This sort of thing - See Ed Foster's blog - is so widespread through ISPs and Airlines (not to mention tech support in general) that it is most certainly a management directive - deny, deny, deny - even in the face of overwhelming evidence:

Three phone calls were routed to tech support staff who said they couldn't help and were not sure who at Adelphia could. Finally on his fourth attempt he managed to get through to an Adelphia tech who would at least discuss the issue. "I explained the hacking attempts and provided her with the Adelphia incident number from their e-mail," the reader wrote. "I re-stated the IP address of the system used in the hacking attempt. After a minute or so she repeated what the e-mail had said -- the IP address of the system was NOT an Adelphia address. After explaining what the WHOIS tool was telling me and how a reverse DNS lookup was supplying the adelphia.net system, she conceded that it was in fact an Adelphia system. She put me on hold for a few minutes, then returned to say that the matter is under investigation."

This is how airlines deal with bad weather and maintenance issues. Just try to get a straight answer about your flight time in most delay situations - it's positvely amazing to watch. Exactly what is the supposed benefit here? The customer facing employees end up looking like bufoons, and customers end up with a lower level of respect for the brand. Explain to me how that's a good thing?