When it comes to popularity, cable companies rank down there with members of Congress, root canals and Nickelback. Current and former customers agree; they hate the high cost and poor service, and they especially hate the runaround they get from call centers.

Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the two largest cable television providers in the U.S., are consistently at the bottom of consumer satisfaction surveys and are among the least trusted corporations in the nation. Now these two monolithic companies are on the brink of a mega-merger.

The merged company — which will be named Comcast — would control more than two-thirds of all cable television subscriptions in the country, and some 40% of the home Internet market. The $45.2 billion merger, proposed a year ago, is awaiting approval from the feds, and there are unfortunate signs the merger will be approved.

Survey after survey shows that Americans wholeheartedly oppose the proposed merger. The latest survey, by Consumer Reports, finds nearly three-quarters of Americans believe it will result in higher cable and Internet rates, while two-thirds say it will likely have a negative impact on customer service and that Comcast would have no incentive to improve.

So, knowing that most of their customers hate their guts, you would think that Comcast and Time Warner would do some corporate soul searching and perhaps polish their respective images. Maybe some acts of goodwill like rolling back prices, making a true commitment to net neutrality or providing better customer service would do the trick. But that hasn’t been the case. As regional monopolies, these companies know that when they are awarded a local franchise, they can pretty much do as they please without fear of consequences.

Comcast even seems to have grown surlier toward its customers since the unpopular merger was first proposed. This past spring, technology journalist Ryan Block attempted to cancel his service. Not only did Comcast’s customer retention specialist try to talk Block out of it, he got hostile with him, chiding Block and refusing to take back Comcast’s cable card. What the rep didn’t know is that Block was recording the last 10 minutes of the conversation, after it became ridiculous.

“This phone call is actually an amazing representative example of why I don’t want to stay with Comcast,” Block tells the retention specialist at one point.

The recording, which went viral after it was posted on TechCrunch, further amplified customers’ frustrations with Comcast and other cable providers. Comcast didn’t handle this bad publicity well; the response was your typical corporate lip service. The company said the rep’s behavior was “unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives.”

But was it?

Earlier this month, Lisa Brown, a Comcast customer from Spokane, Wash., was rechristened “Asshole Brown” on the service bill she received in the mail. Upset by this, Brown believes her name changed after she phoned Comcast’s local offices to remove the pay-TV portions of her cable package. Brown’s call, like other customers who attempt to downgrade or cancel, was forwarded to a rep who tried to talk her out of dropping premium channels.

“I was never rude,” Brown told consumer advocate Chris Elliott. “It could have been that person was upset because I didn’t take the offer.”

After she received her bill, Brown said she called Comcast asking for an explanation and to have her billing name changed back to Lisa, but she says the local and regional offices were of no help. It wasn’t until Elliott contacted Comcast’s headquarters for a comment about the incident that the company sprang into action. Again, Comcast claimed it has no tolerance for this type of behavior and would investigate.

But it turns out this wasn’t an isolated incident by a rogue employee. Only days after Brown’s story went viral, three other customers reported that they, too, were defamed by Comcast employees.

Julie Swano reported that her December bill was addressed to “Whore” Julia Swano. Swano said she had to talk to at least 20 Comcast employees in a three week period to find out what happened and to get her name changed back, yet she says “they did nothing about it.”

Another customer, Carolina Heredia, contacted Elliott after her name was changed to “dummy” on her online account. When she gained access to her customer page, the greeting said, “Hello, dummy.” Heredia says she called Comcast several times about the name change, but got no satisfaction until she visited a local office. Even then, she says no one from Comcast has offered an apology or an explanation.

And finally, a 63-year-old Chicago-area woman told WGN-TV that she, too, was insulted on her Comcast bill. Mary Bauer of suburban Addison was having trouble with her Comcast service for months. After the issues were resolved, her bills stopped showing up, but Bauer said she would call customer service to make her payments. Recently, bills started showing up in her mailbox again, with “Super Bitch” stamped where her name should go. Again, Comcast responded and said it was investigating the matter.

A former Comcast subcontractor told Chris Elliott that it’s easy to change a customer’s name, but the changes would have to be made deliberately. “It does take some serious navigation to get to the portion of the biller, or the software they used to make changes on accounts, where you change account names and information. So the rep who changed the customer’s name to ‘a**hole’ couldn’t have done it by accident,” he tells Elliot.