The second-worst experience I had with cancelling a service was with Comcast. Briefly: called up, told operator I wanted to cancel, they put me through to a special sales team attempting to keep me, eventually I pushed it through.
The real magic happens during the conversation with the sales rep; he asks why I want to cancel, I explain that the cost is high relative to the quality. He offers me more cost effective package, I explained that I had that package in the past and that the slow incremental increases in cost had turned me off them as a company. He goes on to say: "well, that is your fault, I'd never set up auto pay for a service" and continues to make the case that the convenience function of auto pay is actually an agreement with Comcast to increment the cost of my service without my explicit agreement to paying more.
Wow. Just wow.
Still, that's nothing compared to the calls I had with BT after someone hijacked my landline and placed hundreds of GBP worth of calls to Nigeria... but that is another tale for another HN story.
You're being optimistic. I'd bet the majority of Americans could not identify their ancestral country on a blank map[1]. HN is not a very representative sample.
[1] See any survey about Americans and geography ever.
I consider myself about average when it comes to general knowledge. I couldn't point you Burkino Faso in a map (I am not even sure if I spelled it correctly.) but that doesn't mean I can't tell you roughly about my ancestry. (:
This can't be done because if you just type "washingtonpost.com" into your browser or some algorithm creates links out of plain text (like in an email)... the default is always http:// The internet expects http://yourdomain.tld to always work.
I suppose previous poster meant that WP should default to offer its service over HTTPS, i.e. when you first connect over HTTP, the site immediately redirects you to a HTTPS connection. Like e.g. this site (HN) does (connecting to http://news.ycombinator.com/ gives you 301 Moved Permanently, location https://news.ycombinator.com/ ).
This didn't work for me when trying to cancel my Time Warner service. They kick you to the relocation department and demand to know the zipcode for your new address so they can confirm that they don't service it and try to redirect you to the relevant cable company's new service department.
I didn't have a zipcode for my new address, I was going to be crashing with a friend for a while, so that wasn't an option. On my third attempt (first, automated system. Second, live attendant, who kicked me out back to the automated relocation system), a lightbulb went off and I skipped the relocation options and told the rep I was just fired, I live paycheck to paycheck, and I had to move back in with my parents to try and scrape by.
He was extremely apologetic, but still "had" to go through the "can we lower you bills? what price would be acceptable for you to continue your service with us?" He had to "check with his supervisor," but the phone call ended after two minutes of holding with a successful cancellation!
...then I moved 2200 miles away to a city with multiple cable providers only to discover, surprise!, TWC still controls the area I live in. :'(
You would think so, right? I asked my rep and they still wanted to see if there was anyone else I wanted to transfer the account to, and then they asked if I wanted a discount for a service I couldn't possibly use.
Maybe I was an outlier, but it was really frustrating.
I had to call to cancel my AT&T account recently. The conversation was pretty short: I just told the rep that I was moving in with a roommate that already had service set up so I didn't need to transfer my own service (only about ~20% a lie).
The frustrating and insulting part was that I spent a really long time on hold before I was connected with the rep and every few minutes while I was on hold an automated message played saying something along the lines of "You can pay your bill, start new service, or basically anything except cancel way faster by going online!" It was bad enough without the constant reminders that I was only sitting there on hold because I wanted the one thing AT&T won't let you do online.
Why are commenters here a bit apologetic about lying to customer service reps? The latter have no right to know anything about your life, you want the service cancelled and that's it, any information you may choose to provide is purely so they can service you better.
Tell them you're moving to Andromeda to set up an ice cream shop for all I care, I won't hold it against you.
I guess social convention says that it's bad to lie. Personally, I don't feel so bad about lying to a company... but I do feel a bit bad about lying to a person that represents that company.
This is the way - create a scenario to which there is no possibility of continuing Comcast service. I claimed I was going to be living off the grid and had no need for whatever the internet provided. Was cancelled in under 5 minutes.
I said that when cancelling my cell phone - the rep just kept hounding me, not believing that I simply didn't want a cell phone. Finally the ended with "well, good luck on your new life in the Yukon" - to which I replied - "did you even look at my address or listen to a work I've said to you - I've been living the Yukon for 4 years". "oh".
My worst was with Megapath (i.e. Speakeasy after it was bought up and they destroyed all that was ever good with it).
I filled out their web form to cancel and... nothing happened. Someone apparently called me at an odd hour without warning, but there was no message and no callback number so I couldn't figure out why.
They just kept billing me. Then I called up and asked to cancel on the phone and they told me you can only use the website. I told them I had done so already and that wasn't working--no feedback at all, just a form submitted into the ether.
After much arguing (including the point that my CC had expired and they were NOT getting any more money out of me, no matter what), I finally submitted that form while on the line with them. Lo and behold, it magically gives an email confirmation this time. I asked about the two months the service had been completely unplugged and unused, at which point they demanded proof that I'd submitted info to their broken webform.
At that point, I realized it was a scam from the very start where they set you up to fail to get away from their service and decided never to do business with them again.
I had a similar experience with MegaPath. One day my DSL went down and never came back up. I called support, no answer. 2 days later still no answer. I canceled my serice on their website and called Century Link for service.
Months go by, and I start getting mail (physical and email) from "Global Capacity" telling me that my account for DSL service is overdue and my service will be suspended if I don't pay. At first I ignored it thinking it must me a scam because I never heard of the company.
I get 2 more in the following months, the ammount they say I owe them still increasing.
I call Century Link, why I've had service from for months at this point, to confirm my bill is paid in full. It was and my service was not at risk.
Finally I break down and contact them. They explain to me that they purchased MegaPath. So I go to MegaPath's website, which is still online[1]. There's nothing about being purchased to this day. After searching around I find they did indeed purchase Megapath[2] -- AFTER my service went down and I canceled my account!
Global Capacity are still threatening to cancel my service -- which I haven't had in about a year now. Every bill increases according to their monthly service fee. They also refuse to negotiate or admit that I canceled my service prior to their purchase of MegaPath. I don't know what to do at this point.
I have a feeling that Megapath was failing horribly and Global Capacity received unmaintained information from them. Either that or Global Capacity is a fradulent organization. Haven't decided which yet, but it may be a little of both.
Their cancellation was basically fraudulent when they were MegaPath, from my experience. I paid off what I "owed" and no more to get rid of them. Not sure what you do in your case, but they're a complete pain to deal with.
I might try to negotiate by offering to pay off some amount, but they will NOT admit that you've cancelled unless you have some kind of proof... which they will make sure there's no way for you to provide. Because their webform sure as hell won't respond and they definitely won't admit that maybe, given that you were using another ISP the entire time, it could somehow be their fault for forcing you to use a web form that doesn't actually work when you've tried it dozens of times and it magically only does something when you have a rep on the phone.
Like you said, they might as well be a scam company at this point. I felt like they'd turned "customer retention" into some kind of hostage situation. I had to play hardball with the rep before their cancellation form magically worked.
My theory is that there's a manual component to the unsubscribe where they have to confirm it with the customer, but they probably don't try very hard (or at all). I'm sure they'll conveniently blame human or technical errors for any faults, even if they've deliberately set things up to fail.
Be sure you document every call, etc. somehow when dealing with them and get legal help if you need to. My impression was that everyone working there is in on the customer retention scam and all the ways to play hardball and abuse their customers. I seriously wish someone would do an expose on them. Speakeasy was a really awesome ISP back in the day. The people who bought them out were scum, so I'm glad they changed the name in a way.
How are companies like this allowed to operate in the US? In the UK there are multiple regulators you could complain to about something like this, who would quickly come down on them like a ton of bricks.
They're only cheating me out of a little money and they've made it hard for people to prove that they're right and easy for them to blame a single rep or a glitch.
If enough people complained, something might get done, but you have to figure out who to complain to first. Occasionally, someone can interest a TV show into exposing them, but it's really hard to prove something like this. You could complain to a state AG, but unless they get a lot of complaints, it won't go anywhere--they're too small-time for that. I get the impression that they were squeezing the last blood out of the business they strangled and left to rot.
I only know what I did and what the reps said to me and I knew that I didn't have enough proof to go to court with this so I didn't--I'd just end up losing more time & money to it. So I just retell my experience when it comes up again.
I have seen a few other people on HN who got burned by them, though. It's sad, because Speakeasy was a really good ISP back in the day, before it was sold and gutted. The original Speakeasy support reps were awesome. But that's gone now and it makes me sad. I've never seen support like theirs from an ISP before or since. You used to find geeks singing their praises everywhere, too, but I'm sure you've never heard that about Megapath or whoever bought them.
Ignore the other poster's comment. Ignore these bills until they sue (if ever), and then just show up in court. Ask to see the evidence that the debt is legitimate; they will not be able to provide it. Win judgment.
I don't think you can do this with Global Capacity directly, but if the bill goes to a collection agency, it becomes easier. You just dispute the debt. Lots of pages online show how to do this and provide sample letters. You dispute the debt by sending a letter, then the debt collector has to respond within.. it was either 30 or 90 days. If they are unable to provide proof of the debt within that time, the debt goes away (because it's invalid).
You might be able to do the same with Global Capacity, but I think the majority of these rules apply specifically to debt collection agencies.
If you used a credit card - you should have asked your credit card company to do a chargeback. I've only done about 4-5 in my life - and every time the credit card company always went in my favor. One time was even a scammy ebay seller - wouldn't talk to me so I contacted my credit card company told me to send the item back to his address and I would get my money back (the item in question was defective and did not state it in the ebay auction).
Unfortunately some people do abuse it - there was one guy who admitted on DSLreports forums that he uses his credit card to buy all items off ebay. And if he doesn't get it in 2-3 days he does a chargeback - even if he gets the item later. Which, I'm under the impression that when that happens Paypal may yank the funds from the seller's account. I don't agree with it - but I understand why.
My experience with Paypal disputes on the other hand...
For anyone in a similar situation with online forms seeming an official means, I now screencast myself in basically every transaction.
Shift+PrtSc and done.
Having never much been into recording screens before, this took a while to discover, but is not automatic behaviour.
There are lots of utilities for doing so. I use ShareX (with the above keyboard shortcut configures) and it is the most useful app I never knew I needed. http://getsharex.com/
[So useful, I just submitted it as a link. It took a long time to find and trust anything similar.]
Ah, BT... at times just terrible, at times really amazing.
In 2002 I'd rented an apartment in central London, and wanted ADSL, which was pretty new then. They came to inspect the wiring, very old copper they said, and put some new stuff in. No charge.
So with my new PC, 19 inch CRT monitor (fantastic resolution) and Alcatel modem (also free) I tried to connect. 2002 was when Windows XP was getting rolled-out en-masse, but I'd heard about Linux, and had purchased a Mandrake CD. Come 11pm, back from work, I tried connecting. PPPoE or something like that just didn't work. Called BT. They hadn't a clue. Explained it wasn't a supported operating system. But they stayed on the line with me for 1.5 hours trying to work a fix - I'd make a suggestion and they'd check on the internet if it would work, I'd type it in at my end of the line. Amazing service. Improbable today.
Biggest regret is not sending a compliment to the customer support representative. When you (as in, anyone reading this) do get good service, do send a compliment, as few people ever do. I know now that is does make a big difference not just on a personal level, but to the rewards customer support representatives get.
Both, with Comcast and AT&T, you usually have to call back yearly and threaten to cancel to keep the same rate (or to get the current new-customer rate which is probably even lower, or faster).
Even though it is far from ideal, usually we have an agreement, me an Comcast, that the price will stay the same for a whole year (and I still could cancel service at any time with no penalties)
There's the problem right there. The secret is: don't give them anything to hang a hat on. Anything you say will trigger a scripted response and argument.
Just keep repeating you want to cancel; don't give any reasons.
There is no good answer to that question, unless one is fortunate enough to live in an area served by a coop ISP or another super-local business. Our choices are so awful that they hardly even count.
AFAIK in most of the US there are only two cable companies in a given area (both of which typically will be national companies with lobbyists, and also utter shit).
The traditional "telephone" company and the traditional "cable" company, in a given district, each have monopolies that prevent competition.
Since both can now serve cable TV, they only have to compete with one another.
In my area it's Time Warner, which is utter shit, and AT&T.
Anyway, I just don't have cable because they rip you off at best.
If you have a choice of two, you are lucky. Cable franchise rights with cities are usually exclusive. Your choice is usually satellite, cable, or antenna.
Regional operators tend to be better than the national ones.
For example I used Midcontinent Communications when I lived in their service area, and it was excellent. Best ISP and cable company I've ever dealt with.
Unfortunately, they are very limited to the upper midwest/great plains region, and probably serve a million households at most.
I'm sick of comcast and its hidden fees. Their promotion last for one year and they never inform the customer (conveniently) soon after it expires. The bill keeps piling up and when you call them one day to cancel, they feed you some bs on downgrading to a basic package or even reducing your current internet speed.
I had AT&T U-verses before switching to comcast and AT&T are no saints either.
Is there a company that's honest with its customers?
I've signed up for promo plans from Comcast before, and made a note in my calendar it is expiring. Never had a problem with pushing for another promo when it is about to expire. If there is, then I'll reduce my service or switch providers (if I need to), but there is never any surprise that a promo is for a specific duration and when that ends I'll be paying the full price.
What DOES get me is their constant rate hikes outside of promotions, and that is a completely separate issue.
They bill for services they haven't provided. Let's say you order Comcast October 10th and tech arrives and installs everything October 15th. When you get 1st bill, it will include October 10-15 period, when you actually did not have any service and were waiting for one. Happened to me recently.
I think this can be a subject of class action lawsuit.
> AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011), is a legal dispute that was decided by the United States Supreme Court.[1][2] On April 27, 2011, the Court ruled, by a 5–4 margin, that the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 preempts state laws that prohibit contracts from disallowing class-wide arbitration, such as the law previously upheld by the California Supreme Court in the case of Discover Bank v. Superior Court.[3] As a result, businesses that include arbitration agreements with class action waivers can require consumers to bring claims only in individual arbitrations, rather than in court as part of a class action.[4]:708–09 The decision was described by Jean Sternlight as a "tsunami that is wiping out existing and potential consumer and employment class actions"[4]:704 and by law professor Myriam Gilles as "the real game-changer for class action litigation".[5] By April 2012, Concepcion was cited in at least 76 decisions sending putative class actions to individual arbitration.[6][7] After the decision, several major businesses introduced or changed arbitration terms in their consumer contracts (some of which were based on the consumer-friendly terms found in the AT&T Mobility agreement), although the hypothesis of massive adoption of consumer arbitration clauses following the decision has been disputed.
-- Wikipedia
TLDR: Class-action lawsuits against Comcast are not allowed because they include a class-action waiver in the consumer agreement.
This happened to me and they absolutely refused to refund me the 5 days I waited for a tech to show up so he could throw the switch. Absolutely mind boggling.
My experience with Google Fiber would point to customer service antithetical to that which is typically found in ISP's like Comcast. Not sure if that speaks to honesty per se, but it is definitely a welcome change.
My experience cancelling netflix was pretty painless too.. just a few clicks on the website, done... their "come back" emails were only every few months too, unlike some services where you'll get more than one a week for some time. After they had picked streaming service back up again, I re-joined... been pretty happy with them overall.
In Washington, I've been pretty happy with Frontier. Well, "happy" might be a bit strong. Frankly, I rarely give them much thought. $60/month for (I think) 35Mbps up and down. Every single time I've actually checked it, it was indeed what they claim, and it rarely goes down. (About once every couple of months it'll go down for an hour almost exactly at 2300 or midnight; I assume some kind of maintenance.) I don't have to call them once a year to keep the same rate; bill shows up, I pay it, they keep giving me solid, no-bullshit service. Of the few times I've called for support, it's been a small wait and they quickly fixed the problem. My feelings about Frontier are about the same as I have toward the city water utility: I turn on the "tap" and internet comes out, I pay the bill on time every month, and rarely do I give it another thought. That might sound like damning with faint praise, but I think it's the highest praise possible.
Contrast to Comcast, my old provider. Fluctuating rates, horrendous customer service, advertised speeds that are nowhere near reality (I had 12Mbps package back in the day; it rarely was good for more than 3Mbps), and as reliable as an old Fiat. Oh, unlike the city water utility, do I have feelings about Comcast. The last time they were at my door I told the salesman I'd do without internet before I'd give another dime to them. Ironically, Comcast were the ones running billboards about how horrible Frontier would be when Verizon gave up on fiber and sold it to Frontier. Yeah, well, I've been a Comcast customer and I don't see how it could possibly be any worse. Turns out Frontier is just fine.
But you're not going to get Frontier unless you live in western Washington outside of Seattle, so this probably isn't much help.
I have Frontier as my ISP at my rural home on the outskirts of Cleveland. The speed isn't amazing (10 Mbps down, good enough for our streaming needs), but is at least fairly consistent and pretty cheap. Service has been pretty decent too, line faults are usually addressed within a day.
But I've heard that experiences with Frontier are a very localized thing and can be pretty dramatically different from place to place. Which at least contrasts to TWC and Comcast, where people pretty universally seem to despise dealing with them.
This county (Medina) is actually crawling with dark fiber infrastructure, with some business and gov't utilization. I'm patiently waiting for a residential service ISP to pop up. As far as I know, there are not any municipal agreements that would block it.
Sorry about the outage two years ago, I was a new network engineer then and deleted all the residential DSL customers on one of the major Frontier routers in Washington. Lesson learned: never touch anything you don't fully understand
Are they allowed to refuse to cancel your subscription if you don't provide sufficiently valid reasoning for whatever counter-question they throw at you, or something?
Why'd you even answer the second question/offer, let alone get into an argument about it?
"No thanks. I want to cancel my subscription, please."
If they continue to ask "but why?", I'd just start coming up with increasingly unlikely reasons.
> well, that is your fault, I'd never set up auto pay for a service
That's actually good advice. Faithfully un-checking the autopay box every month came in handy for me when Verizon tried to play "customer retention" hardball. As long as you have to explicitly sign every month, you have a bit of control.
Comcast is actually my only utility that I didn't set up autopay for because I was worried about exactly that. They really should have an "autopay until rate increase, at which point contact me" option since their service isn't charged on usage.
I "auto pay" all of my billa through my bank (Fidelity) and they have an option to automatically pay up to $x amount but just email me if the bill is higher. I'm pretty sure it was intended for bills that aren't quite the same each month, but it would also work here.
Most billers have the option to send the bill directly to my bank, for the ones that don't, then it has to be a fixed amount each month for Fidelity to auto-pay it.
Nearly all of these contracts with Comcast or similar companies will have a postal address you can write to and cancel. Even if they provide no cancellation postal address, look up their 'Agent for service of process', this is always listed somewhere. I never call to cancel, this is a waste of time and not necessary.
I've done this repeatedly (use certified mail, or recorded delivery, the term varies by country) and it's dead easy. I have cancelled service with no early termination fees at both Sprint and Verizon, and kept my subsidized phone while continuing on month-to-month service when they raised fees - a 'materially averse' change - always read the fine print. Same thing with AT&T dial-up back in the day.
This service looks interesting but really there is no easier way than sending a proper business letter and keeping proof of delivery. Only once did a company dispute receiving my letter and I emailed a scanned copy of the proof of delivery and that was it.
It sometimes helps to remind the company that falsely reporting a bad debt onto your credit record carries huge fines and you will definitely be checking to make sure they don't 'accidentally' forget or lose your paperwork, and that you have complete documentation and are prepared to defend. Be polite but do be firm, too.
You absolutely can send a letter, that's actually what we're doing behind the scenes for you! We're hoping to eventually integrate things like having a task rabbit pick up your equipment and drop it off at the local Comcast to make the experience even more seamless.
Haha beautiful, I was just typing this same idea in my other reply. Good luck, you are saving people lots of hassle for a low price and I hope you do well.
Seems like this business has a lot of room for liability. In the most minor example, who pays if someone from Task Rabbit tosses the equipment in the garbage?
Yes, time is money isn't it? Like anything else it's easier the more often you do it. I have a template letter I adapt, and I use the automated kiosk at the post office to send. Do it when you are out running errands and it doesn't add up to much time really.
I can say that if I were running a $5 'let us cancel for you' deal I'd damn sure be doing it all by letter though. No way I'd pay to have a bunch of employees sitting on hold with Comcast when I could crank out form letters and mail them in big batches. Possibly easy money if you have enough clients to scale it.
Would you be willing to share your cancellation letter template?
It would be great to have a repository for such templates on GitHub with variants for different companies. Maybe as Jinja2 files so filling in the sender's name, address, etc. would be easy.
I don't mind sharing but there are so many examples online for anyone searching 'cancellation letter template' I don't see the need. It's a completely standard business letter that you keep very short and to the point. Include your account numbers and do not bother with providing a reason unless you are exercising your 'get out free' option for a rate hike on a term contract. The shorter the better. Read the contract from the service provider and have a copy of your most recent bill to refer to for account details, and make sure the reader has enough info to process your request properly.
Note that this works best for small-time stuff like broadband or mobile phone plans, if you have a lot riding on it you are better off talking to a lawyer and paying for an hour or two of their time.
Sample text,remember to keep it very short and to the point:
<your address>
<their address>
<date>
Notice Of Cancellation Of Service (or alternate subject line, use bold print this line only)
Dear Sir or Madam, (or preferably a name if known)
I am writing to cancel service under account number <?12345?> in my name at the above address effective <insert date>.
(optional paragraph) I will return your equipment to your office on the same date and obtain proof of delivery.
(optional paragraph) I reject your rate increase of <insert specific detail here>. You forfeit the Early Termination Fee due to the following materially averse change to our previous agreement: <insert reason here> (It CANNOT be a sales tax increase or anything outside their control but can definitely be an increase in any silly and vague 'regulatory' fees, etc. A classic example is an increase in SMS fees from 5¢ to 10¢, regardless of whether you actually went over your allowance and paid an overage yet. They may offer to waive this but you are not obliged to accept - they chose to alter the deal and they broke their contract, not you)>
This is amazing advice and exactly the sort of thing I would forget when I need it. What I need is a guy like you on the payroll to handle crap like this for me. Who is going to remember this website (OP) when time comes to cancel. What you need is a service that is proactive and just handles stuff like this in the background
I was moving to Thailand ~6 months ago and I had to cancel my Comcast. Cancelling took way too long and was surprisingly frustrating. From talking with other people it seemed like the cancellation process was really frustrating for other people too, so we made this.
My partner Eli (HN username: EliPollak) and I really want your feedback more than anything. We’re planning to expand into fixing other processes that are really more painful than they need to be. We’re around to answer questions/chat and we’re also available by email at founders@airpaperinc.com.
Whenever I go to a new health care provider (or even, often, a health care provider that I have an existing relationship with), I have to fill out those silly medical history forms, and I'm like, "Dude, shouldn't you know all this stuff already?"
It would be nice to be able to say, "Hey, here's the doctor's office where I have an upcoming appointment. Find out what mundane paperwork they expect me to fill out, and fill it out for me." (Many offices now put the forms online so you can download them and fill them out ahead of time.)
Granted, it really only works if I can enter the info once and have you save it and regurgitate it as needed, and then that gets into tricky territory because you're storing sensitive health-related information. But it really would be a valuable service.
How about landlord negotiations? When your landlord tries to raise your rent to above-market rates, it's a pain to look up what the fair rate is and then draft a competent counteroffer letter.
If you're a paying (every month, no soliciting, ahead-of-time) tenant and a landlord is raising rent at all: they run the risk of losing a known quantity for a piece of shit tenant.
Unless you're in a usurious, fucked up market (San Francisco), rental owners need to put a dollar amount on losing your tenancy.
If you're paying $2000 a month, raising the rent 5% means that, for an extra $1000 (potentially), you'll spend your time and money showing, placing ads, screening prospective tenants. Time is money. Either you're doing this yourself, as an owner, or paying someone to do it.
The other cost factor at work applies to the tenant: the "cost to move." It's hard to move in-town for less than $500, so this must be weighed.
I would suggest using HTTPS on your main domain. While you do include an iframe from a HTTPS source for the form that asks for a credit card, someone could MITM the main domain and replace the iframe source with something else, and the user might never know.
I saw that you're collecting credit card numbers on your form... You know that if you are storing them on your servers, you need to follow FDIC regulations, right? Otherwise, you are exposing yourself to a huge liability.
I'd also be worried about whether you are disposing the credit card numbers you collect after they are done in a timely and secure fashion....
PCI is the regulating body. FDIC is just concerned with bank deposit insurance. Looks like they're using Stripe, so I'd suppose they're tokenizing those card numbers before dealing with them.
I don't understand why your front page is so scrolly (Firefox on OSX) but I'm pretty sure it rendered wrong, I can scroll in the x axis past your nice pile of paper on the head of the page and despite my efforts I can't work out what 'Parkin...' you're making easier to get in SF.
This is a great idea! Once you figure out a good model for making processes like this efficient it will probably be easy to apply it to all kinds of problems (as your splash page hints). Good luck with this project.
Thanks! We'd love feedback as to what processes are painful. Keep us in the back of your mind when you're filling out paperwork and send us an email if it feels especially tedious? :)
I personally do not like having to call every year to re-negotiate my internet service price at a resonable rate for another year. If that service was something you could provide, I would be tempted to use it! Especially if you kept track of when my intro rate would expire etc.
This exists, it's called an "advocacy service," and some employers offer access to these services as a benefit to employees. Aon Hewit operates such a service, for example. I recently received a large, surprise medical bill due to an error by the hospital, and the advocacy service did all the legwork/phone calling necessary to get it written off.
You know, we have considered it and we want to eventually. The problem is that hospitals typically want to deal with a company that's both more established than we are. They also typically have a much longer sales cycle.
If you have any specific use cases/contacts, please reach out to us though. We might be able to make something work?
I don't, I just happen to know someone who does insurance company negotiations professionally, is pretty successful at it, and is looking to leave their current gig.
Direct pricing negotiation with hospitals might be easier. From what I understand many hospitals will reduce your bill, or set up a limited- or no-interest payment plan, if you're uninsured or underinsured and can make a coherent case about your inability to pay the full amount.
Interesting, but hard. Due to HIPAA, most hospitals can't/won't speak with anyone but the patient about their bill. I sometimes have a hard time handling negotiations for my own spouse, depending upon how picky they are being.
I ran my connection 24/7 for a month, pulled 33TB of data down, they dropped me as a customer. Most pain free process, and a nice fuck you to Comcast as well.
I actually just cancelled my Comcast account yesterday. The process was pain-free and easy, just told them "I'm moving in X days and do not need service at the new address."
Granted, it was true, but if you are having trouble cancelling for low-quality service or any other issue, you may have better luck using that reasoning.
Likewise, I've moved 5 times in 5 years; each time, I call up and say I'm moving and need to cancel service, and each company - TimeWarner, Verizon, Comcast - has given me no trouble at all.
I'm really glad that that excuse made the process so painless for you, but I do have a cautionary tale about that.
Two years ago, I called them and tried cancelling my service because, like you, I was moving and my new landlord was providing Comcast to me as a part of my lease agreement. Despite my insistence that my landlord already had an account setup for me at my new house, I was kept on the phone for 30 minutes and the representative insisted that it would be beneficial for me to have my own account/service at my new house in addition to the line that's already there, and that I should just transfer my service. You can imagine how frustrated and furious that conversation made me.
I don't mean to deter people from using that excuse, because it still honestly seems like that should be the easiest way to cancel your account, but I do want people to bear in mind that it all depends on the representative you speak with.
I've canceled Comcast service several times now. I've got a pretty good routine down. Basically you just preference the call with "I'm canceling my contract with Comcast today. There is no discount, inventive, or conversation that you can give me that will convince me not to cancel. This cancelation needs to take less than 5 minutes and the phone call is being recorded".
Comcast customer service does seem to be much better now than it used to be. Possibly they got the hint that they were pissing everybody off enough to get voted into the top of the list for worst companies in the U.S. year after year after year.
I seriously don't understand the hate Comcast gets, I've cancelled service with them 4 times now, and it was always a simple 5 minute call. I think their service is on par, or better, with any other internet / phone / cable provider of that size, they always manage to find me some discount on my service whenever I call and complain about the price.
It all depends on the representative you speak with. There have been times where I've had to contact them and have had a pleasant experience, but as I detailed in another reply in this thread, I've also had godawful experiences where I simply couldn't believe the logic the representative was trying to apply to the situation.
I agree with user hololy, I'm a little confused as to what you're trying to get at here.
You may have had a positive experience, and that's great. I'm genuinely happy that you have enjoyed being a Comcast customer, and I don't say that with any sarcasm. Hell, as far as general internet service goes, I'm content with the product that they provide. My experiences with their customer support are personal, just as yours are - you've clearly spoken with some level-headed, respectful representatives. I, however, had to argue with one for thirty minutes when I told them that my landlord has already setup Comcast for me at my new home - the representative insisted that it would "benefit me" to transfer my service and have two internet connections at the house.
All I'm saying is that everybody's experience is different, depending upon the representative they speak with. Some reps are great, but on the whole, the bulk appear to be subpar.
Now, to answer your question. Yes, I would say their support is worse. I had bad experiences with Chase, too, but even they didn't come close to what I've had to put up with Comcast. The only large corporations I deal with these days are Google, T-Mobile and Nissan. All three have exemplary customer service compared to Comcast.
Comcast always gets singled out for their terrible customer support, but in my experience, it is no different than other companies of the same size / in the same space. And no, I wouldn't consider their service as bad, it's just what I would expect from a company of that size. And yes, I think as a company's CS is scaled to such a level, you will inevitably see a decrease in support quality. Compare their support to other tech giants of the same size and you will see the same issues.
Cancelling my Comcast service for cable television and internet involved these steps.
1) Gathering up all of my Comcast owned equipment (cable boxes and remotes, but importantly, NOT my cable modem, which I owned outright) and going to the local Comcast office. There I waited in a long line in a crowded, un-airconditioned office (in the heat and humidity of a hot August day in Maryland) for almost 2 hours. Then handing over the equipment and marking my account as cancelled took 25 minutes.
2) Calling the Comcast support line after they tried to bill me at the end of the following month for not actually supplying service to a home I no longer lived in. I was placed on hold for almost an hour before finally speaking to a representative, who told me that she didn't understand what the problem was because Comcast had no record of actually sending me a bill for the month after I moved.
3) Receiving a call a week later demanding I return my "Comcast owned equipment" before I could receive a refund on my deposit. I countered that I owned the modem outright and had merely given Comcast the MAC address of the modem so that they could authorize it on their network. The representative demanded that I prove that I actually owned the modem. The receipt I emailed from when I purchased the modem was not enough for them, they demanded "more proof" but could not actually offer an example of what proof I could offer. I hung up on that representative and immediately filed a Better Business Bureau complaint (I know, the BBB is a bit of a racket, but sometimes it gets some results).
4) The following day I received a call from a senior customer service manager apologizing for the "mix-up" with marking my modem as being a Comcast-owned piece of equipment. I received a refund of my deposit a few days later.
One piece of advice is to make FTC/FCC complaints instead of BBB complaints. Those agencies are actually pretty effective at suing companies into better business practices.
I have since learned the comparative uselessness of BBB complaints and the effectiveness of FTC complaints. This is the one instance where a BBB complaint worked for me. I've not had cause to make an FCC complaint since this happened, but I agree, the FTC has been very helpful.
The way I see it, they are rude to you by making you go through hoops, so I am rude to them. I repeatedly say "Please cancel" to every new rep I am transferred to and/or every time they ask me a question or go into a spiel.
The only time I will not say "please cancel" is when they ask me any information that needs to be verified in order to cancel. This has worked with Comcast as well as a handful of other service providers that I wished to cancel. I have never been on the phone more than 6 minutes. Try it out.
This is usually my strategy, but it failed hard with TWC. No matter what I did, they would redirect me to the automated "relocation" service and ask for my new zip code. They did this even when I told them I wasn't moving, they do it just to get rid of you. I even tried saying "I just no longer want internet, I feel like it is bad for my health." and sure enough "click Please enter the zip code...."
You know you've pissed off your customers when people start building business models around cancelling your services so they don't have to deal with you.
How does this work legally, are you acting as an agent, proxy or other authorized representative of the customer, when interacting with the vendor?
On the topic of security: is the customer's identity information, e.g. authorization passcodes required by the vendor, deleted from your database after the transaction is complete? You may also want to add some details on encryption.
Great question! In this case, you should of us as a highly trained personal assistant who is helping you cancel your Comcast. We help manage all the crappy parts of the process behind the scenes, but you're still the person actually doing the cancellation.
How do you verify identity, e.g. could an attacker use this to cancel a target's service? When you call customer service, cable companies usually have a few security questions to confirm the customer's identity. A letter usually has a customer signature. How do you close the identity loop with the person keying data into your web form?
We charge their credit card. We don't think it's likely that people will use this to maliciously cancel people's Comcast, but we'll absolutely cooperate with authorities in the event of identity theft.
There is an online cancellation service in germany that will help you to cancel just about every contract: https://www.aboalarm.de/
They have ready-made templates for many compaines (esp. ensurance and telco ones) where you just fill in your details, sign it via your touchpad and let them send it in a conforming way.
I /think/ the business model is focused on post-cancellation: they'll show you other options for the canceled contract.
I'm stunned that this does not exist for the US. It seems to work in Germany.
Not to be "that guy" on HN, but if you can't do this right now you need to shut your form down until you can. Collecting this info without encryption is irresponsible.
Here's a related tip: you can skip step 1. Just show up at the local office with your equipment. They can take care of everything right there, and the office employee isn't trained to do customer retention so there's no hassle.
Yep. I periodically go in to the local office and say I'm looking to cut my costs and I'd hate to cancel but can they put me on one of their promo plans (which they say are only for new customers). They will normally do this with no fuss. The people who work there are local community citizens and it's just a job for them. They don't really care.
Just show up at the local office with your equipment.
Only if there is a local office. Frontier bought up a bunch of Verizon FiOS assets in the area. Frontier behaves purely as a short-term revenue maximization company. So they closed all their local offices. That's right. The local phone/internet/tv company doesn't actually have an office where you can go to return equipment!
Comcast is heaven compared to the depths of hell that is Frontier.
I suppose that depends on the office. Last time I showed up in person, I was told the wait was 2 hours -- and every customer's face in there seemed to confirm that.
When a call center person asks if I've had a particular problem that's causing me to cancel, I say no.
When they suggest that they might be able to help, or in any stall with canceling, I tell them I've changed my mind and now I have a problem with their customer service.
It probably depends on if you've got one of the reps who's worried about being fired because they've gotten too many "I want to cancel" calls. It's not unusual for call centers to 'motivate' their employees in that manner.
Comcast has an entire customer retention department, whose full-time job is to cajole and bribe you into staying. I think getting transferred to them when trying to cancel is pretty standard.
I think a lot of it has to do with the rep you're talking to. The call center workers allegedly get comp gated on % of retentions, so sometimes the agents really seem to fight the cancellation.
Member retention at many companies is often closed before 8am, just call early and then you end up talking to a regular person in billing and they do an immediate cancel.
Alternately just pick a place the company doesn't have service and say you are moving there.
I moved across the country to Comcast land. I had a decent job, so I signed up with all services (HD, phone and internet) After a few months, I realized I didn't need a phone and didn't care at all about HDTV. So I called and told them I'd be backing down my service to Internet and normal cable. I got a guy that informed me that I was under a 2 year contract and had no choice. He was absolutely terrible.... like so mean and insulting. I took it for a bit then I realized, I don't have to be yelled at by a CS rep! I told him that I felt very uncomfortable with the way he was talking to me. He got even more belligerent. It was surreal, I have never had someone speak to me like this. He told me I was stuck, and that his hands were tied. I hung up. I called back because I realized he might just have been full of "poo-poo". I got another CS rep. She was very pleasant. She said, "Mr Nobleach, it appears you're under contract." I said, "that's fair, can you send me a copy of the signed contract?" she replied, " well, your acceptance of equipment equates to a signed contact". I said, "ok, the contract I didn't sign will suffice. I do need my attorney to look over it". They agreed to knock me down to no contract and whatever service would work best. I can't say it's the right course of action. I really did have an attorney wanting to look at my "contract". I'm sure they'd stand no chance against Comcast. But it did get me out of some contract I never knew I was in.
There should be a law (I know, too many laws!) that cancelation process should be the same as sign up, for example you can sign up online for many services but need to call for cancellation.
This. I was about to post the same message, including the same parenthetical disclaimer. It seems like this should be an obvious consumer protection, and yet nobody talks about it.
While I'm a big fan of the idea of paying a small fee to let others deal with such hassles, this is one of the tasks I vastly enjoy. "You suck, you've always sucked, you overcharge, underdeliver, and have terrible customer service". Repeat with more emphasis the more they argue.
Mostly I don't enjoy being a jerk, but most of the time they demand it. (Occasionally, when moving, it's been painless, and I have no need to be rude, but that's been the exception)
I've always felt it's tragic. I'm talking to some person in a call center, whose job/pay depends on me not cancelling to some extent on getting me to not cancel, and I'm absolutely going to cancel.
But if you enjoy it, by all means continue to use the phone calls. I don't think we'll ever be able to replace the satisfaction of that phone call for you :)
Toll free customer service numbers are free calls in Skype, but Verizon Wireless doesn't accept Skype calls anymore. For them I've switched to using Google Hangout. This wound up with the bonus of supporting including my parents in the conversation (adding the phone call into a normal audio group chat).
Sitting on hold isn't so bad when it's free and you can focus on reading Hacker News or whatever easily while you wait.
Organizing customers against companies that try to exploit their customers is an awesome concept. I suspect it will be a battle, but I wish you success, and hope you earn enough to make the effort worthwhile.
What about expanding this?! Some companies frustrate me with their customer abuses, and you could organize customers against them.
- Cell phone companies send bills that are confusing gibberish so we won't read them. So, provide a service that scans my bill and sends me a readable summary with red-lines on anything surprising or changed.
- Banks and credit card companies send 'privacy statements' that are rambling non-sense. Provide me a service that scans my statements and gives me a nice summary of anything surprising.
- Companies send endless offers for loans or useless services (paper 'spam') mixed in with bills. Filter this out for me.
- Alert me to hidden fees.
- Read the legalese and summarize it.
Basically provide me a service that I will try to accept my bills and statements from monopolistic companies and give me a short, readable, reasonable summary. When something is unreasonable, help me protest or fight it, or find an alternative.
Something like a consumers union, I suppose.
I'd gladly pay well for this.
I had to open a Comcast account after a roommate moved out. His checkout/my opening was very straightforward until the modem that worked for his account didn't work for mine. The "new system" that our account was directed through didn't accept the exact model for our modem, forcing us to get another one. And there is no way I would use their modem/router setup.
Maybe I just had a good person, but when I cancelled my Comcast, I just called up, they asked why, I said, "That's not important, just cancel it." and they just did it.
That said, I think this might have been a few weeks after some high-profile example of someone recording them dicking someone around for a while, so maybe they had been told to dial it back.
I like the idea a lot. This is one of the cases where most people try to fix something by calling even though they would be much better off sending in a form letter. Check your contract. It probably says something along the lines of "service will be terminated within 5 business days after written notification" but they sure don't guarantee anything good will come from calling customer service on the phone.
I would be a little worried about basing a business on this because someone else could start a site with a free collection of the letters to download. Until then this would be well worth the money.
I had XM radio pretty early on... at one point I had three radios on the account (briefly), when I had called to cancel the third (as I no longer had that vehicle), I was then placed in a special queue for a different "cancellation department", not once but twice (after a 45 minute wait), the call was mysteriously (yeah right) dropped when they couldn't talk me out of it. After the third call and hold time, I cancelled the service outright...
That is the most horrible cancellation experience I've ever had... I imagine people have seen equally bad from Comcast, and back in the day, AOL.
Really like the conversational approach. Nicely done!
It would be good to explain upfront how you actually do the cancelation, in this case sending a physical letter on my behalf. I had to fill out the form to get to that part.
For sure. We've got a lot of feedback that we could be more clear on the mechanics of how it works. We're looking at adding something to the flow shortly.
Visa to China sounds like a winner: Never had to do that myself, but it seems arcane, shady magic that some friends from Hong Kong know how to perform whenever we needed to go.
There are plenty of these infrequent, but non-zero, official, lifestyle and corporate customer processes that are PITAs, for a variety of reasons. People would gladly pay to avoid the hassle themselves, where cost-efficient, eventually-expert, standardized "schlepping" can make a good business model or 10. Relieve pain for $; enough people will gladly hand you $ to make it happen.
I've cancelled Rogers up here in Canada in a painless, lie free, asshole way without resorting to swearing.
It's easy, just say you want to cancel, act like an imbecile, refuse to be transferred to their retentions department. When they offer you a better deal, or ask why, just repeat "I want to cancel" over and over, and if they still give you guff, ask to speak to their supervisor (all after getting their name and agent number).
I was able to cancel everything in under 5 minutes.
Remember, you don't have to be nice or polite to them when they're trying to upsell.
This won't work for everyone, but if you live near a Comcast brick and mortar store (e.g. Sunnyvale, CA), just go there.
If you tell them you want to cancel in person, and bring all your equipment with you, the reps aren't going to argue with you much.
There is of course still the time cost to wait in line (15-20 minutes on a weekend IME) but at least it saves in frustration in them trying to get you to change your mind.
Chinese visa was painless for me. I think it's gotten a lot easier maybe with the advent of the 10 year American, I don't know when you last tried.
How do you handle Comcast's security questions and all that? Why is there no https for a site with sensitive info? Have you guys actually done this for others, or is this a see what happens, figure it out along the way kind of side project?
Comcast's customer service can be spectacularly aggravating, but are that many people really struggling with canceling their primary ISP? I would think something like "Move your Comcast service in 5 minutes" would be more useful. Perhaps even "Get a Comcast service call in 5 minutes." Now that would get some downloads in the app store.
Is there anything that prevents me from just sending an e-mail/snail-mail to Comcast with the statement "Please terminate my contract effective MM/DD/YYYY. You do not need to respond to this message. Thank you for your compliance." and just stop payment at the appropriate date as defined by the contract (likely the end of month MM)?
My recent Verizon cancellation went very smoothly. No "retention" specialists. Just said, "I'm switching to a competitor."
I'm saving something like $50/mo with the change. Verizon sent me an email offering me a $40 statement credit to re-up. I laughed in their virtual faces.
Even after allowing thirdparty javascript I still can't read the site (get a san francisco park-what?) and the "Cancel my Comcast" button doesn't work. Blah. I'll call Comcast myself, and for $5 I'll show you how "http aref" works
Hi!
Since I'm not from US I have no idea whether this idea is good or not, but here are a few points from your fix form.
- no email validation / phone number, zipcode, comcast client# mask: Your user could easily mistype something without noticing
That's a great point! Right now we're manually following up with users if there's any problem, but I'll add better form validation to our roadmap. Thanks!
If you post on HN, you should expect a massive amount of traffic. This sounds rough, so don't take it the wrong way, but: if you couldn't anticipate the spike in traffic for your website, how will you handle a spike in (physical) traffic when people suddenly start using your service?
Took me about 5 minutes and no hassle to cancel Comcast. I simply took the equipment into the local Comcast office and turned it in, no dealing with phone representatives or anything. When asked why, I simply refused to answer and that was that.
When I attempted to do this a couple of years ago, the line to return equipment went out the door and around the corner. We decided to just drop our equipment in their return box (and call later), which turned out to be impossible because the box was outdoors and overflowing.
Once upon a time I lived at an apartment and comcast did not bill me for an entire year of internet. It was awesome. And more reliable than the comcast my parents paid for.
Now I have Lumos, which is old Ntelos, which is even better than my free comcast.
Really interesting idea! But I'm not sure how I feel about a company impersonating their customer cause that's what you would do right? I think people will be reticent to provide personal information...
This is perhaps the most glorious thing I've seen on here in a long time. I didn't find a Chinese visa all that difficult though so I'm surprised to see that on the list of next issues.
Hey Everyone! We were a little surprised by the response but our servers should be back. Please let me know at earl@airpaperinc.com if you see any more outtages.
this is a great example of using typeform to bootstrap your way into providing a service. Really cool idea and i'm glad these guys are doing this — I can't wait to cancel comcast!
Thanks! We're thrilled that it's something you're looking forward to!
And typeform has been fantastic. We actually made a form for this ourselves, but the UI experience with typeform is so much better. They're really building a wonderful product.
If you don't push the final button on the form after you enter credit card information, it won't cancel your account. You'll get to see almost everything.
If you want to see a sneak peek of the follow-up steps, send me an email at earl@airpaperinc.com and I'll send you what our follow-up instructions/emails would look like.
The real magic happens during the conversation with the sales rep; he asks why I want to cancel, I explain that the cost is high relative to the quality. He offers me more cost effective package, I explained that I had that package in the past and that the slow incremental increases in cost had turned me off them as a company. He goes on to say: "well, that is your fault, I'd never set up auto pay for a service" and continues to make the case that the convenience function of auto pay is actually an agreement with Comcast to increment the cost of my service without my explicit agreement to paying more.
Wow. Just wow.
Still, that's nothing compared to the calls I had with BT after someone hijacked my landline and placed hundreds of GBP worth of calls to Nigeria... but that is another tale for another HN story.