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Comment by jibbit | Hacker News Reader

I’ve tried to cancel my virgin media subscription twice (because it’s too expensive), and each time was upsold a more expensive package. I explained this to my wife, who laughed at me, then the same thing happened to her.

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Once you politely say you want to cancel, I suggest not answering their questions and to only repeat the word "cancel" over and over until the other person gets the point.

Definitely don't let them run their script and mess you around.

Personally, I tend to start any call with a customer support person with something like "Hello, I'm calling about an existing account, would you like the account number?". Almost invariably, they will say yes and then do a couple of checks to confirm my identity for data protection purposes.

At this point they know exactly who I am, and they probably ask why I'm calling. If I'm asking to change or cancel something, I state that immediately, so now they have a record of both my identity and my request.

By now, I'll also have a pretty good idea of whether I'm talking to a human being who is interested in helping me or some call centre automaton who's just going to be awkward and stick to a script.

If they then try to give me the run around, I just repeat that I've informed them of my details and my wish to change/cancel, if necessary state that I'll be cancelling payment authority accordingly, and then tell them I'm ending the call.

If possible, I'll also keep a recording of the call (which is legal in my country) but at the very least I'll make an immediate written record of the time of the call, who I spoke to, and what was said.

I cancelled quite easily, because I explained that I was not only moving house, but moving into a house that already had Virgin Media broadband. I guess that moved them to the part of their script where they actually go through with the cancellation.

I would probably use that again in the future, even if it were a lie.

This is my experience also - I was moving flat and already had sorted internet with a different provider, so there wasn’t really much budging. The operator did try and ask me if I wanted to refer the new tenants of our soon-to-be flat up with Virgin, or if I had any friends who would like to switch and I’m like lol no.

I once downgraded my Virgin package, the online support was helpful and let me know which department to ask for and exactly what to request. Once on the phone I think I was forwarded on about 3 times before I got the right person. From that point on it was really painless. I think it took about 20 minutes in total? All I wanted to do was drop down to the lowest speed package and stop paying for the landline phone service I was never going to use.

I now have the opposite problem, I'd like to upgrade my package and get a higher uplink speed, but the website just throws a generic error if I try to view upgrades available to my account. I'm not bothered enough to pick up the phone yet.

It's sad that 20 minutes out of your day is what qualifies as painless in this regard. The phone companies/ISPs are like cats training their owners to just accept the way things are.

Compared to what they could have put me through, yeah it was painless. I should be able to completely manage my account on-line, including changing packages or updating payment details.

I imagine they don't offer such functionality because they're making quite a bit of money off of people who would downgrade or quit if they had an easier way of doing it. Outside of regulation forcing their hand, I don't ever see a company making this sort of thing easier.

I rang up several years ago to try to get a discount for reasons I can't remember. I ended up being upsold and today I'm spending far more money than I should, but my Internet is so, so fast. And my IP address, whilst not "static", changes about once every three years. Not something you'd run a website on, but very convenient as a developer when being restricted by IP range.

I've heard the customer service is bad, but to be honest, I never need it speak to them. On the whole, a happy customer over the last 18 years (whoever they were when I signed up in 2002- NTL? Cable& Wireless?)

It seems a common story, customer tried to cancel or get a cheaper service but ends up paying more.

These call centre staff must be very highly skilled, wolf of wall Street level of hustle.

In Korea they have a word which describes a person who is easily scammed and parted away from their cash: hugu.

This made me laugh (sorry). How do they upsell without you realizing it?

IIRC Comcast also does this. They tell you your account is canceled and then you start getting charged extra. A facet of giving pay based upsell targets to desperate call center staff.

The Wells Fargo model.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_Fargo_account_fraud_scan...

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