Netflix and Comcast, two companies that are supposed to be business partners, are waging an unusually public feud.

This week, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings publicly opposed Comcast’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable, and one of his executives accused Comcast of “double dipping.” Now, Comcast has fired back by saying Netflix, which is raising subscription fees, was not being honest with its members.

This rare slap fight between two corporations strikes at the heart of the net neutrality debate.

First some background: In February, Netflix agreed to pay Comcast to ensure Netflix subscribers received faster, more reliable service on Comcast’s broadband Internet service. During a quarterly earnings call with analysts Monday, Hastings said “we felt we had no choice” but to sign the agreement because its service on Comcast was “declining rapidly” in the prior six months.

Then Hastings said Netflix opposed Comcast’s $45 billion deal to buy smaller rival Time Warner Cable because the merger would create too big of a monopoly.

On Thursday, Netflix fired another salvo when Ken Florance, vice president of content delivery, published a blog post that accused Comcast of using its position to unfairly make money off both its subscribers and companies that provide content to them.

Proponents of net neutrality say Internet service companies like Comcast should not be allowed to speed up, slow down, or block content from one particular company in favor of another. Internet service companies, meanwhile, say they need a way to recoup the investment they’ve made in their services.

But Florance, in essence, said Comcast can’t have its cake and eat it too.

“In sum, Comcast is not charging Netflix for transit service,” he said. “It is charging Netflix for access to its subscribers. Comcast also charges its subscribers for access to Internet content providers like Netflix. In this way, Comcast is double dipping by getting both its subscribers and Internet content providers to pay for access to each other.”

“Comcast already controls access and sets the terms of access to a substantial portion of people who connect to the Internet in the United States. We’re very concerned that a combined Comcast-TWC will place toll taking above consumer interests and will use their combined market power to the detriment of a vibrant and efficient Internet.”

Jennifer Khoury, Comcast’s senior vice president for corporate and digital communications in public policy, quickly shot back with a blog post stating that Netflix’s assertions were full of “distortions and inaccuracies.”

“Netflix’s argument is a House of Cards,” she wrote, riffing on Netflix’s big original hit series.

Khoury said it was Netflix’s moves to reroute its streaming traffic that degraded service and that “no ISP in the country has been a stronger supporter of the Open Internet than Comcast.”

“As we and other industry observers have already noted, Netflix’s decision to reroute its Internet traffic was all about improving Netflix’s business model,” she wrote. “While it’s understandable for Netflix to try to make all Internet users pay for its costs of doing business (as opposed to just their customers), the company should at least be honest about its cost-shifting strategy.”