Charter’s $7 Billion Penalty For Murdering An Elderly Customer Reduced To $262 Million

Last August, cable giant Charter Communications (Spectrum) was slapped with a $7 billion lawsuit after one of the company's cable technicians murdered an 83-year-old customer after hours. The lawsuit (pdf) claims that Charter had eliminated a more rigorous screening process when they merged with Time Warner Cable, letting the employee and his history slip through the cracks.

By September, that tally had been dramatically reduced to $1.1 billion by a jury. This week the cable monopoly managed to strike a settlement with the family for $262 million, all of which will be covered by insurance. Still, the courts found that Charter was responsible for gross negligence, and had forged documents to try and force the family out of the court system and into binding arbitration:

Charter Spectrum attorneys used a forged document to try to force the lawsuit into a closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and damages for the murder would have been limited to the amount of Ms. Thomas's final bill," the law firm said.

Back in the early aughts, when I wrote exclusively about the broadband sector, you couldn't go a week without a story about a cable broadband technician falling asleep on the job, blowing up homes, occasionally murdering people or getting arrested for torturing and spray painting kittens.

The problem was several fold: one, these companies' executives were so fixated on growth for growth's sake and pleasing Wall Street, they routinely failed to scale their investment into customer service. They also really adored using a series of low-quality, low-cost subcontractors both for the cost savings, and because the layered proxy relationships often offered reduced liability for fuck ups.

US cable broadband customer service has improved some in the years since, but not by much, as there remains little incentive to meaningfully improve thanks to market failure and federal regulators that generally lack the courage to stand up to monopolies with any consistency.

The cable sector still has some of the lowest customer service ratings in any industry in America, a true feat in a country where banks, insurance companies, oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, and airlines exist.