>confusing notice of the fee in a junk mail postcard
<post type="devils-advocate">
There's nothing "confusing" about the wording on the postcard. If you get something that's very clearly from your cable company and you chuck it in the trash, you are (and should be) responsible for the consequences of not reading it. It could be a bill, a disconnect notice, or any number of things.
That's not even getting into the fact that it's a backdoor rate raise, but cmon. There's nothing sneaky about it as far as the customer is concerned.
I think I should only be held responsible for not reading mail from the cable company if the cable company refrains from sending me junk mail advertisements for their service. I get a couple of pieces of junk mail a month from Comcast telling me how I should totally sign up with them. I never get legitimate mail from them (electronic billing), so I'm pretty well trained to ignore their stuff. I guess they don't correlate their subscriber database with their advertising database.
What if it got lost in the mail and never delivered? Is the reciever responsible for that?
It seems like if they are amending your contract, the sender should at least need proof that the reciever got the notice and has agreed (snail mail with signature required, phone call, email with link to website, etc..)
I got my notification a week before they billed me for it. Using the same method they use to advertise all their many services monthly (3-4 postcards/month). That's certainly falls in the 'sneaky' category, I think.
If it was important it should have been included in the bill - like virtually every other sane company would do.
That's not even getting into the fact that it's a backdoor rate raise, but cmon. There's nothing sneaky about it as far as the customer is concerned.