Man claims Comcast called his employer after complaint, got him fired

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- A former Comcast customer said the cable company reached out to his employer and got him fired after he contacted them to complain about problems with his service.

Conal O'Rourke was fired from his job as an accountant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in February, less than two weeks after he contacted Comcast's controller.

O'Rourke said he began subscribing to Comcast's service in 2013, and immediately began having problems with his billing, getting charged for inactivated set-top boxes and getting sent about a dozen pieces of equipment he didn't order.

After several attempts to deal through customer service, O'Rourke contacted the controller, and claims he mentioned the repeated issues should be investigated by the independent Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

At the time he was fired, PwC told him Comcast had sent them an email detailing his series of conversations with them, and an ethics investigation found he had violated company policy.

According to a report from Consumerist, Comcast told O'Rourke's bosses that he had tried to use his employment as leverage, but O'Rourke maintains he never mentioned his place of employment. Instead, he believes someone at Comcast searched his name online and learned where he worked.

O'Rourke's lawyer Maureen Ryan contends he was fired because Comcast is a major consulting services client of PwC.

"Someone from the Controller's office contacted Mr. Joseph Atkinson, a partner in the Philadelphia office of PwC, and falsely told Mr. Atkinson that Mr. O'Rourke had invoked his employment with PwC in an attempt to somehow obtain leverage in his negotiations with Comcast," Ryan writes.

"Mr. Atkinson informed Mr. O'Rourke that the client was very valuable, was the Philadelphia office's largest client with billings [REDACTED], that the client was very angry as a result of Mr. O'Rourke's complaints, and that Mr. O'Rourke was not to speak with anyone from Comcast."

Thomas Nathan, a corporate counsel for Comcast, acknowledged the the company had been in touch with PwC about "a person claiming to be a PwC employee... and yelled at our employees who tried to assist him."

Comcast has so far refused to release the recordings of the allegedly unpleasant call, and neither it nor PwC has provided the email it received from Comcast.

PwC spokeswoman Caroline Nolan did release a statement confirming that O'Rourke was found to have violated the company's ethics policy.

"Mr. O'Rourke was employed in one of our internal firm services offices," she wrote. "The firm terminated his employment after an internal investigation concluded that Mr. O'Rourke violated PwC's ethical standards and practices, applicable to all of our people. The firm has explicit policies regarding employee conduct, we train our people in those policies, and we enforce them. Mr. O'Rourke's violation of these policies was the sole reason for his termination."

O'Rourke is suing for $100,000 in compensation and his job back at PwC in San Jose.