Cancelling cable is a masochistic act Part 2

So it's the next day and I am determined to cancel cable. It has to be done. I can't let those bastards get the better of me. I dial that number for the fourth time. I get to the menu. Do I want to 'cancel' my services or do I want to 'downgrade?' Like I have a choice. I get on that mainline to cancellation city.I just want my relationship with Comcast to end. I am in the zone where I hear the surfer groove music. It invades my earspace. I try to take the phone away from my ear but I'm terrified I will miss the arrival at Canceltown. Which is called the 'loyalty department.' Just before I got here, the agent said 'thank you for choosing Comcast?' Do I have a choice? Why do I have to wait for another twenty- five to thirty minutes to transact this last piece of business? Actually the message said it would be five minutes or so but do I believe these fuckers? I don't know how it happens again but my phone disconnects before the sweet release of cancelling services.

I dial again. I'm determined not to let this system get the better of me. Past the first menu options but that's not nearly satisfying enough. I come up with a genius plan. I won't have to get transferred to the loyalty department. I'll simply ask for a supervisor. That way I'm sure to be able to cancel my services. Because if I ask for a supervisor, they're gonna know I mean business. If I ask for a supervisor, they will respect my concerns and my need for simple closure. They won't jerk me around because they care about their customers. A girl answers. 'I don't mean to take it out on you but this has been a harrowing nightmare. Your system sucks. How hard can it be to cancel one person's services without making him feel like a jerk? The girl informs me that the 'supervisor' is on the other line with a customer. But I can wait and she will transfer me to the 'loyalty department.' Blip. No! Don't send me to the loyalty department again. You have no conscience. Too late. Surfer groove music comes on again. Waiting begins.

From the time I called till now it has been thirty minutes easy. An agonizing thirty minutes. I get disconnected again somehow. I swear there must be one guy chained to a desk who has to take all the cancellation calls for North America. And when they know there is too long of a line to get to have connection with this guru of the cable services world, they just drop a few calls cause it is pretty much futile. One more call. This time I get to the retention department faster. After I explain my nightmare situation to the next guy, he explains that actually a supervisor CAN'T cancel my services for me. So that one guy chained to his desk is just there to get yelled at and abused. Doesn't have any real power. Otherwise he could just cancel my services and make me a tad bit happier than if I had to wait another thirty minutes or so. I am almost crying now. ;Please,' I tell the agent. 'Take pity on me. I have waited SO LONG. You do not know what kind of nightmare this has been for me. Your customer service sucks. Your system whereby anyone who wants to cancel or downgrade services is treated like the biggest shmuck, the most pathetic piece of human trash is degrading beyond belief.' Or something like that comes out of my mouth.

Miraculously, the clouds part, God reaches his big hand down and puts compassion in this agent's soul. He can't cancel my services for me of course. But he is going to monitor the line so I do not get disconnected. Really he promises me it will be ok. And this guy checks in with me every few minutes. It's another twenty minutes or so of waiting but he holds my hand all the way through. I am grateful to this man. I do not quite catch his name but I am grateful to him all the same. By the time the woman in the loyalty department answers, I am so relieved. I do not even give her that hard of a time. It is actually anti-climactic. But I do tell her what a nightmare it has been. And how backward-assed it is for you to make your customers wait and be punished just to cancel their goddamned services. Well, I give her a little bit of a hard time. Nothing personal.

My services are finally cancelled with that malicious, thoughtless corporate entity. I can't believe the nightmare is finally over. I think Dante said there were Nine rings of Hell. Well I went through my Six Rings of Hell and I swear to God I could not have taken one more.