James couldn’t seem to do anything right when it came time to coax Comcast into renewing his promotional cable discount. He tried a phone call and an email and was thwarted at every turn, but one last effort that started with an online chat led to paydirt: the company forgave his $128 bill and and slashed monthly charges on his HD box.

He writes:

I have a love/dislike relationship with Comcast so I guess I should share something positive, the love side, of our relationship. For the most part I like what they give me and in return I would assume that they like my money. After my recent promo charges expired I called to ask for more. They said yes. I waited until the following day to call the automated billing system and was told that my bill was only a couple of dollars less than the full blown bill.

I called again and was hung up on, I called the retention department again at 6.41 pm PST and after 28 minutes heard an automated voice thank me for calling and then hung up on me (the retention department closes at 7) I called to complain and was told that if we were disconnect (AT&T drops my iPhone 3GS calls like a finger-less juggler) they would call me back. Of course my call dropped and I never heard from them again.

I wrote a long letter and tried to use their website to send it to them but it was more than 1,500 characters so I couldn’t. Got a chat session going with Comcast and was given a different web page to submit. Within 24 hours I heard back from Comcast and they had paid my entire month’s bill ($128) AND dropped the $12.60 a month charge for my second HD box down to $3.99…for an entire year! I was preparing for an EECB but it wasn’t needed. Nice.

What goodies have you managed to nag out of your cable or satellite provider?

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