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Show HN: Cancel your Comcast in 5 minutes

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Re: Show HN: Cancel your Comcast in 5 minutes

#111

Post by ams6110 »

electroly wrote: post #76
koenigdavidmj wrote: post #44

Am I the only one who never had trouble canceling? The process was just this: 1. Call, specify your account info, and say you're canceling. 2. They confirm that it's canceled and tell you to return the cable box (and modem, if you're renting one) to the local office. 3. You either put them in a big box out front, or if you're paranoid like me, you wait in line so that you get a receipt. 4. In a couple weeks, you get…

Here's a related tip: you can skip step 1. Just show up at the local office with your equipment. They can take care of everything right there, and the office employee isn't trained to do customer retention so there's no hassle.

Yep. I periodically go in to the local office and say I'm looking to cut my costs and I'd hate to cancel but can they put me on one of their promo plans (which they say are only for new customers). They will normally do this with no fuss. The people who work there are local community citizens and it's just a job for them. They don't really care.

Re: Show HN: Cancel your Comcast in 5 minutes

#112

Post by 15155 »

shostack wrote: post #80
avn2109 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about landlord negotiations? When your landlord tries to raise your rent to above-market rates, it's a pain to look up what the fair rate is and then draft a competent counteroffer letter.

Do those letters ever work? They are either hoping you will pay, or willing to kick you out for someone that will, no?

If you're a paying (every month, no soliciting, ahead-of-time) tenant and a landlord is raising rent at all: they run the risk of losing a known quantity for a piece of shit tenant.

Unless you're in a usurious, fucked up market (San Francisco), rental owners need to put a dollar amount on losing your tenancy.

If you're paying $2000 a month, raising the rent 5% means that, for an extra $1000 (potentially), you'll spend your time and money showing, placing ads, screening prospective tenants. Time is money. Either you're doing this yourself, as an owner, or paying someone to do it.

The other cost factor at work applies to the tenant: the "cost to move." It's hard to move in-town for less than $500, so this must be weighed.

Re: Show HN: Cancel your Comcast in 5 minutes

#113

Post by Natsu »

dayjah wrote: post #30

The second-worst experience I had with cancelling a service was with Comcast. Briefly: called up, told operator I wanted to cancel, they put me through to a special sales team attempting to keep me, eventually I pushed it through. The real magic happens during the conversation with the sales rep; he asks why I want to cancel, I explain that the cost is high relative to the quality. He offers me more cost effective pa…

My worst was with Megapath (i.e. Speakeasy after it was bought up and they destroyed all that was ever good with it).

I filled out their web form to cancel and... nothing happened. Someone apparently called me at an odd hour without warning, but there was no message and no callback number so I couldn't figure out why.

They just kept billing me. Then I called up and asked to cancel on the phone and they told me you can only use the website. I told them I had done so already and that wasn't working--no feedback at all, just a form submitted into the ether.

After much arguing (including the point that my CC had expired and they were NOT getting any more money out of me, no matter what), I finally submitted that form while on the line with them. Lo and behold, it magically gives an email confirmation this time. I asked about the two months the service had been completely unplugged and unused, at which point they demanded proof that I'd submitted info to their broken webform.

At that point, I realized it was a scam from the very start where they set you up to fail to get away from their service and decided never to do business with them again.

Re: Show HN: Cancel your Comcast in 5 minutes

#114

Post by estsauver »

tombrossman wrote: post #82

Nearly all of these contracts with Comcast or similar companies will have a postal address you can write to and cancel. Even if they provide no cancellation postal address, look up their 'Agent for service of process', this is always listed somewhere. I never call to cancel, this is a waste of time and not necessary. I've done this repeatedly (use certified mail, or recorded delivery, the term varies by country) and…

You absolutely can send a letter, that's actually what we're doing behind the scenes for you! We're hoping to eventually integrate things like having a task rabbit pick up your equipment and drop it off at the local Comcast to make the experience even more seamless.

Cheers!

Re: Show HN: Cancel your Comcast in 5 minutes

#115

Post by tracker1 »

I had XM radio pretty early on... at one point I had three radios on the account (briefly), when I had called to cancel the third (as I no longer had that vehicle), I was then placed in a special queue for a different "cancellation department", not once but twice (after a 45 minute wait), the call was mysteriously (yeah right) dropped when they couldn't talk me out of it. After the third call and hold time, I cancelled the service outright...

That is the most horrible cancellation experience I've ever had... I imagine people have seen equally bad from Comcast, and back in the day, AOL.

Re: Show HN: Cancel your Comcast in 5 minutes

#116

Post by ams6110 »

ramidarigaz wrote: post #41
dayjah wrote: post #30

The second-worst experience I had with cancelling a service was with Comcast. Briefly: called up, told operator I wanted to cancel, they put me through to a special sales team attempting to keep me, eventually I pushed it through. The real magic happens during the conversation with the sales rep; he asks why I want to cancel, I explain that the cost is high relative to the quality. He offers me more cost effective pa…

When I called to cancel my account I told them I was moving out of the country. Total lie, but it made the cancelation process really easy.

Just say you're moving to an apartment where cable and internet is provided.

Re: Show HN: Cancel your Comcast in 5 minutes

#119

Post by estsauver »

walterbell wrote: post #71
elipollak wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question! In this case, you should of us as a highly trained personal assistant who is helping you cancel your Comcast. We help manage all the crappy parts of the process behind the scenes, but you're still the person actually doing the cancellation.

How do you verify identity, e.g. could an attacker use this to cancel a target's service? When you call customer service, cable companies usually have a few security questions to confirm the customer's identity. A letter usually has a customer signature. How do you close the identity loop with the person keying data into your web form?

We charge their credit card. We don't think it's likely that people will use this to maliciously cancel people's Comcast, but we'll absolutely cooperate with authorities in the event of identity theft.
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