How Comcast convinced customers to buy “near-worthless” service plans

The Washington state attorney general's $100 million lawsuit against Comcast uses a sales script and transcripts of chats with customers to make the case that Comcast deceived subscribers when marketing what the state calls "near-worthless" service plans. Since January 2011, Comcast made $73 million selling Service Protection Plans (SPP) for up to $5 a month to 500,000 customers in Washington. But the service plans were sold to customers under false pretenses, with Comcast describing the plans as being far more comprehensive and useful than they were, Attorney General Bob Ferguson alleged.

One of Ferguson's key pieces of evidence is a sales script that Comcast used until June 2016. (Comcast recently made changes to address the attorney general's complaints.) Though Comcast service plans had various limitations and purportedly "covered" certain services that were actually available for free, the "sales scripts did not include any reference to limitations on the SPP's coverage," the AG's lawsuit said. "Nor did Comcast's training manuals teach its employees to disclose the limitations to Washington consumers."