Another bugging scandal has plagued the media — but this one has nothing to do with News Corp. hacking into celebrities' phone lines.
Antonio Munoz, a resident of Chicago suburb Aurora, Ill., is fuming mad — and probably considering fumigation — after the provider allegedly installed a cable box infested with roaches in his home.
Munoz tells the Beacon News that, shortly after an installer hooked up the cable, cockroaches began emerging from the box in his parents' room. According to Munoz, the equipment Comcast installed was used — and obviously of suspect origins.
"You don’t know where this equipment came from,” Munoz told the paper.
Munoz claims that Comcast gave him the runaround when he tried to get the infested unit replaced, and that his residence "never had a roach problem" prior to the installation of the allegedly tainted cable box.
The irritated Munoz has taken to carrying around a bag filled with dead roaches as evidence of his plight — though, aside from being pretty icky, is probably unnecessary. In November, nearly a dozen former and current Comcast employees filed a lawsuit against the company in U.S. District court, claiming that they were forced to work in a rat- and roach-infested facility in Chicago's South Side, and made to install bug-infested equipment in homes in that area.
Comcast — which calls Munoz's situation "an isolated incident" — maintains that it replaced Munoz's equipment swiftly after receiving his complaint.
“As soon as Mr. Munoz contacted us, we immediately replaced the boxes in question and have worked with him directly to take steps to resolve this claim to his satisfaction," the company said in a statement provided to TheWrap.
The company adds that it has "rigorous and extensive quality control processes in place to ensure our equipment is always in top working condition, and is using the Munoz incident "as an opportunity to further reinforce [those processes] with our employees.”