Philly Woman Sues Comcast Over Unrelenting Robocalls
Photo | Jeff Fusco
A Philadelphia woman is suing Comcast, saying the company flooded her cell phone with robocalls for most of a year — long after she’d paid a bill in question, and long after she’d asked the company to cease the practice.
An attorney for Kia Elder filed the suit Friday in federal court (see below). It says she received calls from Comcast “once or twice a day” between September 2014 and “at least through” June 18th of this year. The calls were initiated by automatic systems, the plaintiff said; after she answered, the calls would be transferred to live representatives of the company.
She said she spoke to a Comcast debt collector in September 2014 who was trying to collect on a $527 cable TV bill. Elder said she told the collector she’d paid the bill in 2011, and then asked that Comcast stop calling her cell phone. “Defendant acknowledged plaintiff’s instructions to stop calling her phone but did not stop,” Elder’s attorney wrote.
Elder is seeking at least $2,000 $500 to $1,500 apiece “per violative call” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act — a sum that, if granted, could quickly add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.
A spokesperson for Comcast did not immediately have comment.
Comcast has faced similar allegations before. Last year in California, a man named Trevor Thomas filed a federal suit against the company for repeated robocalls that — like Elder — he said he’d explicitly told the company to cease. That case is scheduled for trial in June 2016.
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