Honestly - if they can't resolve it right fricking now, I say you tell them it'll be reported as a fraudulent charge.

I'm with Brenda. I would call whomever one would call to report a fraudulent charge and do it.

You know what? The sentence "The problem is--no one spellchecks any more." is treacherous. Until I heard it out of the corner of my ear, I'd never realised how similar "spellchecks" and "felches" sounded.

Thank Dog that didn't happen at work. Hard to hide my reaction.

tommyrot, I'm also with brenda, and when the flummoxed customer service representative doesn't know what to say, you take his/her name (first and last) and direct phone line, and ask to speak to a supervisor. When they say they'll have the supervisor call you, you refuse, and say you'll hang on the line, then ask for the supervisor's first and last names, and direct line, "in case we get cut off." Lather, rinse, repeat, 'til you reach the guy who has the right type of password to their billing-a/r system, to reverse the payment, right there online.

All this paperwork is THEIR problem, and they're trying to make it your problem. They charged your account ten times (right?) the amount of your bill. Tell them you'll be calling the State's Attorney's fraud office, if it's not taken care of immediately, by someone who can fix it (and someone can, just not someone in the phone unit) and that you will be taking them to small claims court for any interest charges that appear on your debit card account. Refuse to take no for an answer, and refuse to get off the phone. They won't know what to do with you.

I agree with Topic!Cindy, tommyrot. This was their screw-up, and they are responsible for dealing with it in a timely manner. Keeping thousands of your dollars for well over a week does not equal a timely manner.

I think I missed the beginning of this story, but I've gathered that Comcast overcharged you by some vast amount, and they're saying it'll take two weeks to fix?

Hell, no. I agree with Cindy. Stay on the phone and refuse to hang up until someone fixes this.

This was their screw-up, and they are responsible for dealing with it in a timely manner. Keeping thousands of your dollars for well over a week does not equal a timely manner.

Adding my voice to the chorus as well.

From BoingBoing and Metafilter -- flickr set -- people seeing goatse for the first time.

yeah, how did i miss the story. i swear i've not been skimming today.

HDTV ready?

What they want is for you to wait, so that they can follow their SOP for reversing a payment, which makes the paperwork easy/less/nill for them.

That's tough shit. You need to be Mr. Doesn't-Take-No-For-An-Answer, until you get a human with some brains, and some compassion, who realizes Comcast can do without its 250 bucks for a week or two, way more easily than Tommyrot, Dick, or Harry can do without 2500 bucks.

Someone can reverse the charge today, online, and might have to then put a post-it note on his/her monitor, or a note in his/her day-planner, to follow the paperwork through to completion, after the fact, but the charge can be reversed today.

Put it this way, if you'd called them, and asked them to take the payment from your checking account electronically, you would see the debit from your checking account, tomorrow. They just don't want to have to go and find out how to fix this now. It's completely unacceptable.

The higher you go up the food chain, the more reasonable people ought to be (there are always incompetent asshats at every level, but in general, I mean), because they have more autonomy in decision making. At this point, for your extreme aggravation, they ought to be writing off your monthly bill this time out, too, as well as reversing the charge immediately.