I tried to cancel Virgin Media broadband contract

When I was searching for a new flat, I was worried about the lack of fibre.

My new flat is connected to DSL, which has 70Mbps which is enough for 4K HD streaming and practically enough for everything. Even Stadia plays smoothly. Not perfect, but agreeing on DSL option gives much more freedom to choose a flat.

Good luck with looking for a place to live!

They told me I couldn't cancel in advance, I had to ring the month before I wanted the service cut, otherwise I'd cancel and it would end at the end of the month.

When I rang during that month, they then told me I had to give a month's notice and would be charged for an extra month.

Took me a few hours of phone calls to eventually get that dropped.

A good consumer protection law would be some requirement that cancelling a service is similar in friction to signing up for that service (obviously vague, but you get my point). You shouldn't be allowed to require a phone call to cancel a service.

Oh, this was also while I was in Cambridge and I was getting dial-up speeds regularly on my fibre line because they were so oversubscribed, while I was still getting leaflets through the door telling me to sign up for their service. It shouldn't be legal to advertise a service you don't have the capacity to actually provide, and still take people's money for it.

I remember one time I rang about it, explained and the guy went "I'll just look up and see if we have any congestion issues". After a few seconds, I heard him go "holy shit" away from the receiver, then come back to me and just start apologising and saying he could see why I'd have a problem.

This is an anti-pattern that some companies follow. I remember trying to cancel an account from a grocery delivery service. There was no option online to cancel the subscription. The only option was to call them during their working hours which were different from mine because we were in different time zones. After waiting for 30mins I finally got connected to a human on the other side. They tried pressure sales tactics to get me to continue with the service even though I made it clear that I did not need their service anymore. The call itself took about 30 minutes. This is such an egregious waste of my time just to cancel a frickin subscription. These services cost actual money. On the other hand, there are "free" newsletters which hide their unsubscription button under layers of pages and clicks. It's a good thing gmail provides an "unsubscribe" button on the top. There should be a service which basically manages all your subscriptions(bits/bytes & atoms/molecules) in one place and allows you to activate/deactivate them. I would definitely pay for such a service. Or a website which ranks services based on ease of use, cost, cancelling headaches, most important clauses in their terms of use etc.

The thing that kills me with these stories (and if you read the comments there's plenty more) is that customers _remember_. I'll never use Videotron again after the crap they put me through when I cancelled.

I'd love to blame monopolies (sure, pick the other guys, but you'll be back in a few years when they piss you off) but the other big offender here is gym memberships, and there's no shortage of choice there. I think there's at least 4 different brands within a 5 minute drive of my house.

Consumer protection laws should be: You can cancel anywhere you can sign up. You allow new signups online, over the phone, and mall kiosks? Great, you also allow cancellations online, over the phone, and mall kiosks.

When adding a customer exit survey to our cancellation workflow the hard and fast requirements were "you cancel first, you need to understand that the cancellation has been completed. Then we can show you the survey". Don't be jerks, then hopefully people will remember you fondly if they need you later.