Another CenturyLink Class Action Claims Unlawful Overbilling

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A Wisconsin woman is taking CenturyLink to task for adding unauthorized charges to its customers’ bills.

Plaintiff Susan Miller says she and many other CenturyLink customers have had enough of what she says are the defendant company’s unfair and unlawful billing practices. Her CenturyLink class action lawsuit claims the company is in gross violation of Wisconsin’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

“Rather than uphold their duty to act in good faith and to ensure that they accurately charge consumers for services that consumers authorized, Defendants have shifted that burden to consumers and essentially dared them to locate the overcharges and then demand refunds,” the complaint says.

Every year for the past five years, Miller says she has signed up for a CenturyLink promotional rate. Yet every one of those years, she claims she was charged a higher rate than what she agreed to. She says CenturyLink corrected the erroneous rates, but only after she repeatedly spent several hours on the phone trying to get the problem solved. Even then, CenturyLink never offered to extend the corrections retroactively, she claims.

Miller says consumer interest websites show reams of complaints from other CenturyLink customers who say they were overbilled in a similar way. One customer says she was billed around $95 per month after being promised a rate of $65. She says she then set up auto pay so she could get the lower rate, but her monthly bill remained the same. She was then allegedly told there was no such discount for auto pay.

Another reviewer reports being charged $80 for two weeks of service after she found out her discounted rate did not apply to partial months of service. When she tried to cancel her service, she was told she would have to pay a $100 fee to cancel her one-year contract – even though she never agreed to such a commitment.

Miller also brings up a whistleblower lawsuit filed in June by former CenturyLink employee Heidi Heiser, who was fired after refusing to take part in the company’s allegedly unlawful billing practices. Heiser claims CenturyLink ran an incentive program that encouraged employees to sign customers up for new lines or services without their authorization.

According to Heiser, customers who discovered the unauthorized charges and complained about them were told that they did indeed authorize them. CenturyLink’s policy was to demand payment for these services through the date of the complaint, she alleges.

CenturyLink is also in the crosshairs of two other class action plaintiffs who filed suit against the company two months ago, accusing them of a long list of unlawful business practices. Plaintiffs Craig McLeod and Steven McCauley estimate CenturyLink could be on the hook for as much as $12 billion in damages related to practices like overbilling, charging customers for modems they already returned, and referring them to collections when they refused to pay.

Miller proposes to represent a plaintiff Class consisting of all persons and entities who contracted with CenturyLink for telephone, television or internet service in the state of Wisconsin during the applicable statutory limitations period.

She seeks an award of actual, consequential, statutory and incidental damages and an accounting of CenturyLink’s business practices, plus an award of attorneys’ fees and court costs.

The plaintiff is represented by attorneys Richard M. Hagstrom, Anne T. Regan, Nicholas S. Kuhlmann and Jason Raether of Hellmuth & Johnson PLLC, assisted by Roxanne Barton Conlin of Roxanne Conlin & Associates PC.

The CenturyLink Deceptive Trade Practices Class Action Lawsuit is Miller v. CenturyLink Inc., et al., Case No. 3:17-cv-00648, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.