Comcast Sued By Customer Who Says Cable Company Had Him Fired From Job 
 
 Last week, we brought you the story of former Comcast customer Conal O’Rourke, who lost his job at renowned accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers after someone from Comcast called his employer with details of Mr. O’Rourke’s numerous — and valid — complaints about his cable service. Comcast has subsequently apologized for the myriad billing and service problems but maintains it did not intend to have O’Rourke fired, but that has not satisfied Conal, who has filed a lawsuit against the nation’s largest cable company, alleging violations of, among other claims, a federal law prohibiting cable companies from sharing personal information without customers’ consent. 
 
 The complaint [PDF], filed in a U.S. District Court in San Jose, CA, on Thursday, accuses Comcast of violating the Cable Communications Policy Act, defamation, breach of contract, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and unfair business practices. 
 
 “Mr. O’Rourke’s story is both simple and chilling,” reads the complaint. 
 
 For those coming late to this story, here’s the brief rundown. 
 
 In early 2013, Conal became a customer of Comcast. From the start, he claims the company failed to provide service at the promised promotional price. Multiple promises to resolve the over-billing resulted in only continued inaccurate invoices, even after meeting with Comcast staff in person and presenting them with detailed breakdowns of every charge and credit associated with his account. 
 
 It eventually got so bad that Conal says Comcast sent and billed him for $1,820 worth of equipment he never requested and did not need. 
 
 Exasperated with Comcast’s non-responsive customer service, Conal eventually contacted the office of the Comcast Controller, Lawrence Salva, and expressed his opinion that should perhaps be investigated by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), a private-sector oversight operation. 
 
 After this discussion with Mr. Salva’s office, the controller himself — who had not actually spoken with O’Rourke — contacted Conal’s employer, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which earns a significant amount of revenue (at least $30 million annually, according to the complaint) as a consultant to Comcast. 
 
 There is little debate about the above points. Where Conal and Comcast differ is their respective accounts of his call to Mr. Salva’s office. 
 
 Comcast claims that Conal mentioned that he was employed by PwC and attempted to use it as leverage to get better service. 
 
 “Mr. O’Rourke believes that the Controller’s office performed an online search after Mr. O’Rourke stated that Comcast should be investigated by the PCAOB, and learned that Mr. O’Rourke worked for PwC,” contends the complaint. 
 
 The call from Mr. Salva — who is also named as a defendant in the suit — to a PwC executive resulted in Conal being subjected to an ethics investigation, which Conal claims consisted solely of a 20-minute phone interview. 
 
 Conal says he has made repeated requests for recordings of the call where he is purported to have name-dropped PwC, but in spite of Comcast’s claims that it exists, the recording has not materialized. Additionally, neither Comcast nor PwC will provide details on exactly what Mr. Salva told PwC. 
 
 “Defendant Salva either directly asked for Mr. O’Rourke’s termination, or implicitly requested and caused it by making the knowingly false, defamatory, and malicious accusation that Mr. O’Rourke had violated accounting ethics rules by attempting to use his employment with PWC as leverage in his ‘negotiations’ with Comcast,” contends the lawsuit. 
 
 Section 551(c) of the Cable Communications Policy Act forbids cable companies from disclosing “personally identifiable information concerning any subscriber without the prior written or electronic consent of the subscriber concerned.” And since Comcast has yet to argue in any of its statements that it obtained this permission, Conal believes the company has violated this statute. 
 
 Additionally, Section 551(f) of the same law allows victims of such violations to seek actual and punitive damages, along with legal costs. 
 
 The lawsuit also alleges breach of contract, as Comcast has admitted publicly that it failed to live up to its obligation to provide the service that Conal ordered and paid for. 
 
 “Comcast breached the Agreement when it engaged in… overcharging Mr. O’Rourke, failing to show up for service appointments, sending Mr. O’Rourke to collections, and failing to repair his internet service,” reads the complaint. 
 
 Finally, Conal accuses the defendants of engaging in “unfair, unlawful and fraudulent business practices” in violation of California Business & Professions Code, by “violating his privacy, defaming him to his employer, unfairly and persistently overcharging him, and retaliating against him for questioning the legality and propriety of its billing and collections practices.” 
 
 The suit ultimately seeks damages and legal costs in excess of $1 million, an injunction barring Comcast from: providing subscribers’ personal information to third parties without consent; defaming customers to third parties; over-billing customers; and retaliating against customers who complain. 
 
 UPDATE: Comcast has provided the following statement to Consumerist regarding the lawsuit: 
 
 “We don’t normally comment on pending litigation and as we have said, there were clear deficiencies in the customer service that we delivered to Mr. O’Rourke. Comcast had nothing to do with PricewaterhouseCoopers’ decision to terminate Mr. O’Rourke. Once again, we apologize to Mr. O’Rourke for his service issues. We said we were determined to get to the bottom of exactly what happened with Mr. O’Rourke’s service and we are doing that. As part of this investigation, we have listened to recorded calls between Mr. O’Rourke and our customer service representatives and his treatment of them and his language is totally unspeakable. Mr. O’Rourke’s claims are without merit.” 
 
 UPDATE #2: Harmeet K. Dhillon of Dhillon Law Group, the firm representing Conal, has provided the following response to Comcast’s statement: 
 
 “It is unclear whether Comcast is accusing our client of using profanity, or simply being angry after months overcharging and broken promises to resolve his billing problems. In any event, being angry or using profanity isn’t illegal. Even reciting a George Carlin routine in frustration at utterly incompetent and abusive ‘customer service’ isn’t illegal. Violating the privacy of a cable subscriber and defaming him to his employer, is.” ||||| The story continues for Conal the Comcast customer who lost his job after the cable company called his employer (which happens to make a lot of money off consulting for Comcast) and provided details about his customer service complaints. Comcast’s new Mr. Fix-It has issued an apology for the year-plus of horrendous service and over-billing that Conal experienced, but still maintains that it didn’t mean to get him fired. 
 
 The blog post from TV-star handsome Comcast exec Charlie Herrin reads: 
 
 What happened with Mr. O’Rourke’s service is completely unacceptable. Despite our attempts to address Mr. O’Rourke’s issues, we simply dropped the ball and did not make things right. Mr. O’Rourke deserves another apology from us and we’re making this one publicly. We also want to clarify that nobody at Comcast asked for him to be fired. We’re also determined to get to the bottom of exactly what happened with his service, figure out what went wrong at every point along the way, and fix any underlying issues. I’m a few weeks into a new role at Comcast which is entirely focused on what we can do to make the customer experience better. We need to make sure that every interaction is excellent … from the moment a customer orders a new service, to the installation, to the way we communicate with them, to how we respond to any issues. We’re holding ourselves accountable and we are working hard to make real improvements across the board. While it will take us some time, we can and will do better than this. 
 
 We reached out to Conal’s attorney, who said her client has yet to hear anything from the company directly in way of an apology and provided the following rebuttal: 
 
 We view this apology as more of a public relations strategy than a public apology. Comcast has yet to contact Mr. O’Rourke through his lawyers at Dhillon Law Group Inc. with this apology, which calls its sincerity into doubt. Furthermore, we would note what is missing from the apology. First, Comcast has not promised to investigate its involvement in Mr. O’Rourke’s termination, or to release the emails or taped calls that would prove that he is telling the truth and that Comcast defamed him to his employer. Second, Comcast’s claim that “nobody at Comcast asked for him to be fired�? does not resolve the matter. While we disbelieve this statement, even if it were true, the Controller’s office at Comcast knew when it made the ethics complaint to PWC that if PWC believed the complaint, Mr. O’Rourke would be terminated. Comcast made false and defamatory statements about Dhillon Law Group Inc.’s client to his employer, knowing the outcome would be termination, and we will not allow that to stand. Mr. O’Rourke does appreciate that more than eighteen months after Comcast first made errors on his bill that it is willing to investigate the matter. Mr. O’Rourke and his attorneys hope that this investigation will be productive, unlike the other investigations Comcast repeatedly promised to perform over those eighteen months. 
 
 It’s all well and good for Comcast to apologize publicly now that it’s been humiliated in the media (again), but what does Herrin really mean when he writes “nobody at Comcast asked for him to be fired”? 
 
 What else could Comcast — which has admitted contacting Conal’s employer, accounting giant PriceWaterhouseCoopers, following his complaint to the office of the Comcast Controller — expect would happen when it contacts an executive at a company that relies on Comcast for a nice chunk of its revenue and says “Hey PwC, one of your guys was really rude to our staffers”? 
 
 Did Comcast think that PwC would listen to the word of a single employee over the word of the nation’s largest cable provider, who again is a client of PwC’s? 
 
 [NOTE: It is generally our policy to not provide the last names of readers who submit stories to Consumerist, which is why Conal’s last name was not included in the initial story. However, since he has subsequently spoken to other media outlets giving his full name and the name of his former employer — and since Comcast refers to him only by his last name in its statement, we are using his last name in this post.]
– Conal O'Rourke says he lost his job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers because he complained about poor service from Comcast—a PwC client—and now he's suing the cable company. After O'Rourke brought his story to the media, Comcast apologized publicly for the many billing issues and other service problems he experienced, but insisted "nobody at Comcast asked for him to be fired." O'Rourke, however, says Comcast's controller did call PwC (Comcast does not deny that a call was made), and he's suing over the alleged violation of a federal law that bars cable companies from sharing personal information without a customer's consent, Consumerist reports. The big issue is what happened when O'Rourke, fed up after months of poor service, contacted Controller Lawrence Salva's office (but didn't actually speak with Salva). Comcast says that during this call, he attempted to use his job at PwC as "leverage to get better service," Consumerist notes; O'Rourke says he believes the controller simply did an online search of his name following the call and learned he worked at PwC. (O'Rourke has asked for a recording of the call in which he supposedly mentioned his employer, and Comcast has yet to release one.) O'Rourke says that after he called the controller's office, the controller contacted PwC. He's seeking more than $1 million in damages and legal costs, as well as an injunction barring Comcast from doing a slew of things—among them, overbilling customers. Click for O'Rourke's full story.