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I agree that Comcast is horrible but you can't expect them to skip the most basic troubleshooting steps. That probably solves the problem for most non-technical users who call in.

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A traceroute takes a few seconds. 99% of the time I call it's mainly to tell them to please track down the problem (outside of my home... only once over the years was it my modem) and fix it. To have to wade through 20 minutes of prelims, when a 20 second command could make it obviously unnecessary, that's just dumb.

The fact that you thought I was suggesting skipping the basics is bewildering.

I deal with the same issue on Verizon. I found that using LiveChat, the support there seemed to be more tech. focused. If I start by sending a screen shot of my traceroute, I usually can get what I need within a few minutes.

It would be great though if there was an option in general to say, look, I'm an expert, I've tried this, this, and this already. But I see lots of reasons why this wouldn't be practical.

Yeah I think the time you'd have to spend convincing them to skip steps in their script would probably take longer than just doing them.

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