They didn't come out as part of sign up, they came out for install, which is a separate phase. You signed up on the phone or online. They don't need to remove hardware from your house to turn it off.
Is there a requirement that a signup flow is a single process that you do all at once?
What if they just moved the last contract you had to sign to something that you clicked on the technicians phone after they set everything up?
I get that it is part of the install process and we think of it as a different phase. But in reality how much of a diasctintion is that really?
I am trying to understand what is realistically stopping Comcast from saying that the signup process is not complete until service has been activated? Nothing I am seeing or what is being said here is telling me they could not argue this.
In theory, the economics of this don't work out (Comcast/ISPs might be an exception). It would raise their onboarding costs a lot and raise their offboarding costs too. But if they're a local monopoly the might get away with it.
That doesn't side step this - if you sign up in person they have to provide a telephone or online option to cancel that is just as easy as it was to sign up.
Now you'll need to return the hardware if you're using Comcast's hardware. Nothing changes there.