We all know that it takes strength to call a utility or telecom. But the patience of two customers was seriously tested recently when they had the audacity to contact Comcast and make a simple request.

Writer Veronica Belmont and her husband Ryan Block, a product manager at AOL (parent company of The Huffington Post), called Comcast last week to disconnect their service. The couple planned to switch to another cable and Internet provider, but the customer service representative who handled their call had no intention of letting them do so.

He began asking me why we switched and that he would get us a better deal. I said, again “No, thank you, we’ve already switched, I just need to turn off the service in the old place.” It went back and forth like that for another five minutes. At one point I actually pleaded with him, “Please, I don’t want to get into a back-and-forth, our minds are made up and we just need to cancel.” He wouldn’t relent.

So Belmont handed the phone to Block.

"Overhearing the conversation, I knew this would not be very fun," Block wrote on SoundCloud. "What I did not know is how oppressive this conversation would be. Within just a few minutes the representative had gotten so condescending and unhelpful I felt compelled to record the speakerphone conversation on my other phone."

(Warning: This conversation may cause anger, teeth grinding and an all-consuming sense of frustration.)



"We are very embarrassed by the way our employee spoke with Mr. Block and are contacting him to personally apologize," Tom Karinshak, Comcast's senior vice president of customer experience, said in a statement posted online. "The way in which our representative communicated with him is unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives."

He said that Comcast is investigating the incident.