I used to work for the cable modem side of Comcast, and yeah, the contractors were a joke. The in-house techs tend to be on the ball and at least in the markets I supported they had good QA for them.
As far as the bucket truck, the person in the call center can't send one of those directly. There are only so many to go around and the advanced techs that do maintenance (not service calls) are the ones that get them. An aerial drop shouldn't need one though, the techs have those ladders on their vans for a reason. Climb the pole, attach the drop to the tap, climb ladder at the house and attach the drop at the ground block.
You can probably haggle for free installation if you really want. While I was still working on the floor, I would toss out free installs left and right. I would use it as a way to make the customer happy without them even asking half the time. The money is in the subscriptions not the installs.
Here's the reason why people don't like Comcast: Comcast has discovered the maximum amount of profit when compared to customer satisfaction and overhead. If they spent more to genuinely improve satisfaction, they would lose customers due to higher prices, and thus lose profit. If they lowered prices, then they would lose too many customers due to lower satisfaction, or they lose profit. Comcast is a business, their goal is to make money, not to make people happy.
On that note, if anyone has any questions specific about cable modems, hit me up. I might be a bit rusty as it's been a few years, but I used to be one of the best in the company at what I did =D
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They drill a hole, "oh."
