Carlos,
Just wanted to say "Thanks" for this post. I am in a similar situation as Scott, and I had my doubts that a reconsideration request would yield any results. Nice to hear that it does. My "prior" seo advised me to wait it out. When I insisted, they wanted me to remove all reference to them in my response as well as remove their IDs in Webmaster Tools. Been trying to unwind things on my own before i submit a reconsideration. Do you think Google will remove the penalty if i just tell them I fired the SEO?
Thanks again.