Comcast has publicly apologized to the California man, Conal O'Rourke, who accused the company of getting him fired from his former position at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in the wake of a yearlong billing dispute. The apology comes less than 24 hours after Ars published an article detailing O'Rourke's documented allegations.

"What happened with Mr. O'Rourke's service is completely unacceptable," Charlie Herrin, a company senior vice president, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. "Despite our attempts to address Mr. O'Rourke's issues, we simply dropped the ball and did not make things right. Mr. O'Rourke deserves another apology from us and we're making this one publicly. We also want to clarify that nobody at Comcast asked for him to be fired. We're also determined to get to the bottom of exactly what happened with his service, figure out what went wrong at every point along the way, and fix any underlying issues."

Herrin is the same new Comcast executive who said late last month that improving customer service was his "number one priority."

As a result of his firing, O'Rourke hired a local attorney and is now threatening to file a lawsuit against Comcast if the company does not agree to his demands, which include "a full retraction and apology, his re-employment with his former employer, and $100,312.50" by October 14.

On August 18, Comcast's Senior Deputy Corporate Counsel, Thomas Nathan, responded to the first demand letter sent by O'Rourke's attorney, Maureen Pettibone Ryan. Nathan told her that Comcast had not received Ryan's letter in time to meet her deadline for action.

Nathan's response letter, however, does acknowledge that "Comcast communicated to PWC that a person claiming to be a PWC employee had called our chief accounting executive's office with complaints about his cable service and bills and yelled at our employees who tried to assist him."

Neither O'Rourke nor his attorney immediately responded to Ars' request for comment.