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Synopsis: Dude tried to resolved an ongoing, year-long billing issue with Comcast (sound familiar, Comcast customer?); contacted the Comcast Controller office, insinuated that they have bad billing practices, Comcast complained his employer - PWC, for whom they are a huge client of -- and PWC fired him. Now he's suing to get an apology, $100k, and his job back.
I have no doubt in my mind that he used being an public accountant at Price Waterhouse as leverage. How the heck does Comcast know a customer's employer? By telling them! What purpose does telling them have? He certainly wasn't shooting the breeze. He was threatening Comcast. That's very unethical for a public accountant, especially one who has the conflict of interest of working for a public accounting firm who has Comcast as a client. He should have been fired! I say that as someone who hates Comcast and truly does believe their billing practices are shady. That doesn't change the fact that Comcast, as a customer of Price Waterhouse, had every right to notify Price Waterhouse, and Price Waterhouse had every right to fire him.
I have no doubt in my mind that he used being an public accountant at Price Waterhouse as leverage. How the heck does Comcast know a customer's employer? By telling them! What purpose does telling them have? He certainly wasn't shooting the breeze. He was threatening Comcast. That's very unethical for a public accountant, especially one who has the conflict of interest of working for a public accounting firm who has Comcast as a client. He should have been fired! I say that as someone who hates Comcast and truly does believe their billing practices are shady. That doesn't change the fact that Comcast, as a customer of Price Waterhouse, had every right to notify Price Waterhouse, and Price Waterhouse had every right to fire him.
Well, he's a "learning and education consultant" (aka Trainer) not an accountant for PWC.
" How the heck does Comcast know a customer's employer? " well, that's the scary part, isn't it, if he didn't tell Comcast who he worked for as he claimed.
Of course PWC has the right to fire him ... he's suing Comcast, not PWC.
Well, he's a "learning and education consultant" (aka Trainer) not an accountant for PWC.
It doesn't matter. Comcast is one of his company's customers. It seems he tried to represent himself as a public accountant with his accusations too. The only reason he shared that he worked for Price Waterhouse is because he was trying to use it as leverage to threaten Comcast. Was he even an employee since his title is "consultant?" It sounds like the lies are what were unethical.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jaypee
" How the heck does Comcast know a customer's employer? " well, that's the scary part, isn't it, if he didn't tell Comcast who he worked for as he claimed.
He clearly did tell them. They state he said he worked for Price Waterhouse when he threatened them. I believe it because there's no other reason for the topic of his employer to come up in conversation, and Comcast doesn't collect employer information from customers. I know because I'm a Comcast customer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jaypee
" Of course PWC has the right to fire him ... he's suing Comcast, not PWC.
The only way he could win that is if Comcast contacted his employer in an attempt to collect a debt, but Comcast contacted the employer to report that one of its employees was threatening them. It would be different if Comcast and Price Waterhouse didn't have a business relationship. Those threats are serious. While I do believe Comcast should be investigated for its billing practices, he went about it all wrong. The only way he'll see a penny is if Comcast settles.
It doesn't matter. Comcast is one of his company's customers. It seems he tried to represent himself as a public accountant with his accusations too. The only reason he shared that he worked for Price Waterhouse is because he was trying to use it as leverage to threaten Comcast. Was he even an employee since his title is "consultant?" It sounds like the lies are what were unethical.
He clearly did tell them. They state he said he worked for Price Waterhouse when he threatened them. I believe it because there's no other reason for the topic of his employer to come up in conversation, and Comcast doesn't collect employer information from customers. I know because I'm a Comcast customer.
The only way he could win that is if Comcast contacted his employer in an attempt to collect a debt, but Comcast contacted the employer to report that one of its employees was threatening them. It would be different if Comcast and Price Waterhouse didn't have a business relationship. Those threats are serious. While I do believe Comcast should be investigated for its billing practices, he went about it all wrong. The only way he'll see a penny is if Comcast settles.
I don't know about that, seems that he is already on the way to getting what he wants, A Public Apology to Conal O'Rourke . One of the things he is demanding in this lawsuit was a public apology from comcrap.
Location: 23.7 million to 162 million miles North of Venus
23,614 posts, read 12,543,921 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopes
I have no doubt in my mind that he used being an public accountant at Price Waterhouse as leverage. How the heck does Comcast know a customer's employer? By telling them!
He didn't have to say who he worked for, Comcast could have found out who he worked for in probably less than a few minutes, either by Google or by pulling files from a data mining company (it took me less than a minute by using Google). His comments made them aware that he was very familiar with accounting terms, and, his threat was about filing a complaint with PCAOB (if CC is as bad as he'd stated, they sure wouldn't want the PCAOB, or any other regulatory agency, on their butts).
Could he have used PWC as leverage? Possibly. But, doing that is illegal and would/should have resulted in legal actions against him instead of just being fired. PWC may not have had anything concrete, to base legal actions against him and to fire him, but to make CC happy they simply fired him.
(I may be wrong, but personally) I think that he didn't use that leverage, that CC wanted to reduce his credibility before he filed a complaint with PCAOB.
Could he have used PWC as leverage? Possibly. But, doing that is illegal and would/should have resulted in legal actions against him instead of just being fired.
How is it illegal for him to tell Comcast that he worked for PWC?
OTOH, if he yelled and screamed at some customer service rep, telling them WHO HE WAS and that he was going to HAVE THEIR JOBS, etc., that may have concerned them to the point, where his employer was notified of the crazy man working for them. Perhaps they could have called the police and had him arrested, but that seems even more drastic.
CSRs deal with angry & frustrated customers daily (especially at Comcast!). It must take behavior above & beyond the usual levels of hostility, for a report to be made and action to be taken. Is there video somewhere? With audio?
Good luck on getting his job back. On national television he slams his former employer. "PWC didn't do their due diligence" basically blaming their stupidity for firing him. Wow.
Location: 23.7 million to 162 million miles North of Venus
23,614 posts, read 12,543,921 times
Reputation: 10479
Quote:
Originally Posted by bigjake54
How is it illegal for him to tell Comcast that he worked for PWC?
OTOH, if he yelled and screamed at some customer service rep, telling them WHO HE WAS and that he was going to HAVE THEIR JOBS, etc., that may have concerned them to the point, where his employer was notified of the crazy man working for them. Perhaps they could have called the police and had him arrested, but that seems even more drastic.
CSRs deal with angry & frustrated customers daily (especially at Comcast!). It must take behavior above & beyond the usual levels of hostility, for a report to be made and action to be taken. Is there video somewhere? With audio?
Accountants have ethical standards that they must abide by just as any other professional - doctor, lawyer, etc.
Remember Enron? Not only did Enron go down the tubes for violating accounting ethics, the outside accounting firm that they used also went down. The accounting firm was one of the largest, but only a small few of their accountants actually worked with Enron. Because of the ethics violation, that accounting company closed and somewhere around 85,000 people lost their jobs - just because of a few unethical accountants.
I never said that it would be illegal for him to simply state that he worked for PWC, but it would be illegal to use his affiliation with that company to try to make CC play ball.
Did you not read the linked articles?
From the first link...
Quote:
He said he suggested Comcast's billing practices should be investigated, and questioned whether the revenue the company is reporting to investors is accurate "with everybody having billing problems."
Quote:
Ryan said Comcast told PwC that O'Rourke had tried to use his employment there as leverage in making his complaints. "They went to his employer and said he had violated accounting ethics," she said. "That's not a minor charge to make."
Both Ryan and O'Rourke deny he committed any ethics violation or even let Comcast know he worked for PwC.
From the second link (which is more detailed)...
Quote:
"I told her that I was angry and said, ‘You need to do your homework before you pick up the phone,’" he told Ars. "I told her I was going to call back to Salva's office. That's what I did. And I expressed my concern and said, 'You have sloppy accounting, you don't take anything seriously, and I should go to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.' That's the regulator that makes sure that accounting is done properly. I think that some of my terminology would have indicated that I wasn't a layman. I worked for 20 years in corporate comptrollership. These errors become material after a while."
(edited to add, that is probably the part of the conversation that got CC into investigating who he worked for, and then making up the b.s. story about him allegedly violating accounting ethics, and, contacting PWC about it which resulted in him being fired for the alleged accounting ethics violation)
The third link is to the letter from CC to O'Rourke, apologizing to him for their own screw ups. Highly doubtful that a company would write that letter to someone who allegedly violated ethics by trying to strong arm them.
If there were video/audio of his talks with the CC CSR's then I haven't heard of them. I don't know if he taped the calls, or if CC taped them (but CC probably did as normal procedure when speaking to anyone) If CC did tape the conversations then it's up to CC whether they want to release any tapes of the conversations that they had with him, unless it's court ordered.
Last edited by berdee; 10-12-2014 at 09:22 PM..
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