About your cable bill:

I hear it everywhere I go in Oregon: Comcast and other cable giants are ripping off consumers in every way imaginable with deceptive billing practices.

Just to name a few examples:

A rental fee charged month after month, long after a modem was returned to Comcast.

A mysterious and worthless "Service Protection Plan" adding $5 to the monthly bill.

Extra charges for "Premium" channels that you don’t watch and never asked for.

By February, I’d heard enough. I asked the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission to investigate and take urgent action.

This month, the FCC came through, confirming that Comcast had been billing customers for services they had never ordered and hitting the company with the largest civil penalty ever assessed against a cable operator by the Commission.

This is a good step. We need the FCC to step up and stand up to Big Cable’s price gouging. Big corporations like Comcast hold a lot of power over regular consumers, and we need watchdogs like the FCC to act aggressively when consumers are getting systematically ripped off.

I’m going to be keeping an eye on Big Cable and the FCC to make sure consumers have someone fighting for them.

Ron