West Virginia’s attorney general is suing Comcast on the grounds that its practices of requiring customers to pay the company for their cable boxes is bundling and thus violates a few West Virginian antitrust laws. The suit itself is directed at Comcast and its various subsidiaries (Comcast Cable Communications, Comcast Holdings Corporation, etc), but is itself applicable to a lot of cable companies out there as most of the cable providers require customers to purchase cable boxes through them. This undermines the consumer’s ability to go out and buy a cheaper cable box, which he could then use on any cable service.
Where Comcast really stands out as taking the low road is in its practice of not actually selling a cable box to customers, but instead forcing customers to rent the devices. So over the course of the years and years that Joe Shmoe is getting cable service, he’s paying the rent on a box that he could buy for substantially less than Comcast is collecting.
