes a job offer.
This is not to be confused with “ban the box” with respect to housing in Oakland, California, which does prohibit most landlords from conducting criminal background checks. Presumably, the reasoning is that having a past conviction alone shouldn’t make someone who has served their sentence homeless.
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I noticed that the Republican Party’s background checks are through and rigorous.
cough George Santos cough
cough Mark A. Grethen cough
cough Beverly Russell cough
‘Scuse. Anyone got a lozenge?
Dear Cable Execs…
Dead customers no longer generate revenue at any level, perhaps making sure your workers don’t kill your income is worth spending a bit more on.
Re: They find ways of clawing their money away from you
Relative: Hello, I’d like to cancel my nana’s cable?
Agent: Oh! let me help you with that sir, what’s the reason you’re canceling?
Relative: You killed my Nana.
Agent: Oh I’m sorry to hear that. So you’re transferring service over to yourself then?
Relative: No I’m canceling altogether.
Agent: Well okay then. Before I move forward I’d like to inform you we have an “oops we murdered you” discount package for 3 months…
Relative: Just cancel the service! …Please.
Agent: Okay we’re not taking the discount. Would you like to upgrade then?
Lawyers forging documents?
How is this not an automatic disbarment? Do not pass Go, do not collect $200 dollars. Good luck paying your law school bills without a job.
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You basically first need to prove that the lawyers knew of the forgery when they tried to shunt this lawsuit into arbitration.
Before that the bar won’t move a finger.
It was not the jury that reduced the punitive part to $1.1 billion, that was the judge following guidelines set (a supreme court 2003 ruling) that punitive damages are not to exceed 9 times compensatory damages. The most common level for punitive damages is 3 times the compensatory part
The judge set the punitive part at roughly 2 times, my guess to lower the chance that Charter win on appeal.
In a growth sector, service is of secondary importance
The problem is that as long as there is significant growth, there is an influx of new customers more than offsetting the quitters. If you take a look at, say, customer ratings at Youtube, you’ll find that the worst offenders have about 95% approval. Those 5% totally dissatisfied customers are comparatively irrelevant as long as there is a sufficiently large pool of newcomers more than offsetting them.
As long as you are in a growth market, investing into customer acquisition pays off better than customer retention. In particular since you can run a concerted marketing campaign that your dissatisfied customers just don’t have the coordination and reach for.
Only once the white areas reached by the market become sparse does customer service pay off. But as long as you have new technologies to hype, telling your (and other people’s customers) that they will cure every problem that magically keeps sticking around, you can still enter a rinse, repeat cycle in brainwashing.
And then there is monopoly and collusion power.
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You do realize that Charter Cable is not in a growth sector. Worse it looks like the entirety of Charter (that is from cable to streaming to internet) has been losing customers last year.
Also the reason they do not need customer service is not because they are still in a growth market (they are not), it is because they are a monopoly (or at best a duopoly), customers have no choice so why invest in something that only costs money.
7 billon was a statement
%10 of the companies market cap was a hell of a statement by the jury but just not a real number. 262 mill is still something to make them think about there actions. I am sure thier insureance company will make them pay over time. They always do..