Exercising your power of consumer choice can yield amazing results, even when doing battle with the Grendel that is Time Warner Cable, writes reader James:

I called to cancel my Time Warner cable TV (Dallas-Fort Worth market) and they insisted on charging me a mysterious $11 “disconnect fee”. They said they had to isolate the TV signal from my cable Internet. I pushed and pushed, but they wouldn’t budge from this fee.

I finally called bullshit and threatened to switch my cable internet to Verizon FiOS and voila! Suddenly she waived the fee.

James was able to do this because he still held one other line of service with the company. Rather than lose both accounts, Time Warner Cable capitulated.

Using this technique of course assumes you actually have a choice of providers. Many areas suffer under a cable monopoly. Wonder what they would say in those cases if you said, “sorry, I’m canceling and switching to books?” — BEN POPKEN

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