How would you handle this if you were the Amherst Superivisor? - audit cable TV deal

[WNYresident]

Time Warner Cable says Amherst must refund $971.23 that the company says should have gone to West Seneca.Amherst officials are skeptical. The Town Board could take a gamble Monday on spending up to $15,000 to challenge the accuracy of Time Warner’s claim. That’s the maximum amount it could cost Amherst to hire a third-party auditor to go over Time Warner’s books.
An audit recently netted Cheektowaga a $420,000 settlement from the cable giant. The Cheektowaga Town Board hired Troy & Banks, a local auditing firm, to examine Time Warner’s books over a three-year period.

http://www.buffalonews.com/city-regi...-deal-20160321

An audit recently netted Cheektowaga a $420,000 settlement from the cable giant. The Cheektowaga Town Board hired Troy & Banks, a local auditing firm, to examine Time Warner’s books over a three-year period.
Instead of a flat fee for its services, Troy & Banks received a small percentage of the settlement that was paid to Cheektowaga.

I'm not saying this was a bad way to do this but I wonder what the small percentage of the settlement was. I have heard some lawsuits where the law firm received upwards of 30% of the settlement. I am not saying that is the case here. I just wonder what it was.

If the amount was $420,000 and the law firm received 10% that could amount to $42,000. 3% is still $12,600 dollars. I wonder how many hours the law firm spent auditing the paper work.

“We’ve been wanting to do this audit of the (Time Warner) revenues for quite some time, but our contract, which predates my time as supervisor, says you can’t do an audit on a contingency basis,” Weinstein said.

I could see why businesses would have this in a contract. It keeps lawyers or people from wasting many business's time on audits. Notice how some local lawyers now advertise you don't pay unless we win? They know the gamble of their staff time can be a big payout so they offer to take cases for free.

That means Amherst would have to pay a flat fee for an audit, whether or not the town winds up keeping the $971.23 Time Warner says the town was overpaid or, if an audit finds any money that might be owed to Amherst.

The issue involves the cable franchise fees that Time Warner collects from its customers, a percentage of which the cable company shares with each of the municipalities in which it operates.

“We get 5 percent from the cable TV revenues, from both Verizon and Time Warner Cable,” Weinstein said.

I wonder why a flat fee versus paying for the actual hours it would take for the audit. I wonder how much paper work the law firm would receive from TW to audit. Is it basically a list of services sold to people in Amherst and then cut is calculated to verify how much Amherst receives?

Loose example. The amounts are going to be much higher.

Barry states 5%

You would take the totals for the year of each service and multiple them out to see what cut Amherst receives. The law firm can break it down monthly to make it look like more time was spent.

Item 1 $1,000,000 for cable TV services @ 5% = $50,000

Item 2 $2,000,000 for internet access services @ 5% = $100,000

Item 3 $2,000,000 for phone services @ 5% = $100,000

For a total of $250,000.

Or a revenue stream of

$250,000 / 12 = 20,833.33 a month.

[grump]

Wait, all this over $971.23 on a $120, 000,000 budget. Take the money out the salary of the Walking Deb who was just re-elected to the board. She doesn't do anything, she is stunningly stupid and even members of her own party ignore her and vote against her. Or make them sue for the $971 and counter sue for about $ 20 million.

[nogods]

i don't think they are lawyers because they are described as auditors. There are lots of auditing firms that do that kind of work for private companies on contingency fees. There are even audit companies that check multiple years of large law firm bills to large corporations to see if there have been any errors.

But why didn't the town put an audit cost recovery in the contract in the first place that stated if errors were found in favor of the town then time warner would pay the cost of the audit?

[grump]

Could it be that Time Warner wouldn't agree to such a clause? Don't know, just sayin'. And you're right, Troy and Banks are auditors and not lawyers. I think I've seen that name associated with the audit of municipal utility bills somewhere in the past.

[nogods]

Could it be that Time Warner wouldn't agree to such a clause? Don't know, just sayin'. And you're right, Troy and Banks are auditors and not lawyers. I think I've seen that name associated with the audit of municipal utility bills somewhere in the past.

if the five or six towns with most of Erie County's population all demanded such a clause, time warner would agree to it.

[leftWNYbecauseofBS]

If there is a 'perfect' time to strike over cable....now would be that time.

It's my understanding that most of the town is covered by FIOS for Cable/Internet options. If you're in an area where you can only get TW for internet/cable, there are now two services that allow you to stream typical cable TV in SlingTV and Playstation Vue. Both of these require a unit like Amazon Fire but the service is there. SlingTV is a product of Dish Network and Vue is a product of Sony. In addition to these, AT&T through DirecTV, is about to release a product similar to SlingTV in the very near future.

Meaning that with a little hardware (OTA Antenna + Fire + Internet Connection) you can get almost all of the cable TV stations through a provider not named Time Warner.

If you're local and want to start a non-profit that really helps people...create a group that assists people with the conversion from Cable to Internet based video. The savings per home can be as much as $1200 a year for less than $150 in hardware to setup and paying for an internet plan that's faster than 30 Mbps down.

If anyone is interested in how to do this, I am more than happy to assist in this thread.