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Comment by harryh | Hacker News Reader

For places that require a phone call I came up with a trick to cancel via email. If they reply back via email and say I have to call them, I tell them I'm deaf and can't talk on the phone.

Works every time.

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I actually have a speech impairment (a stutter) and you’d think people would be willing to accommodate. I can speak just fine when I have complete agency over the words I choose to say, but it’s the absolute worst when I have to read out some long specific access code or account number and say it 100% correct. Stutter even once and they think I meant 2 P’s when I just wanted to say a single P. And then it becomes this long drawn out process of “after AF6, it’s just a single P, but the rest of it is right” because I really don’t want to have to read out the entire code again.

But sadly there have been more times than I can count where I told them I have a speech impairment, it’s difficult for me to say certain things in the way they need me to right now, and I’d prefer to send them an email (even offer to send them an email for them to open while we are still talking)... And they said no they cannot do that for one reason or another.

That sucks. I guess "works every time" is an overstatement.

I'm currently 3 for 3 but I guess you have a lot more attempts than I do.

You could always tell them you're halfway through a bottle of Colt 45.

When I lived in the US I would follow the phone menu for 30s or so, but at some point I would always a get annoyed enough and just hit random keys until the robot says: I don't understand let me connect you...

Often hitting # repeatedly did the trick. But lot always.

GetHuman has most companies' information online on how to get a human the fastest and alternate ways to contact them.

I learned the other day that the CA Franchise Tax Board has a live chat via GetHuman [0] which saved an insane amount of time on hold. I was originally just trying to find alternate dial in numbers to actually talk to a person, not a robot.

[0] https://gethuman.com/phone-number/California-Franchise-Tax-B...

this also happens when I’m speaking to actual humans. Sadly.

It isn't SFW (well some), but yelling a couple random swearwords works surprisingly well for getting a human on the line.

I've found multiple systems that go on your tone of voice. No need to swear or even raise it.

> When I lived in the US I would follow the phone menu for 30s or so, but at some point I would always a get annoyed enough and just hit random keys until the robot says: I don't understand let me connect you...

I don't remember which ones, but I've found several companies whose automated systems hang up on you after giving you a certain number of 'tries' to enter a menu option.

> Stutter once and they think you meant 2 P’s when you just wanted to say a single P. And then it becomes this long drawn out process of “after AF6, it’s just a single P, but the rest of it is right” because you really don’t want to have to read out the entire code again

Have you tried using the NATO alphabet? I don't know if that would be easier or more difficult for you to say, but it's worth a shot, since it'd be less ambiguous over the phone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet

Generally speaking people working in call centre, or that deal with client all day long, like the NATO alphabet, especially people that have to deal with random code, or need to get names spelled right. People that I know worked in call centre love it, and carry on using it decades after they left that job.

It seems a bit more tedious, but the slower pace with reduced ambiguity means you almost never have to repeat yourself.

Worth giving it a shot, speech impairment or not.

My name has an unusual spelling, so I always have to spell it on the phone. I've had issues every time I try to use the NATO alphabet for this, because several of the phonetics are names. E.g. someone named Matt might say:

"Matt, spelled Mike-Alpha-Tango-Tango"

And get the response:

"Ok Mike, now I need..."

I am not familiar with NATO standards until I read this post. And I’m not an English native speaker. But what I get from NATO idea is take the first character from the word said in conversation. So when speaking with someone on the phone, sometimes I say “I” as Italy instead of India. And luckily they understand it. You may try “Monaco” instead of “Mike”.

It also avoids similar sounding things, word where it can be hard to figure out what the first letter was & words where the first letter is mute.

There is a joke version of the alphabet that messes with all those rules. http://i.imgur.com/3CbAxSp.jpg

I overheard a co-worker once trying to spell out a mailing list address to a customer using a NATO-like alphabet, but he began, "M as in Mary, L as in Larry..."

We ribbed him pretty good for that. I even created my own Completely Useless Alphabet from that incident:

A as in Aerie

B as in Barry

C as in Carrie

D as in Dairy

etc.

I can do the NATO alphabet when speaking to a human, that’s a good suggestion.

One thing though, when speaking to a robot, they’re not usually programmed for that. They want exact letters and numbers that their speech-to-text engine can convert. Eventually the robot takes me to a human after it fails enough times but there’s usually a queue, which isn’t always great because the wait times can be very long.

Have you tried text to speech dictation? macOS has this built into accessibility options under the speech category. You can assign a keyboard shortcut speak from highlighted text, simple as that. I use it to read faster cause I'm a slow reader.

I wonder if they would accept that.

It's morally OK to just lie about it. If I can tell them "I'm physically unable to speak", you can too.

I suggest creating a form letter where you threaten to file an ADA action against them, as well as notifying your state's attorney, etc. Plus cc: the local TV station consumer reporter. When they give you static, they get a copy of that letter sent to their registered corporate agent, return receipt. Their lawyer has to handle all such legal threats. ADA actions are extremely expensive for corporations.

People without an ADA issue should send their cancellation notice to the registered corporate agent, return receipt, which sets the date of cancellation and gets their (expensive) lawyer involved. Threaten to sue them under your deceptive trade practices statutes if they continue to bill your account. Lawyers shed these kind of nuisance things quickly and cut through the bureaucracy. Your file will be stamped "service terminated" posthaste. There is no better way to communicate your desire to terminate service than to notify their registered agent in writing.

How do you generally go about finding registered agents? It's never been super obvious to me that Sportsmans Guide is represented by "Clarke, Whitehall and Rosenstein, LLP" or some equally stuffy sounding law firm, much less where the firm might be reachable by registered mail...

This[1] just says most states provide free access to their database to find registers agents.

I don’t live in the US, so no idea which department handles that.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_agent#Registered_ag...

Typically the Secretary of State for any given state maintains a registry of businesses that is searchable online. The main purpose for these databases is to verify the status of the Corp and to identify the Agent of Service. You need to know the name of the actual corporation to do the search. I say this because some businesses use a fictitious business name, also know as a DBA (doing business as) for branding purposes. In that case, you’ll need to find where the DBA is filed (maybe the County Registrar for a small company) and look up online or perhaps have to mail a request with a small fee, depending on how well funded the locality is.

This would probably be my go-to from now on when canceling a service. Kind of sucks to have to pay for registered mail but sounds like it’s a sure fire way to cut through the bs and maybe that’s worth the postage.

I’ve once signed up for a service and I didn’t know beforehand that their “delete account” button would take me to a page telling me that in order to shut it off I had to email them at least three business days in advance. I don’t have a general issue with having to inform people to shut things off the old fashioned way like via telephone or email.. but that’s for when I had to communicate over phone or email in order to begin the agreement. Such as with a consultant or contractor.. Not when they made signing up a quick and simple online process and then want to make it difficult to shut off so they can squeeze an extra payment out of you.

So I resorted to CC-ing a fake legal@ email address in the cancellation email, thinking maybe they would think I’ve CC-ed one of my lawyers (I didn’t have a personal lawyer, but they didn’t know that). They took care of it immediately.

The symptoms you describe are what someone I know experiences. In the same situation of making a phone call, he give the handset to his wife. What's pathetic is that the operator insists on talking to him "in person" even if he sits next to her. Some of these trained operators apply their company rules to the letter so much that it feels almost barbaric.

Why blame the operators for management's barbaric rules?

I have a different trick: I use Lob.com to send a cancellation request through certified mail. Works every time, and takes 5 minutes.

That's interesting. So I took a look at lob.com's web site and I can't figure out which service you use.

I just use the web GUI to upload a PDF and send the letter.

I've found a different method. Email them and tell them they need to call me or they won't be paid anymore. I've actually used the phrase "give me a holler". Got a call the next morning.

You've managed to bypass an automated system and jump the queue, but you're still in a point where you're waiting for their next action, potentially taking a call at a bad moment and then still having to fight the customer retention scripts and getting bounced around a call centre until somebody finally helps.

If your goal is to just end your contract (as permitted), I should not have to jump through any more hoops than telling them we're done.

You can also say: "Because I was convicted and I am going to prison by next week."

All you have to do is say you will report the charge as fraudulent in an email.

How about just sending a notification of cancellation by snail mail?

Finding a stamp and a post office box is significantly more annoying than two emails.

Surely there are web business that print and mail documents for you.

That's the point of this law, isn't it? That canceling service should be as easy as activating it?

but would not that make you feel a little guilty as you are lying to the person just to cancel a subscription?

Why should we feel guilty when companies like this do their best to hide important things from the people they're billing?

I don't. The only reason why this deception is necessary is because of the company's scummy cancellation policies. Heck, one could argue that it actually reduces labor costs because emails are usually less time consuming than phone calls.

Why would one feel guilty about it?

This is a utility-maximizing lie. You're saving both yourself and the other person time. Unless you subscribe to some belief-system that holds truth-telling to be some sort of moral good in and of itself, everyone is better off.

And that's aside from the fact that the patter you'll hear trying to keep you paying is going to be full of, at the very least, deceptive statements lacking any objective truth or falsity.

As guilty as saying "I can only pay $X" or "$X is my final offer" when buying or selling a car despite knowing it's a negotiation tactic and not a real limitation.

Incidentally the price tag was invented by Quakers who considered haggling immoral.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_tag#History

After yesterdays thread on the anki system I'm tempted to get into that and this bit of trivia is just the sort of thing I'd love to remember.

That is fascinating, thanks for sharing.

An interesting question is whether a car dealer that says "we paid $Y for this car, we're losing money if we sell it to you at $X" is committing fraud if Y is a false figure aka negotiating tactic. I think a lot of people would be unsurprised that such a thing would happen, but should it be a crime?

I was reading a Matt Levine column in which he described some litigation over selling bonds that was very analogous to the car dealer situation. And apparently what happened is that it was decided that lying about the price paid was ok per se, but creating falsified documentation to back it up was fraud. Which seems weird!

Why? Its just a machine. You're trying to find the right buttons to press to get it to give you the desired results. The "person" is just part of the interface. They have no choice at all what to say.

If you saw that a soda machine always dispensed a Coke when you pressed the Dr. Pepper button would you feel bad pressing that button to get the Coke you wanted?

Despite what we teach small children, lying is not immoral. Lying is amoral. The circumstance and motivation of a lie determine whether that particular lie is moral or immoral.

There are times when it's moral to lie, other times when it's immoral to lie, and still other times when morality hardly has anything to do with it at all (such as the above scenario.) We tell small children that it's immoral to lie because we don't trust their moral judgement and would prefer they always tell us the truth.

Reminds me of Kant’s Axe ...

Is it ever morally acceptable to tell a lie? Kant thought not. His example of the would-be murderer explains his reasoning. Read by Harry Shearer. Scripted by Nigel Warburton.

https://youtu.be/x_uUEaeqFog

Thankfully most people have more sense than Kant. In truth, I doubt Kant himself would be so hardline if he were actually put to the test in such a scenario. Talk is cheap, would he actually be so depraved in practice? I can't rule it out, but I doubt it.

Kant's philosophy is universal, not individual. His morality (and many others!) accepts that people may becomes martyrs.

Should you kill a person to save two? Kill two to save one? Does matter who the people involved are? Anti-Kantian philosophies don't have good consistent answers to this -- at least they don't live according to their philosophical answers.

I don't think people grow out of the need to follow moral rules as much as you imply. Sooner or later, there comes a time when it is overwhelmingly in a person's interest to lie (or some other transgression). If they are purely rational, they will do it. If they think deeply about morality, they will rationalize why it is right to do what is in their interest. The point of inculcating honesty and other virtues is so one is habituated to the point that dishonesty is preempted when it really counts. Reasoned moral judgement is not an unmitigated good, because it opens the way for bias and hinders the operation of trust needed for relationships.

Lying isn't bad. Hurting people is bad. There are many totally honest ways of hurting someone.

The way I see it, telling a "harmless" or "justified" lie can destroy trust, which can have substantial or even devastating consequences. Often one faces several choices, all of which may hurt people, and moral rules are a heuristic method by which people avoid the harmful effects of cognitive biases due to self-interest or logical errors.

None of this should suggest I think it's obviously wrong to lie to a stranger about whether you're deaf in order to avoid a conversation - that might be permissible according to generally accepted social rules. My point is more that when you start talking about deciding for yourself when to obey moral rules, you are on shaky ground, no matter how wise or logical you are.

> Lying isn't bad. Hurting people is bad. There are many totally honest ways of hurting someone.

While I agree with your first two sentences and think that they are well said, the third doesn't demonstrate the first; it demonstrates only that "hurting people can be done without lying", not "lying can be done without hurting people."

They bank (much like sales people) on human nature making you feel bad when they’re screwing you.

It’s like the squares/grid stuff used by car salespeople to get you to get a car loan instead of buying the car with cash.

No more guilty than corporations feel for making customers jump through hoops just to cancel a service they no longer need or want.

You can take that as "not at all guilty".

"Make game of that which makes as much of thee." They are playing you, manipulating you, and not dealing with you as a person. They are treating you like a factor to be optimized and played with. It is entirely a moral response to respond in kind and out-play them.

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