In my experience helping an elderly relative with the cable shitshow, the Comcast service center people are actually really nice and would have done so without the drama. But I definitely recommend the physical side of things.

Although I have done a bit of a chaotic neutral thing myself: Comcast sent her two new boxes instead of one after we switched her to a cheaper box. They wanted us to drive all the way back to service center. Grabbed their UPS account # from the tracking code, filled out the web form and had it sent back with pickup billed against Comcast’s acct. She never got billed a cent.