You’ve no doubt by now heard the story of the AOL VP who recorded a call with a Comcast service rep, trying to cancel his Comcast service. If you haven’t heard the call, here it is:

The linked story makes the case that the rep in the recorded call is being made a scapegoat for following Comcast policies.

Comcast’s response to the call:

Tom Karinshak, Comcast’s (CMCSA) senior vice president of customer experience, issued an official apology on the company’s website stating that, “the way in which our representative communicated with them is unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives.”

But is that the case? Was the rep’s behavior inconsistent with Comcast policies?

It turns out the rep wasn’t going rogue, according to Lauren Bruce, a former Comcast customer account executive. “Unless a customer was moving, we were encouraged to use retention techniques”.

If someone states that they are dissatisfied with service, the customer service representative must first ask why they are dissatisfied before proceeding with the request. The goal is always to retain customers or convince them to buy a higher-priced service.

You get the sense, reading this, that Comcast puts their reps in an impossible situation, one where the price is paid (literally) by the customer.

Customer service agents are instructed to connect customers to a manager if they become particularly angry and insist on speaking with one. Yet Bruce says that in her office, managers were rarely accessible to the employees, so she often had to deny the request. “Comcast is trying to operate lean, so you weren’t given the support you needed,” she says.

The poor work environment made it difficult to help customers, she adds. “I always felt really disempowered to do the right thing. … It was all about the dollar,” Bruce says. “They didn’t care about the hours you had to work or whether or not their policies made sense for you in their job. The system was really outdated and slow, which is always a drag when you’re trying to help someone efficiently.” She adds that “management was poor” because of constant churn among supervisors.

And just in case you think this is simply one person’s view, take a minute to read the confessions of a Comcast video repair agent. I want to use the word shocking, but it all rings true.

M. gives the example of removing the code for HD/DVR service, which will cut a chunk off the monthly bill, but which will eventually render the set-top box inoperable.

“Then you call back, we add it back on, and you’re back where you started, except we don’t tell you that,” he explains. “We don’t give out what we’re doing to fix your box because we have been told long ago that we are to fix your equipment, not talk about your billing.”

This exact thing just happened to me with another provider. This makes me feel like this is a standard industry practice. Grrr.

UPDATE: Just to add more proof to the pudding, in case you had any doubts about the “confessions” post above, check out this Verge post, Here’s why your Comcast rep is yelling at you. Yeesh.