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Comment by dayjah | Hacker News Reader

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.

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When I called to cancel my account I told them I was moving out of the country. Total lie, but it made the cancelation process really easy.

Yup. That's how I cancelled Comcast.

Me: "I'm moving."

Clerk: "Oh, where to? We can set up your service ahead of time so it's ready when you---"

Me: "Ireland."

Clerk (disappointed): "Oh."

Same for me when I was moving to Germany.

The only question I got was: "Is there a roommate or somebody else that could take over the account?"

Good idea. Next time, say you will move to China where there are state telecom companies only.

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.

That's probably the trick you are paying $5 for.

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".

Just say you're moving to an apartment where cable and internet is provided.

When I left the country I didn't cancel Comcast, I just closed the account that it was auto- deducted from.

Let's hope I never need a US credit rating for anything.

Ha, straight out of Friends: https://youtu.be/DtKgZjxuzVs?t=2m50s

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.

> (only about ~20% a lie)

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.

My conversation with ATT went something like this:

Me: I'd like to cancel service.

They: why?

Me: I already signed up with Comcast. They're giving me 100Mbps for the price of your 10Mbps.

They: Oh.

<done>

I usually just say personal reasons.

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. :'(

That's why you tell them you are moving overseas.

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.

[1] - http://www.megapath.com/ [2] - http://info.globalcapacity.com/global-capacity-acquires-mega...

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.

But "occasionally, someone can interest a TV show" isn't a replacement for regulation :-)

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.

Won't they also add crap to your credit report that you may have to dispute?

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).

I did that 4 months ago. Literally each month since then, it has crept back up so that it is now within $10 of the original bill.

My only other options is an equally shady CenturyLink.

I hate (yes, hate) internet/cable in the U.S. I truly wish we had some honest lawmakers who would do something about this.

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.

If the sales rep was arguing for you not to use auto pay he is the worst sales rep of all time.

What an amazing story. Thanks for checking out our site and sharing that.

Pretty crazy to imagine the incentives Comcast must put in place to get sales reps to act like that.

Or punishments for failure

The incentive is that you get to keep your job.

I just wanted to throw another name into the pot of shit companies: Time Warner Cable.

Okay, what's a non-shit cable provider?

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.

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.

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.

PhonoScope.

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'm confused...

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.

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.

Comcast is immune to class action as decided by AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion. You may never sue them in a court of law in the US.

> 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.

The fact that you have to do that to keep a reasonable price is why people are upset about it.

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.

"Doctor's orders."

"Lost a bet."

"Religious reasons."

"Sacrilegious reasons."

"I'm gluten-free so I quit computers and phones."

"I literally have no money."

> 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.

The Nigeria story must be funny. Care to share? :-P

Probably this: http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/may/24/bt-hacked-ghost...

Criminals were tampering with phone lines in junction boxes, using them to make expensive calls.

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