"Put very little faith in anything told to you by a front of the line call center rep."
Now come on.... You know that 1st line call center reps speak with the authority of the CEO and full board of directors. Anything that comes from a CSR should be taken as the full official position of the company.
"So, you end up playing the open and close ticket game with customer support."
A lot of the time the ticket ping pong game is the fault of the customer. Customers either treat the CSR like shit by talking about there uber 1337 networking skilz. They sometimes just refuse to go along with what the CSR has to do before passing it along because they think/know that procedure is a waste of time.
If you learn to play the CSR game you will sail right through 1st and sometimes 2nd level support. Act like an ass and you will go insane trying to get past them.