Idaho Joins in on Class Action Barrage Against CenturyLink

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CenturyLink’s no good, very bad week we touched on in last week’s Class Action Round Up has bled into this week with a new lawsuit alleging the company has employed a policy of taking advantage of consumers at almost every turn.

A proposed class action filed on June 25 alleges the embattled telecommunications behemoth and its subsidiaries, CenturyTel of the Gem State, Inc. and CenturyTel of Idaho, Inc., essentially hold consumers hostage through numerous unlawful schemes by which the company allegedly:

• Bills consumers for phone lines or service items they never requested;
• Bills consumers at higher rates than those quoted during sales calls;
• Bills consumers for early termination fees after they’ve canceled services due to rate increases;
• Bills consumers after they’ve canceled their service after learning the quality of service “was not how CenturyLink had represented it”;
• Bills consumers for periods of service before service was actually connected, or before products were received, without crediting consumers for these charges;
• Bills consumers for services and products that were never requested without providing consumers credit for these charges;
• Fails to process consumers’ service cancellation requests in a timely manner and then bills them for the period of time the service remained connected following the cancellation request—again without providing credit for this time period;
• Charges consumers full price for leased modems that are returned to the company within the mandatory time frame, and then refers these customers’ accounts to collections after the individuals refuse to pay for returned modems; and
• Destroys consumers’ credit as a result of any of the above actions.

The case estimates damages from CenturyLink’s alleged conduct toward its 5.9 million subscribers could range between $600 million and $12 billion.