Also call your local councilman. They have staff who will at least attempt to deal with the issue. It helps.
That said, you shouldn't have to call up a politician and beg in order to get government departments to perform functions that they are supposed to be performing.
If you have some ultra-edge case involving your deceased uncle's estate's something or other it can be understandable. But this should be a routine business transaction and the city is incapable of making it happen. He's trying to give them a large amount of money FFS, you'd think they'd accept it and then do the menial amount of work to make the records on their end reflect that.
Getting things moving in city hall's bureaucracy is in the councilman's remit, as is improving the state of the bureaucracy to prevent further problems in the future. They might not be the ideal person to handle anything in particular, but they should sure know who to talk to, and they should make time to do it.
There is not much your local councilman / state rep / US Rep / US Senator / etc can do about a problem with Comcast. But I've seen appeals to elected officials fix lots of issues with government bureaucracy.
Because of its presence on public utility poles, there is a lot that they can do about Comcast. Many people prevail getting Comcast to do stuff by writing cities. The problem is the cushy job Comcast gives people after a long stint in government service in favor of Comcast. That shit isn’t a conspiracy.
What is it then?
However, the essence of the matter isn't just about putting you in a cage - it's about excessive and capricious penalties with no real recourse. And those exist aplenty in the private sector. Nor do all laws broken necessarily equate to imprisonment.
In practice, for perceived infractions against whatever rules the powerful organization has, private organizations are pretty ruthless up to but not quite reaching imprisonment. Pseudo-monopolists cutting service, or hefty financial penalties up to and including losing pretty much everything, holding your data hostage: that's all fair game.
These two things aren't the same; but I do think they're both bad and scary enough to warrant not just concern, but in an ideal world, rules. You know, for example, constraints for government, and licensing rules for business.
Historically speaking this is completely false. Even now you can find individual examples of businesses doing things like this, especially in places with little rule of law.
There is nothing magical about businesses - they are made up of the same people that make up governments. Those people have the same power trips regardless of their positions.