Even if only 5% of customers have had a bad experience, to me that would still be a fail.

Comcast paying needless fees... kind of has a nice ring to it :)

[www.comedycentral.com]

If billing were Comcast's only sin, this would be the first you'd have heard of them on Consumerist. Once you've had the misfortune of being a Comcast customer, you'll understand the resentment and flat-out rage people feel upon hearing their name. Comcast's asshattery has easily consumed > 100+ hours of my life.

This is bringing back dreadful memories of C Programming classes.

On a related note, could someone tell the Yahoo people to re-program their personalized greeting in e-mail so that BOTH of my first names show up? It pisses me off when things like that don't look past the first null character they see. >:(

Well that's moronic. If it actually mattered, I'd call it petty but at that level it's almost insanity.

I loved going to the college's treasury and paying directly (I was studying at the same place at the time). The WTF face of the cashier made the trip worth it.

Call Comcast, verify WTF is up, and go on.

That's a fantastic idea!@Framling:

The thing is, it was always HIGHER than it should be.

All the guys on the night shift had a pool: if the last 2 numbers of your pay matched the last 2 of the check number you won. Some new guy won it the first time he played, and it had been piling up for a while. He wasn't very popular that day.

@bravo369: My mom always used to intentionally overpay bills by a negligible amount, so that the company in question would send a notice back, costing them more in postage than she had overpaid by.

What next, a bill for -4.153 1/7 euros?

After hitting a bunch of random buttons and repeating "Help. Customer Service. Operator" into the hold message, I got transferred to a rep who proceeded to laugh hysterically when I described my issue, but got it taken care of. I think the final tally was 5 letters sent about it, so they ended up losing money in the end.

@egogg: That still makes me laugh.

[consumerist.com]

Almost everyone's bank accounts held fractions of a cent at one time in their existence. If they are performing the same process, then they do have a problem.

Criminals used to shave fractions of a cent off of many accounts to build up their accounts. It's called "salami slicing or penny shaving". Before computerized accounting took hold, it was almost impossible, save in grocery stores and retailers to perform this kind of crime.

But as others have posted, it's most likely a computer error. But what triggered the error in the first place? Hence the penny shaving scheme came to mind.

I'm not surprised that Comcast would hire people who are that dumb, though, given many of the geniuses I've encountered there (including both CSRs and "technicians" (I use that term VERY loosely) in that statement). Comcast seems to have no standards whatsoever about who they will hire. It must be a sucky place to work.

Honestly, this kind of issue has been known about almost as long as there have been computers. There's no excuse for it.

For the same reasons, good programmers who work with floating-point numbers learn to avoid using exact comparisons. Conditions like "if (amount == 0)" are bugs waiting to happen. Much better to use something like "if (amount < 0.01)".

@kc2idf: @johnva: I can see that. Any time you have a prorated portion of your bill, this would come into play. The explanation makes perfect sense, but given how often they have to prorate things, you'd think they'd have a decent number of angry customers with $0.00 bills and threats of service termination! Hope they kick some Comcastic ass.

The problem comes in the logic that decides that the bill is delinquent. It should be looking at whether the balance is less than $0.01, rather than less than or equal to $0.00, in order to squash this sort of nonsense.

Sending $1will pay off this account with some left over. You can send a smaller amount but $1 will play it safe. It will pay off whatever small amount is out there and then they can send you back the remainder.

@LiquidGravity: Forever, actually. Even cell phones do it.

"Sorry, smallest bill I've got..."

Time is of the essence; don't mail a check, go to one of the walk-in payment centers and personally give them your check for $0.00. And be sure to get a receipt.

@Phillip Guyton Jr.: You need to work on your delivery.

I meant to add that if it is a software error, I don't envy them the task of getting Comcast to admit that. It will be a wall of "the computer can't be wrong" when they call in.

After all: .1 of a cent rounded up is 0 cents to a program set to the $0.00 format. It'll take a sharp CSR or high level support to clear that one up...

EECB this one. Don't let it slip through the cracks or they'll get stupid (EG, send it to collections and that will ding your credit).

@azzie: I was thinking this also. Make sure to request a refund for overpayment too because I think most companies will not issue a refund for a few cents. it will end up costing them money

Then, request a refund of overpayment to be mailed to you...

PS. When you get it, send a copy to Consumerist :)

c'mon someone had to say it.

Write them a check for $0.00 and send it in.