Time Warner Cable, Charter Will Overcharge Customers Millions This Year, Report Finds

Time Warner Cable and Charter, two companies set for a $78 billion merger, will overcharge customers by millions of dollars this year, a U.S. Senate investigation released Thursday estimated.

The investigation, conducted by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, looked at how five major cable companies (Comcast, DirecTV and Dish were also included) handle billing errors. With millions of cable bills sent every month — each including several line items such as TV packages, premium channel subscriptions and equipment rentals — mistakes are bound to happen.

How the companies handled the errors, the report found, varied greatly. And Time Warner Cable and Charter were the biggest offenders, according to the report.

Here's what they found between January and April of 2016:

• Time Warner Cable over-billed customers across the country by $639,948 during that timeframe. The committee estimated (by multiplying by three, apparently) that means about $1,919,844 in overcharges over the course of the whole year.
• Charter hasn't yet gathered the necessary data, the committee said, but the company told the committee it was over-billing customers by $442,691 per month. Using some advanced mathematics (multiplying by 12), that would be about $5.3 million per year of overcharges.

"Throughout the time period examined by the Subcommittee, Time Warner Cable and Charter made no effort to trace equipment overcharges to their origin unless customers specifically asked them to and did not provide notice or refunds to customers," the report said.

A representative from Time Warner Cable did not immediately respond to Patch's requests for comment.

In an emailed statement to Patch, Charter said:

An audit of our set-top boxes charges over the last nine months found them to be over 99% accurate. To move us closer to 100% accuracy and permanently resolve this issue, we have installed new controls to ensure discrepancies are caught and eliminated on a daily basis. Customers who were incorrectly charged for set-top boxes are being notified and given a 12-month credit for these fees.

And what did the report find about the other three providers?

"Comcast and DirecTV provide automatic refunds or credits to overcharged customers, while Dish’s billing system is designed to prevent these types of overcharges from occurring in the first place," the report said.

Read the full Senate report below:

Image via Chris Brown, Flickr, used under Creative Commons