Reader Jesse was having an awful time explaining a simple problem to DirecTV. Thankfully, the EECB (Executive Email Carpet Bomb) was just the thing.

Jesse says:

Random note: I was in a pretty infuriating situation with DirecTV last night, where, after they failed on four different occasions since August to fix my house’s faulty cable, I decided I wanted to cancel my account. I was informed that despite their repeated inability to get things working, which had to that point entailed endless hours of hassle dealing with DirecTV’s labyrinthine phone system (at one point last night, I was transferred six times during the same call–the sixth time to a dead line), I’d still have to pay a $180 early termination fee since my contract wasn’t up. Of course, if I wanted to contest this there happened to be no phone number I could call or email address I could write to. Nope. Of course, if I wanted to contest this there happened to be no phone number I could call or email address I could write to. Nope. I’d have to deliver to DirecTV via chariot a complaint note written on a papyrus scroll in squid ink. (Well, I’d have to send a snail-mail letter to some Colorado address–same difference).

No thanks. Instead, I turned to The Consumerist, which recommends Executive Email Carpet Bombs in instances like this. In an EECB, you email a company’s top-level executives to inform them of ongoing issues that the folks below them haven’t been able to address. I refreshed my memory about how to best write an EECP, snagged the email address of DirecTV’s CEO, Chase Carey, which The Consumerist had helpfully posted, and went to work.

I sent the email at midnight last night and a half hour ago got a call from Ronnie in the DirecTV president’s office. He immediately offered to waive the cancellation fee, and that was that.

The morals of the story: DirecTV sucks, other than some dude named Ronnie, who’s pretty cool, and The Consumerist is amazing since, at least in this instance, one of its tactics worked exactly as advertised.

Yes, the EECB doesn’t always work — but sometimes, gloriously, it does. For more information about launching your own EECB, click here. If you need some TLC from DirecTV, here’s their contact information.

All Hail The Consumerist [Pushback]

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