Comment by iamdave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iamdave | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I like having a bit of fun with cancellations once I catch on that they're not gonna make it easy.

"Please cancel my service"

"We'd like to retain your business is there anything we can do?"

"Is my service cancelled yet?"

"Why are you cancelling your service?"

"My service is still working, can you cancel it? Is this the cancellation department? Who will be cancelling my service?"

Just pretend like I didn't hear anything they said or asked and keep asking variations of that in an increasingly childlike wondrous tone. Sometimes you can hear the person on the other end getting audibly frustrated until they give in and cancel it just to get you off the phone-and when they finally go "Your service will be cancelled on this date, is there anything else I Can help you with?"

"NOPE THANKS!" and hang up.

Never fails to make me giggle madly. Is it patronizing? Sure. Do I care? No not really-I've asked nicely that I want my service cancelled. That really ought to be the start and end of it. Meeting retention rates is their problem, not mine.

Same thing with upselling at retail establishments. No I'm not a rewards member. No thanks I don't want to sign up. Yep I'm sure. Oh I'm quite aware that I can save 10% over $2500 spent. Hey can I just buy this pair of headphones and gtfo?

"Meeting retention rates is their problem, not mine."

Do you also maliciously fill out surveys with less than "excellent" ratings even after you are told that constitutes failure according to corporate management?

I understand the attitude of refusing to play the game, but that doesn't justify making things worse for other victims.

> Do you also maliciously fill out surveys with less than "excellent" ratings

I've started doing this, although I wouldn't characterize it as malicious. I bought a car last fall and that started a ridiculous number of surveys coming my way. I contacted the dealership, the manufacturer, and the survey company asking for the surveys to stop. The dealer and manufacturer both responded saying they would take car of it. The survey company never responded.

The surveys keep coming so I fill them out randomly and return them. It isn't malicious because I'm genuinely dissatisfied with them because they can't stop the surveys.

It seems ironic to me that I've bought multiple cars from a dealership and I can't get them to update my email or postal address after well over a year. They apparently don't want to send me ads.

I know exactly what you are talking about. When my wife bought her last car, I stopped by the dealership after work to cosign all the papers and for some reason they entered my phone number into their database. They started calling me and each time I would tell them to call my wife because it's her car. It took probably 10 or 12 discussions with various people at the dealership to get our record updated. The general manager seemed to be as frustrated with their system as I was because he had to deal with me asking him over and over to fix the problem.

I fail to understand how repeatedly asking someone to cancel my service is being malicious, beyond depriving the company of the revenue they'd benefit had my membership continued.

It's not my job to go out of my way to help these folks meet their retention KPI. Categorically, full-stop and quite literally, that is not my responsibility. I'm a customer who used to pay money for a service, not a call-taker responsible for meeting certain metrics. I don't work for the cable company. I'm not their employee. I'm their customer.

If I don't want to be a member anymore, and I state as such, and repeatedly state as such when said company makes it as difficult as possible to cancel my membership-then I've satisfied my end of that particular transaction. I've stated my business request, I'm asking them in various manners to please honor that request. Where is the malice? If you want to point out that it's probably immature, then I'll probably agree with you. Comparing it to deliberately trying to tank a call-taker though by giving a deceitful and dishonest review I think is an incredible exercise in reaching.

So can you explain this for me? How are you drawing a parallel from me repeating my request to have my service cancelled with maliciously filling out customer response surveys in such a way that deliberately gives the call-taker a negative score?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com