Ken Mueller of Illinois has been a mostly happy customer of Comcast for about eight years, relying on the cable company’s business Internet service to run an IT consulting business from his home.

But over the past 18 months, he’s had to spend hours on the phone trying to fix a billing mistake that resulted in Comcast taking extra money from him via automatic payments and collection agencies demanding even more money that he didn't owe. Although Mueller had paid his bills, Comcast thought he didn’t.

“I called Comcast a total of 10 times beginning 5/31/2014 and wasted at least 10 hours of my life trying to fix a problem that they created,” Mueller told Ars. “In making those calls I was hung up on, transferred, and dismissively told to just wait it out.”

The problem was seemingly fixed in November 2014, yet almost exactly one year later Mueller got a letter from another collection agency. More calls to Comcast this month didn’t fix the problem immediately, and Mueller contacted Ars out of frustration.

“It blows me away that the burden is on me to fix their mistake and that it is taking so much of my resources,” Mueller told us. “I really would like to bill them for my time.” Mueller was also worried the collection agencies' involvement would harm his credit rating.

After talking to Mueller, we reached out to our contacts in Comcast’s public relations group on Thursday last week. A Comcast spokesperson researched the issue, and the very next day someone else from Comcast called Mueller to tell him that the problem was fixed for good.

The billing mistake started when Mueller moved twice in a span of three months, because he sold his house and moved in with his parents until he could close on a new house. The error was made in the process of canceling Mueller’s account and moving it to a new address.

“Apparently they need to link your accounts when you move, and Comcast neglected to link my first location to the second and so continued to bill me for service I no longer had,” Mueller said. “They did, however, link my second to third location and so there was no problem with that move.”

Mueller noticed that Comcast was still billing him for service at his old address and called to get that fixed in May 2014. He also disabled auto-payments on the account to prevent Comcast from taking more money, though not before Comcast took an extra $176.77 without him realizing it.

"I was initially told to wait it out and assured that it would be fine," he said. "Eventually I began receiving notifications from a collection agency about the balance due. On the 8th call, on 11/11/2014, I was able to get someone to connect the dots and remove the balance due. The collection agency went away and all was well, or so I thought."

One of the collection letters Mueller provided us is from an agency called Credit Management, which told Mueller in October 2014 that he owed Comcast $382.92. That was the amount Mueller "owed" by the time Comcast stopped billing him for service at his old address. The past due amount was revised downward without explanation to $322.92 when the most recent collection agency contacted him.

The strangest thing may be that the issue seemed to be entirely resolved in November 2014, only to pop up again without warning. "I have no idea" what prompted the latest collection letter, Mueller said. "I've just been paying my bill every month."

It wasn't until Friday that Mueller found out Comcast had taken the extra $176.77 from him before he disabled automatic payments on the old account. The Comcast rep who called Mueller told him the $322.92 charge is being taken off his account and that he’ll get a check for $176.77 in the next few weeks.

“I forgot Comcast just kept taking payments for the ‘disconnected’ account when this adventure began,” Mueller said. “It was nice of her to figure that out.”

Comcast’s spokesperson explained the situation to Ars this morning:

Mr. Mueller’s account should have been cancelled on 5/23/2014. There was some type of error that prevented the representative from cancelling the account on 5/23/2014. Eventually the account went into non-pay on 9/5/2014 which in turn stopped billing and services. Because of this error there was a credit due of $497.69 which will cover the delinquent amount showing in the amount of $322.92 and we will send a refund of $176.77 that he will receive within 10-14 business days. This should be resolved now.

Waiting for a human

Mueller said he pays $132.85 a month for Internet service of 50Mbps down and 10Mbps up. The business-class plan allows him to host a couple of servers and have a static IP address.

There are some other perks to having business-class Internet. “Once they realize that you're a business they actually respond much quicker,” Mueller said last week, before the billing problem was resolved. “It seemed pretty efficient. I was surprised with this. I still don't really understand what's going on.”

Comcast consistently ranks low in customer satisfaction scores, but the company says it has a multi-year plan to provide better customer service.

Mueller said most of the Comcast reps he spoke with were polite, but the calls were frustrating nonetheless.

“I know I've spent at least an hour on many of those calls,” he said. “You have to wait on hold to get a human, and when you get to a human I have to explain my whole story, which gets longer each time.”

Mueller would often get transferred to another representative, at which point he’d have to explain his odyssey again. “Then they have to look into it, and they really don’t seem to know what to do,” he said.

Mueller kept track of his calls to Comcast and documents related to the billing problem.

“One time someone said, ‘you didn't fill out a move form,’ and I said, ‘yes I did, in fact I have a copy and here it is,'” Mueller said. After getting the latest collections letter, a Comcast rep “suggested I make sure I return any equipment. I did return the equipment and have receipts to prove it.”

"It would be one thing if I had made a mistake, but I didn't," he said. "It's frustrating that the onus is on me to fix their mistake, the bug in their system that they can't figure out."

Despite it all, Comcast is still Mueller's best option

After this billing nightmare, Mueller says he would consider switching Internet service providers if there was more competition where he lives.

“I would if there were options but there really aren't,” he said. “AT&T can't even get me DSL here, so I guess I'm lucky that I have Comcast as an option.”