I can't speak for Comcast's policies, but I work for a major health insurance company. We're considered one of the higher class companies for customer service and it's amazing what a leaky ship the entire operation actually is. We're perpetually understaffed, so everything takes longer than it should. People's issues are constantly being dropped due to the overwhelming amount of problems and there is no culpability whatsoever. It's just silently accepted as normal. Even the computers, the claims processing network, it's fucking up constantly. It finds new ways to fuck up faster than we can fix it.

So I totally get it when people are mad. A lot of people are actually very good at being mad without actually being hostile to me and I don't mind that so much. In fact most people are quite nice on the phone, to my surprise, despite how much fucking up is going on.

That said, at my company if you want a supervisor we have to get you to one. I can't refuse or try to talk you out of it. If you want to give me a chance I'll give it my all, but I won't complain about being able to avoid whatever mess you're in.

What's funny is that (and here comes a cliche customer service phrase) I understand your frustration! In the course of doing my job, I end up interacting with the exact same system that you do. We're basically just messengers. When you ask me to do something, I'm just sending a signal to somebody else in some other department to do that thing. And then for some reason that person just fucks up all the time. Despite the fact that I'm mostly just a conduit for information, I feel the effects of that system's failings; they use me as a shield just as a customer might use me as a punching bag. In my day-to-day I'm forced to work with other similarly flawed systems, other departments and companies that are just as unprofessional.

When it comes to resolving these things, I don't have the choice to be angry, because I'm working. Instead I've found persistence is ultimately the most important thing. Being loud is quite often confused with persistence; but as others have pointed out it most often ultimately works to your detriment. I honestly think that it was your persistence allowed you to resolve your situation... but I suppose I'm biased.