Ask HN: Why do I have to call for cancellation?
rogers.com
rogers.com
The optimization is for short term profit, not for customer experience.
If you care about customer experience, talk to the government, not businesses
Not retention, not customer service, not the customer experience.
Then he proceeds to order them by priority.
It is backwards, I do not think this way. Yet, the modern successful business does.
the ordinary consumer really does believe these are separate networks.
“The same great coverage as TDC because we use their network, but you only pay xx DKK” kind of thing is quite common.
If you click the careers button it takes you to the careers page of the parent company, since they don't want to bother creating a separate careers service for the sub-brand to fully maintain the ruse.
As if the CRTC doesn't meet the absolute economics 101 textbook definition of Regulatory Capture.
If the Canadian federal government had any intention of applying actual consumer-friendly policies with teeth to the telecom industry, they wouldn't be letting Shaw and Rogers merge. But they almost certainly will.
In Canada this is not a (L) or (C) political problem, both parties have been equally bad in the last 25 years letting telecom companies with billions of dollars market cap do basically whatever the hell they wanted. Under Chretien, Martin, Harper, and Trudeau. It's more a problem of the wealthy throwing their weight around in Canadian business influence over the government policies generally.
so much irony in this statement
As soon as I said no to the third, the rep said they would disconnect the account, and that was it. Super weird, especially to think that that is literally someone’s job, all day long, every day. Hopefully they get to rotate in and out of that desk.
Imagine the damage if a company like Comcast passed this info on to Palantir or one of its ilk.
Given employers have used private screening companies for ages and landlords increasingly use them, it could seriously fuck up your life, and you'd never even know...
But yes, it's bullshit and it's worse for those other services.
I've recently got a preloaded Visa that doesn't effect credit that I'll be using for shit companies that I have to deal with so I can just cut off the funding instead. Problem should take care of itself.
It's shocking to me that you can't simply stop paying when you don't want to use a service anymore - you have to ask them to stop taking your money. When you actually think about it, it's ridiculous and unacceptable.
Not being able to charge your card doesn’t mean you’re not liable for the charges. If it’s worth it, they’ll sell your accounts receivable to a collection agency.
That method of skipping out on cancellation only works if they don’t actually have a name / address / etc to identify you.
It's meant to be a method of last resort.
It's because there's a contract behind the service, and contracts have agreements which bind one or both parties, so the other party needs to be informed w.r.t. the change.
Cutting off service when there's no payment would also be "ridiculous and unacceptable" in some cases - e.g. think if the lights just go off when you forget to preload your Visa, instead of just getting a nudge.
But of course I concede to your between-the-lines point, namely that it would be best if the companies knew exactly what we want done (which they sort of do), and did it without a hassle (which they sort of don't), instead of being pricks about it all.
Every single one of those "free trial period" scams that require a credit card to sign up (for the allegedly "free" trial period) will fail with a prepaid card. I have tried.
It is my position that every sort of "free trial period" that requires calling or snailmailing in order to cancel should be outlawed. With hefty penalties for all execs at such organizations.
We need to speak with you directly in order to process your cancellation request and ensure you are informed of any details relating to your account changes."
this is BS.
[1] https://www.consumerprotectionreview.com/2021/11/california-...
There is a non zero risk of unauthorized 3rd parties making service changes or cancellations to somebody's account, so it's standard procedure to have a customer service rep ask some basic security questions of the account holder before proceeding with a port, change or cancellation.
You don't want just any random person who stole your login/password to the rogers portal to be able to port your cellphone number away, right?
There's a valid reason why a few barriers should be introduced to cancelling someone's service or making significant service changes, before the company can be totally satisfied that it really is the authorized account holder making the change.
You get security problems like people trying to port away someone's number to receive SMS for "SMS 2FA" (which is not really 2FA at all, that's a whole other shitshow) to hijack cryptocurrency trading accounts or similar. Or any other service that can have its credentials reset by sending an SMS to the "authorized" phone number.
In addition to the risk of fraud for things like porting numbers away, there's things like disgruntled ex-girlfriends/ex-boyfriends trying to cancel peoples' services.
All of that said, it is also a sad fact that C-level execs at big consumer-abusive canadian telecoms consider it totally fine to introduce whatever arbitrary barriers they can to reduce the level of customer churn.
There is the factor that a great many Rogers customers have been tricked at the start of their service into signing up for 12, 24 or 36 month term contracts, so arbitrarily cancelling service can have financial implications for the customer if they didn't look in detail at what they signed up for when they started the service. Even with BYOD device plans, the 3rd party Rogers resellers in Canada such as Glentel get a buttload more commission from locking people into 24 month contract terms, so they do that as the default now unless you look carefully at what you're signing.
This has not been my experience, although I have never dealt with Rogers. Whenever I have canceled service from a similar vendor in this market, they want me to talk to a representative to try and encourage me to stay, not to make sure I am who I say I am. I am not sure how they would determine authenticity over the phone any better than they could electronically, although I know there are 'voice print' authentication services now that maybe they use.
Overall, when I see this I believe it's to introduce enough friction that some people will give up without trying.
This isn't really true. It's very easy to get a replacement SIM sent or a number ported and is primarily how a lot of financial and online accounts are compromised.
Some carriers allow for specifying a SIM and porting lock on the account with an additional password, or requiring an in-person visit to a physical store with ID.
Has anyone used TTY functions/ Services for the deaf/disabled to communicate with customer service to enable you to not actually talk to people on the phone?
Does that still exist?
Then they can call you if they are interested.
But indeed, this shit should be illegal practice.
It's exactly the reason I didn't continue with them after my car's free trial. If they made it easy, like Netflix, they would have gotten a chunk of money from me over the past 4 years. Instead they got nothing.