Time Warner Hit With Internet Speed Class Action Lawsuit

Consumers have filed an internet speed class action lawsuit against media giant Time Warner Cable (TWC), alleging false and misleading advertising. Lead plaintiffs Elizabeth Hart and Le’Roy Roberson have named TWC and its successors, Charter Communications and Spectrum Management, as defendants.

Case Background

According to the complaint, Hart, her family and friends, all residents of Orange County, Calif., have been subscribers since 2013. They have used the defendant’s internet wireless connection services on a daily basis for multiple purposes.

Roberson, who resides in Los Angeles County, is a telecommuter who relies on reliable, fast internet service for his employment. He says he has paid a premium subscription fee in order to get higher upload and download speeds (300 megabits per second), which the defendants represented to him as being the fastest internet speed available.

The Allegations

Between January 2013 and July 2014, Hart says she subscribed to TWC’s “standard” service, which the company claimed provided upload/download speeds of 15 megabits per second. However, she claims that despite having been provided a modem that she was told could handle such speeds, her service was plagued by buffering and other delays.

Because of this, she says, she began subscribing to the defendant’s “Extreme Internet” service, which company advertising claimed was twice as fast as the “standard” one. She claims that the “Extreme” service was no better than what she and her family had been paying for previously; furthermore, the modem that was leased to her was inadequate for handing the 30 mbps data transfer rate that was promised.

Hart also claims that the defendants’ “No Contracts” advertisement was misleading. She says the Defendants had never provided her with the Terms of Service, which she says turned out to be a “binding contract,” that required her to follow a “Residential Services Subscriber Agreement” she said had been published without notice to consumers in 2016.

Roberson claims that whenever company technicians entered his home in order to check his connection speed, it was never more than half the speed claimed by the defendants. He argues that because he relied on the promises made by the defendants, he has suffered harm to his livelihood. His claim against the defendants has been stayed pending the outcome of arbitration proceedings.

All of the plaintiffs allege that Time Warner and the other defendants were fully aware that their actual services would and could not perform as well as was claimed in their advertising and marketing materials. The internet speed class action lawsuit accuses the defendants of fraud, misrepresentation, and violations of California False Advertising statutes.

The current Internet Speed Class Action Lawsuit is Case No. 8:17-cv-00556-DOC-RAO, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, Western Division.