Spokane, Washington, woman updates on Comcast "a**hole" debacle

Lisa Brown, the Spokane, Washington, woman whose billing account was renamed with a profanity after a run-in with a Comcast customer service representative, said Thursday she is "pretty satisfied" with attempts by Comcast to make good.

Brown's story has gone viral after news hit that the billing name on her family Comcast account was renamed "A**hole Brown" instead of her husband's name, Ricardo Brown.

This came after a protracted call with Comcast in which Lisa Brown said she was trying to scale back their service to save money. They were instead passed to a consumer retention specialist who tried to keep their business.

And then came the day they got their bill addressed to "A**hole Brown."

"I was shocked," said Lisa Brown. "I was upset. I didn't think we deserved it."

The story broke Wednesday when a consumer advocacy blogger wrote about it on the Elliott.org web site.

A day later, it's been picked up by numerous websites. Brown said she was doing interviews Thursday with Fox Business News and possibly CNN. The Browns' story has been the number 1 story on CBSNews.com since it was published Wednesday night.

It's not the first public relations black eye for Philadelphia-based Comcast, the country's largest cable service provider. Last August, CBSNews.com reported how one customer was put on hold for three hours while trying to cancel service. Another customer recorded the difficulty he had canceling service over an eight-minute phone call.

Brown said she spoke with Charlie Herrin, Comcast's senior vice president for customer experience, who expressed sincere apologies to the couple. Herrin issued a statement on the Comcast website, saying that the person who changed the billing account has been let go.

"In every interaction we have with a customer, we need to show them respect, patience, and enthusiasm to provide them with an excellent experience," Herrin said in the statement.

"He was very professional, very polite, very apologetic," said Brown. "He tried to turn it around."

Comcast has cleared the couple's existing balance of about $150 and verbally promised to refund their payments to Comcast for the past two years, Brown said.

"I'm very satisfied with what they've said to me verbally," she said. "I'm still in the waiting process, though."