Is there any NEC rule about the burial depth of phone and TV cable?
I know they usually barely cover it with the sod but today, Comcast drove away with my cable "Buried" under the leaves, no dirt at all over it. They also cut my phone cable, broke their own Dmark box and left the cover hanging by a tywrap. The cables were not secured to the building in any way.
This was so bad I got a refund on my "$100 professional installation". After I got my refund they promised someone would come here tomorrow and clean up this mess.
I just wonder if these bozos are actually required to adhere to any standards at all. They certainly don't think so.
Who enforces Article 800?
Is it really just gee whiz information or is it the code?

This would be covered under the NESC. There is a section (352-D-1 in old 2007 version) with a general condition stating:

"The distance between the top of a cable and the surface under which it is installed (depth of burial) shall be sufficient to protect the cable from damage imposed by expected surface usage."

There are more specific requirements for supply cables and such, but the general rule appears applicable to communications as well.

Also, if they happen to be powering their network termination equipment at your house from the drop, then that would be covered under both NEC 830 and the NESC. in that case burial depth could be 18", but probably they aren't directly powering yours. In any case the section quoted in my earlier reply would still be applicable.

I suppose the NESC question would depend on where the service point is. They usually seem to imply that the customer owns everything from the tap on the pole to their equipment in the house, I know the service point for underground laterals is the tap in the right of way. I know Comcast charged me $100 to put that cable in.

Out of curiosity I did a bit of a search and you're certainly not alone. There was even a YouTube video from a housing association where Comcast had done something like 50 drops barely buried. They fought back via social media and a local TV station and got results, but a hassle. On the video they brought up the tripping hazard and its potential legal consequences.

I'm wondering if you had installed buried coax yourself to the service point, if they would have refused to connect to it, insisting they have to run it.

I am sure they would just use it and then verify they had a decent signal strength at the equipment. They hooked up to the cable I ran in the house with no comment. I was sort of surprised they didn't say anything because it was their orange flooded cable that I used. They left a spool of it sitting in the HOA lot next to mine for a month and I was mowing around it. Then I moved it to the corner of the lot near the utility pole. After another month I put it in my shed.
These folks are not the sharpest pencils in the box anyway. About 15 years ago when I fired them I cut the overhead drop and left it in the right of way. I gave then the modem back in a DSL box. That drop stayed there all winter and in the spring I cut it off as high as I could reach so I could mow. For about 2 years after that they were working up on that pole just about every week. This unterminated cable was hanging in the air 25' from where they were working. Finally I felt sorry for them and asked if they had an ingress problem. That got his attention and I pointed to the wire hanging there. I didn't see them after that.

Don't know whether to LOL or just shake my head (probably both).