A Long Island couple is suing Cablevision, saying the cable provider should be offering automatic credits to customers in areas that lost service due to Superstorm Sandy rather than waiting for them to call. Time Warner Cable, which also serves the area, said last week that it would apply automatic credits in neighborhoods hit hard by the storm.
Joclyn and Jeffrey Bard of Huntington are seeking class-action status for the lawsuit filed 11/13 at the New York State Supreme Court. They want damages from the company and an order that it stop billing for services it didn’t provide because of the storm, reports The Associated Press.
The Bards’ lawyer, Hunter Shkolnik, said the company doesn’t let customers know that they have to call to get their credit: “They know when you’re on and they know when you’re off. They monitor this.”
Cablevision responded in a statement to The AP that the suit “misstates the facts and is without merit … We have an extremely broad and customer friendly credit policy following Sandy. Blanket or arbitrary credits for cable outages could shortchange customers because each case is different.”
The company also said that customers can register an outage online or call to get their credits.
RBR-TVBR observation: With so much infrastructure damage and subsequent repair work going on, it seems a bit premature to file a lawsuit until all systems are restored. It’s not like Cablesystems is denying credits, but to just assume they still know who was on and who was off system-wide every day after this mess is presumptuous. We doubt this case will get wings.
