ORANGE : City Says Cable TV Firm Owes Refunds

Cablevision of Orange overcharged its subscribers by $96,000 during a 10-month period in 1993 and 1994 and must refund the money, the City Council has decided.

The cable company, which serves more than 24,000 customers, has 30 days to appeal the council’s decision to the Federal Communications Commission.

Council members passed a resolution Tuesday that rejected the $11.20 monthly rate Cablevision charged for its “basic tier” service from September, 1993, to July, 1994.

The basic rate should have been $10.82 and should have included stations WTBS and WGN, said Emily Brubaker, a consultant with Communications Support Group Inc., in Santa Ana.

Assistant City Atty. David De Berry said subscribers may have to wait for months before receiving the refund, which amounts to about $4 per customer, plus interest.

Cablevision General Manager Kristy Casasanta said the company is waiting to see the council’s resolution before deciding whether to appeal. “More than likely, we will,” she said.

The issue of classifying cable channels has come before city councils in cities across the country since Congress restored local control over cable rates in 1992, Brubaker said.

“You are not alone in this,” she advised council members who said they were uncomfortable challenging the cable company on a formula too complex for lay people to understand.

“Ultimately, it boils down to how many channels can be counted in a package,” De Berry said. “It gets into whether those two channels were taken off the basic tier to purposely evade regulations.”