Believe me, I understand the "this makes good business sense on paper" angle. To me it is very clear that this guy is not reading from a script. He is clearly a

Believe me, I understand the "this makes good business sense on paper" angle. To me it is very clear that this guy is not reading from a script. He is clearly angered and frustrated on a personal level by the customer's unwillingness to talk to him. The best example of this is probably at the end of the call when he refuses to give a confirmation code. I'd bet a week's pay that he had one to give, but was so angry that he just wanted to be argumentative to score a point in the argument. It almost reminded me of childhood fights I had with my brother when I was twelve. Why would a monopoly provider want to do that? But Comcast isn't a monopoly in most major markets, and I'm guessing if this guy worked as a tech blogger he probably lives in a market where he can choose from Fios, Uverse, Comcast, etc. Increasingly people have more choice in which service provider they use, and even in the markets where Comcast is a monopoly, it is seldom good business to piss off your customers. There's a difference between putting up barriers between somebody who is upset and is threatening to cancel service and somebody who clearly has made the decision to leave and wants the service to be disconnected, which clearly this guy was. When I worked in a major telecom we used to review customer service calls and I can tell you that this guy would not be applauded for that behavior. Probably given a stern warning and possibly terminated. Telecoms may be ruthless business people, but nobody is stupid enough to believe that this kind of behavior is good business. The guy was frustrated and did his job poorly. That's pretty much what this boils down to.