Comcast Employee Admits Company Will Issue Refunds Only If Customers Record Their Calls
(This is not Tim Davis.)
Tim Davis, a YouTube user who usually makes videos about philosophy and religion, has discovered the one surefire way to get Comcast to refund a billing error: Record the call in which a Comcast employee made the promise of free service in the first place, and then blackmail the company into honoring its promise with the recording.
The Consumerist has a great story on Davis' blow for the little guy in consumers' endless war against cable companies. But here, in a nutshell, is what happened:
Davis moved house, took his cable box with him and re-installed it himself at his new place. He was told by a Comcast rep on the phone that the "self-install" would have no charge.
A while later, Davis' internet service kept cutting in and out, and Comcast confirmed the fault was on its end. But after it sent an engineer to fix the fault, it billed Davis $181.94 in "failed self-install" charges:
Tim Davis / Consumerist
So Davis called Comcast and reminded the company that the previous rep with whom he had spoken said there would be no charge.
After being on hold with the company for over an hour, and after much back-and-forth with the phone rep's supervisor, the rep spilled this priceless piece of information, the Consumerist notes:
'We try to negotiate, and again, that is a valid charge,' she answers. 'But since I advised my manager that there is a recording and you were misinformed, then she’s the one who can approve that $82.'
Seemingly flabbergasted, Davis asks to confirm, 'You’re telling me that if I didn’t have a recording of that call, you wouldn’t have been able to do it?'
'Yes, that is correct,' answers the rep ...
A Comcast spokesperson has since told Business Insider that it's looking into the situation:
'This is not the type of experience we want our customers to have, and we will reach out to Mr. Davis to apologize to him. Our policy is not to charge for service visits that are related to problems with our equipment or network. We are looking into this to understand what happened and why it happened.'
Here's Davis's video account of his adventures (contains some NSFW language).
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