You can check out any time you’d like, but you can never… well, you know the song. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Even under the best of circumstances, trying to get a refund from a cable company can be a trying ordeal. But when a small condo association in Florida was inadvertently billed $ 2,000 by Comcast, an obvious mistake that should have been solved with a quick refund became a months-long bureaucratic nightmare.

The Riggs Landing Condo Association, a nine-unit development in Sarasota, Florida, had been paying for TV service since 1990 under a series of bulk contracts with Comcast and predecessor companies. The latest 10-year deal with Comcast was due to expire at the end of 2016, but at the beginning of this year, Comcast agreed to let Riggs Landing opt out of the deal early.

“In reference to your inquiry about termination of the bulk cable service at Riggs Landing, we can de-bulk the residents effective April 1, 2016,” a Comcast employee told the association in an e-mail on January 22. The condo association then sent Comcast a letter via certified mail to complete the early termination and received a receipt confirming that it was delivered to Comcast on March 1.