OAKLAND, CA—Speaking over lunch last Friday, a Northern California man named Conal O'Rourke laid out what admittedly sounds like a crazy story: a year-long billing dispute over his home Comcast service that ultimately resulted in Comcast getting O'Rourke fired from his job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) in nearby San Jose earlier this year. 
 
 But O’Rourke arrived to last week’s lunch meeting with Ars with an astonishing amount of documentation: he has pages and pages of Comcast invoices. He has a spreadsheet, photos, notes, business cards, and complaint letters. He and his lawyer, Maureen Pettibone Ryan, happily provided digital copies of these materials to Ars, which we have re-published with his permission here. 
 
 As a result of his firing, O’Rourke has hired a local attorney and is now threatening to file a lawsuit against Comcast if the company does not agree to his demands, which include "a full retraction and apology, his re-employment with his former employer, and $100,312.50" by October 14. 
 
 A rogue $26.25 
 
 O’Rourke first moved to California in early 2012 after 20 years of working for Andersen Consulting (later Accenture) in Connecticut, most recently as part of the corporate controllership division. During his career, O'Rourke developed skills in accounting, financial analysis, and auditing—skills that proved useful in his eventual dispute with Comcast. 
 
 In February 2013, he moved to a new place in San Jose and signed up for TV and Internet service with Comcast, since the only other competitive service, AT&T’s U-Verse, was not available in his building. 
 
 "I was roped into Comcast, and with Comcast, my problems soon began," O'Rourke said. 
 
 His first issues began when, after six weeks of service, he had yet to receive a bill. 
 
 After eventually receiving his first bill in April 2013, O'Rourke noticed a number of problems. For one thing, his name was misspelled (an issue that never got corrected). 
 
 More importantly, O’Rourke noticed that Comcast was charging him for three "additional HD outlets" for an extra fee of $26.25 a month. He also was charged for cable boxes that he says he never activated (he planned on moving two additional TVs later on into his condominium), after allegedly being promised that he wouldn’t be. 
 
 Finally, as part of a promotional deal, O'Rourke says he was promised HBO and other premium channels for nine months, but they disappeared after just three. 
 
 O’Rourke said he called multiple times to try to get these issues resolved. When they weren’t, he finally walked into his nearest Comcast store in San Jose. 
 
 There he met with the assistant store manager, who gave him a business card and provided his personal cellphone number. "He promises me that it will all be addressed and that we're going to look at it," O’Rourke said. 
 
 Then the real problems began. 
 
 $1,820 in equipment he didn't order 
 
 For the next few months, O’Rourke says he was under deadlines at work and could not address issues with Comcast. 
 
 By October 2013, O’Rourke said that his Internet speeds suddenly dropped off, becoming "unworkable." 
 
 "I had contacted them regarding lack of responsiveness and performance issues; sometimes my service wouldn't be usable and I had to hotspot in with AT&T," he said. 
 
 Again he called, and again, Comcast promised to correct his problem—sometimes by sending technicians to his home—but according to O'Rourke, the company never did. 
 
 O’Rourke spent part of November and December 2013 traveling overseas, so he was surprised when he returned home to find several boxes at his doorstep containing "12 pieces of equipment" and a December 2013 monthly bill for over $2,000—including $1,820 in equipment that he insists he did not order. 
 
 According to the December 2013 invoice, O’Rourke was charged for devices including an "AnyRoom Hub" ($420) and a "Pace Host" ($110). On December 30, 2013, carrying these various boxes back, O'Rourke walked into the same San Jose Comcast store to return the gear and get his issues resolved. 
 
 When he took a service ticket at 1:59pm, he discovered that he was Ticket #395 but that the store was only on Ticket #251. Rather than spend his afternoon at the store, O’Rourke came up with a plan. 
 
 "They close at 7:00pm, so I thought, I'm going to go at 6:45pm, then somebody will have a fire underneath them to address the problems," he said. "I had had it up to here." 
 
 A Comcast employee named Matt Doblias ended up helping O’Rourke, took back the equipment, and cleared the charges. But that still didn’t get to the root of the errors that had now persisted for months. (Ars sent an e-mail to Doblias, which bounced.) 
 
 "I provided Matt with the detailed spreadsheet in person, and he asked if I could send it to him, and he would take a look," O’Rourke said. The next day, December 31, he did so, but Doblias "responded that the spreadsheet never came through. I sent it again, then at the end of the day I asked for follow up and never heard back." 
 
 O’Rourke got irritated. 
 
 "On January 11, 2014, I was frustrated because I felt that I had done everything," he said. "I sent [Doblias] an e-mail that I was hopeful would ignite him to do something. What I did was [show Doblias by e-mail that] I sarcastically wrote a letter [to Comcast Senior Vice President Lawrence Salva], recommending Doblias for the Employee of the Month award. I wrote it up but didn't put it in the mail. I wanted to give [Doblias] an opportunity to fix the problem." 
 
 The letter included lines like: 
 
 The reason why I have chosen to nominate the San Jose center is simple. Their blatant disregard for the customer has made resolving my issues next to impossible. This behavior has proven to be quite profitable as I, like most customers, just throw their hands up in exasperation. However, now that I am no longer exasperated I intend on following up on my concerns. 
 
 But O'Rourke heard nothing, and the billing errors persisted—resulting in Comcast allegedly sending a collections agency after him. 
 
 "On February 5, 2014, [Comcast] said my account was two months past due and at that point pushing $300," he said. "I don't order pay-per-view, and I explained [to the collections agency] that that can't be right, and they were insistent, and I walked them through it." 
 
 She said, �?What color is your house?!? Tell me the color of your house!’ She went on a tirade and said, �?Just answer the question!’ 
 
 By this point, O’Rourke had yet to receive an errorless bill, he said, despite having been a customer for nearly a year. The following day, he decided to contact Lawrence Salva , Comcast’s Philadelphia-based controller, who oversees the division of the company that deals with accounting. He spoke at length with Salva’s executive assistant, describing his litany of problems. After the call concluded, the assistant said that she would have another Comcast employee contact O’Rourke directly. 
 
 "An hour later I got a second call from an individual who doesn't identify herself [except as Evelyn] but says that she's with Comcast," he said. O’Rourke asked her if she knew why she was calling, to which she responded that it had something to do with missed appointments. 
 
 "I laughed, because they missed so many appointments I don't even know which one she's talking about," he said. 
 
 When he tried to explain the situation, O'Rourke said that Evelyn began to berate him. 
 
 "She said, �?What color is your house?!? Tell me the color of your house!’" O’Rourke remembered. "She went on a tirade and said, �?Just answer the question!’" (O'Rourke lives in a condo complex.) 
 
 "I told her that I was angry and said, �?You need to do your homework before you pick up the phone,’" he told Ars. "I told her I was going to call back to Salva's office. That's what I did. And I expressed my concern and said, 'You have sloppy accounting, you don't take anything seriously, and I should go to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.' That's the regulator that makes sure that accounting is done properly. I think that some of my terminology would have indicated that I wasn't a layman. I worked for 20 years in corporate comptrollership. These errors become material after a while." 
 
 Unbeknownst to O’Rourke, however, his call set off alarm bells within Comcast. 
 
 Listing image by Alyson Hurt ||||| OAKLAND, CA—Speaking over lunch last Friday, a Northern California man named Conal O'Rourke laid out what admittedly sounds like a crazy story: a year-long billing dispute over his home Comcast service that ultimately resulted in Comcast getting O'Rourke fired from his job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) in nearby San Jose earlier this year. 
 
 But O’Rourke arrived to last week’s lunch meeting with Ars with an astonishing amount of documentation: he has pages and pages of Comcast invoices. He has a spreadsheet, photos, notes, business cards, and complaint letters. He and his lawyer, Maureen Pettibone Ryan, happily provided digital copies of these materials to Ars, which we have re-published with his permission here. 
 
 As a result of his firing, O’Rourke has hired a local attorney and is now threatening to file a lawsuit against Comcast if the company does not agree to his demands, which include "a full retraction and apology, his re-employment with his former employer, and $100,312.50" by October 14. 
 
 A rogue $26.25 
 
 O’Rourke first moved to California in early 2012 after 20 years of working for Andersen Consulting (later Accenture) in Connecticut, most recently as part of the corporate controllership division. During his career, O'Rourke developed skills in accounting, financial analysis, and auditing—skills that proved useful in his eventual dispute with Comcast. 
 
 In February 2013, he moved to a new place in San Jose and signed up for TV and Internet service with Comcast, since the only other competitive service, AT&T’s U-Verse, was not available in his building. 
 
 "I was roped into Comcast, and with Comcast, my problems soon began," O'Rourke said. 
 
 His first issues began when, after six weeks of service, he had yet to receive a bill. 
 
 After eventually receiving his first bill in April 2013, O'Rourke noticed a number of problems. For one thing, his name was misspelled (an issue that never got corrected). 
 
 More importantly, O’Rourke noticed that Comcast was charging him for three "additional HD outlets" for an extra fee of $26.25 a month. He also was charged for cable boxes that he says he never activated (he planned on moving two additional TVs later on into his condominium), after allegedly being promised that he wouldn’t be. 
 
 Finally, as part of a promotional deal, O'Rourke says he was promised HBO and other premium channels for nine months, but they disappeared after just three. 
 
 O’Rourke said he called multiple times to try to get these issues resolved. When they weren’t, he finally walked into his nearest Comcast store in San Jose. 
 
 There he met with the assistant store manager, who gave him a business card and provided his personal cellphone number. "He promises me that it will all be addressed and that we're going to look at it," O’Rourke said. 
 
 Then the real problems began. 
 
 $1,820 in equipment he didn't order 
 
 For the next few months, O’Rourke says he was under deadlines at work and could not address issues with Comcast. 
 
 By October 2013, O’Rourke said that his Internet speeds suddenly dropped off, becoming "unworkable." 
 
 "I had contacted them regarding lack of responsiveness and performance issues; sometimes my service wouldn't be usable and I had to hotspot in with AT&T," he said. 
 
 Again he called, and again, Comcast promised to correct his problem—sometimes by sending technicians to his home—but according to O'Rourke, the company never did. 
 
 O’Rourke spent part of November and December 2013 traveling overseas, so he was surprised when he returned home to find several boxes at his doorstep containing "12 pieces of equipment" and a December 2013 monthly bill for over $2,000—including $1,820 in equipment that he insists he did not order. 
 
 According to the December 2013 invoice, O’Rourke was charged for devices including an "AnyRoom Hub" ($420) and a "Pace Host" ($110). On December 30, 2013, carrying these various boxes back, O'Rourke walked into the same San Jose Comcast store to return the gear and get his issues resolved. 
 
 When he took a service ticket at 1:59pm, he discovered that he was Ticket #395 but that the store was only on Ticket #251. Rather than spend his afternoon at the store, O’Rourke came up with a plan. 
 
 "They close at 7:00pm, so I thought, I'm going to go at 6:45pm, then somebody will have a fire underneath them to address the problems," he said. "I had had it up to here." 
 
 A Comcast employee named Matt Doblias ended up helping O’Rourke, took back the equipment, and cleared the charges. But that still didn’t get to the root of the errors that had now persisted for months. (Ars sent an e-mail to Doblias, which bounced.) 
 
 "I provided Matt with the detailed spreadsheet in person, and he asked if I could send it to him, and he would take a look," O’Rourke said. The next day, December 31, he did so, but Doblias "responded that the spreadsheet never came through. I sent it again, then at the end of the day I asked for follow up and never heard back." 
 
 O’Rourke got irritated. 
 
 "On January 11, 2014, I was frustrated because I felt that I had done everything," he said. "I sent [Doblias] an e-mail that I was hopeful would ignite him to do something. What I did was [show Doblias by e-mail that] I sarcastically wrote a letter [to Comcast Senior Vice President Lawrence Salva], recommending Doblias for the Employee of the Month award. I wrote it up but didn't put it in the mail. I wanted to give [Doblias] an opportunity to fix the problem." 
 
 The letter included lines like: 
 
 The reason why I have chosen to nominate the San Jose center is simple. Their blatant disregard for the customer has made resolving my issues next to impossible. This behavior has proven to be quite profitable as I, like most customers, just throw their hands up in exasperation. However, now that I am no longer exasperated I intend on following up on my concerns. 
 
 But O'Rourke heard nothing, and the billing errors persisted—resulting in Comcast allegedly sending a collections agency after him. 
 
 "On February 5, 2014, [Comcast] said my account was two months past due and at that point pushing $300," he said. "I don't order pay-per-view, and I explained [to the collections agency] that that can't be right, and they were insistent, and I walked them through it." 
 
 She said, ‘What color is your house?!? Tell me the color of your house!’ She went on a tirade and said, ‘Just answer the question!’ 
 
 By this point, O’Rourke had yet to receive an errorless bill, he said, despite having been a customer for nearly a year. The following day, he decided to contact Lawrence Salva , Comcast’s Philadelphia-based controller, who oversees the division of the company that deals with accounting. He spoke at length with Salva’s executive assistant, describing his litany of problems. After the call concluded, the assistant said that she would have another Comcast employee contact O’Rourke directly. 
 
 "An hour later I got a second call from an individual who doesn't identify herself [except as Evelyn] but says that she's with Comcast," he said. O’Rourke asked her if she knew why she was calling, to which she responded that it had something to do with missed appointments. 
 
 "I laughed, because they missed so many appointments I don't even know which one she's talking about," he said. 
 
 When he tried to explain the situation, O'Rourke said that Evelyn began to berate him. 
 
 "She said, ‘What color is your house?!? Tell me the color of your house!’" O’Rourke remembered. "She went on a tirade and said, ‘Just answer the question!’" (O'Rourke lives in a condo complex.) 
 
 "I told her that I was angry and said, ‘You need to do your homework before you pick up the phone,’" he told Ars. "I told her I was going to call back to Salva's office. That's what I did. And I expressed my concern and said, 'You have sloppy accounting, you don't take anything seriously, and I should go to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.' That's the regulator that makes sure that accounting is done properly. I think that some of my terminology would have indicated that I wasn't a layman. I worked for 20 years in corporate comptrollership. These errors become material after a while." 
 
 Unbeknownst to O’Rourke, however, his call set off alarm bells within Comcast. 
 
 Listing image by Alyson Hurt ||||| 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.]
– Even Conal O'Rourke knows his story might sound convoluted. But the California man hopes documentation and an in-person interview provided to Ars Technica will help prove that Comcast had something to do with him losing his job at PriceWaterhouseCoopers after a lengthy battle with the cable company over billing and service issues. O'Rourke has hired a lawyer and has issued an Oct. 14 ultimatum to Comcast—a PWC consulting services client—that requests "a full retraction and apology, his re-employment with his former employer, and $100,312.50." His lengthy timeline begins in 2012, when he says he moved to the Golden State and signed up for Internet and TV with Comcast—and everything started going wrong almost immediately. Among O'Rourke's numerous allegations: late bills; charges for and shipments of equipment he didn't order; not receiving the right promotional items; "unworkable" Internet speed; and not hearing back from Comcast employees when he tried to resolve issues. They never even got his name right on the bill, he adds. But the worst repercussion, according to O'Rourke, was getting fired from his job after he started calling Comcast's controller's office. He says via a letter written by his attorney that he was called in to a PWC partner's office and told that Comcast, a "very valuable" client, "was very angry as a result of Mr. O'Rourke’s complaints, and that Mr. O'Rourke was not to speak with anyone from Comcast." O'Rourke alleges after that meeting that he endured a PWC internal investigation and then was fired on Feb. 18. His attorney's letter says O'Rourke was "shocked, humiliated, and ashamed based on the unjustified loss of his job. He sought counseling and was prescribed medication to address his emotional distress." He now has AT&T service at home, and is threatening to sue Comcast if the company does not comply with his demands. (Follow the entire Ars Technica timeline for further details.)