• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, January 4, 2017

In a blow to Comcast, a Washington state judge refused to dismiss Attorney General Robert Ferguson's lawsuit accusing the company of bilking customers.

The ruling, issued late last month, means that Ferguson can proceed with claims that the country's largest Internet and cable provider duped around 500,000 Washington residents into purchasing near-worthless "service protection" plans.

Comcast's plan -- which cost $4.99 monthly -- was supposed to cover the cost of all repairs, including fixes to "inside wiring," Ferguson's lawsuit alleged. Instead, the service plans cover only "a narrow scope of repairs," and specifically excludes most of the wiring inside people's homes, according to the lawsuit.

Ferguson alleges that Comcast misrepresented the scope of the plan protections on its Web site, as well as in emails and online chats with customers. The company allegedly collected $73 million in fees for the plan from Washington residents since 2011.

From January of that year through mid-June 2016, Comcast's site allegedly promised people that the service protection plan would provide a host of benefits, including "unlimited covered service calls with no contracts," "hassle-free replacement and repair of defective customer inside wiring," and "confidence that if there is a problem with any XFINITY service, Comcast will take care of it without charging a service fee."

The plan's online terms and conditions state that it covers "all inside-wiring related service calls," but the last paragraph contains a disclaimer stating: "The plan does not cover the repair of wire concealed within a wall (i.e. wire that is wall fished)," according to the lawsuit.

Comcast had argued that the case should be dismissed at a preliminary stage. The company made several arguments, including that its service protection plans enabled customers to save "millions of dollars in avoided service call costs."

A company spokesperson added on Wednesday that the lawsuit "fails to demonstrate violations of the Washington Consumer Protection Act, and in fact acknowledges that our customers have saved millions of dollars in avoided service charges with our Service Protection Plan."