>Automation is wonderful to cut cost for them but for the users being unable to get support is a horrible experience. But you cannot go elsewhere because they are the only player in town.

I can't tell you how many times I've experienced this with comcast. The last time I had to deal with it, was when I bought a new cable modem. I call in to provision it, the automated system assumes I have one of their modems and fails. For some reason I can't get technical support on the line and finally I resort to yelling 'cancel my account' over and over again until I finally get someone on the phone.

The guy was able to solve the issue in 5 minutes flat. The problem with automation is it's only ever going to be able to handle the 'happy path'