Dear Comcast,
I understand when there are "area-wide spread" issues preventing some or all of the offered service you need to have an answer for the customer that calls up inquiring about it. That being said, when the customer calls you up, and in great detail explains all the steps that he has taken to verify the issue does not reside on his end, please have a better outage cover story then something he has already dis-proven.
Thank you for the 'account credit' once you realized I actually knew what I was talking about but you would save us both the frustration of 'the game' if you would simply stick to: "Sorry, Sir. There is an area-wide outage at this time."
My favorite BS story is, "Oh yeah, we have scheduled maintenance in that area right now"
Most of us in real engineering and operations (don't get me started) hate our customer service. The reps and managers are paid based on calls closed per hour and not customers pleased. It's even worse when you're an employee - they have to contact HR about anything.
It is a battle we face everyday - some of us want to empower the customers. This saves money, makes the customer happy, and provides us with good data. On the other side are people that have built their corporate empire on building massive teams. "Our customers aren't happy because I don't have enough people."