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Comment by tialaramex | Hacker News Reader

It's common in Europe (maybe an EU harmonised regulation?) to require that if you can sign up from a web site then you can also cancel from a web site.

The one time I've talked to a human to cancel a service, it was Three and it was a pleasant surprise because although their retentions team did end up keeping me I got a huge discount over not only what I was paying before, but compared to the competitor I was leaving them for. I have no idea how it's even profitable to give me service at the current price, maybe it isn't and just drives somebody's retention-based bonus?

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> to require that if you can sign up from a web site then you can also cancel from a web site.

This is unfortunately not a freedom we enjoy in the US. I recently changed my car insurance provider to a much cheaper one bundled with my home insurance. I called to cancel the old one and talked to the rep for like an hour. He didn't even really try to save my account, made a few half-ass efforts but mostly just chatted. It was early in the pandemic lock down and I didn't have anything else to do anyway so I just talked to the guy for a while. A month later I notice another charge from them. Turns out he just ... didn't cancel it. I think he kept me on the phone so long for plausible deniability if his call got audited, and then just marked me down as a retained customer. When I called to cancel the second time they did actually cancel and refund me back to the original cancel date, fortunately. This was Progressive.

Short circuit to most contact center retention flowcharts:

"I'm moving overseas for an extended period of time." (Implication: to somewhere you don't offer service)

"Where are you moving?"

"I can't really say."

Turns out, most service providers have an exclusion to their retention metrics, where "customer moving to location we don't offer service" is one of the few reasons to just process their cancellation request.

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