This used to to be the trick to use with the 10 CDs for a penny offers to get out of buying the remaining required full price CDs. After you got the promo-priced CDs, you could send in a change of address form with an address where shipping costs made it unprofitable for them to send the remaining purchases. They'd send a letter back where they regretfully informed you that you membership was being canceled because they didn't support your new address. All you had to do was figure out some address in rural Africa or Asia. Everyone in my freshman dorm used that trick to fill out their music collections.
I started doing this after I came back from living in Korea a couple of times. The only one who ever tried was, I think, Sprint or another carrier, who offered to put a hold on my account but they could only do that for some short number of months, so of course my next reply was "I'm not planning on coming back."
I've done this several times with Comcast, but it failed with Time Warner when I moved out of NYC. They demand to know why you are canceling and have some sort of way to extract money out of you for every scenario, including moving out of their service area. In that case, they transfer you to another phone system that helps you find a provider at your new address and, presumably, nets them a referral fee of some kind. Meanwhile, if you try any excuse to quit that they haven't accounted for, they tell you "yes sir" and redirect your call to that service as a fallback catch-all. Truly despicable.
My dad used to use "I'm unemployed and have no money" on telemarketers, with some success.
Though nowadays, in the era of pervasive financing and Wall Street investors that care more about revenue than cash flow, I wonder if that would even work. Maybe "I'm being investigated by the Feds and all of my financial relationships are considered suspect, and so would prefer to have as few of them as possible"?
I've had people still try to sign me up when I've said this. I had just moved country, had no job, and was literally living off my credit card. I ended up getting stopped by some people on the street trying to sign me up for some charity, because I'm too nice to tell them to fuck off.
Even after I explained that I literally arrived in the country a week ago, and that I literally have no money, they were still trying to get me to sign up for a recurring donation. Sure, I understand that they get commission, so they want to make a sale. But not only is it extremely unethical to try and get unemployed people to sign up, it's also trying to extract blood from a stone.
Saying "I'm unemployed and have no money" will put you in the target market for certain products, like payday loans and diploma mills. Depending on the call center, you could find your contact info sold on to a new set of telemarketers. Win the battle, lose the war.
> My dad used to use "I'm unemployed and have no money" on telemarketers, with some success.
I've tried telling the truth, I've tried assertively stating I'm not interested, I've tried so many things...
...at this point, when I pick up a call, I wait for the other side to introduce themselves, and if they call with an unsolicited offer, I just hang up without saying anything. Am I a bad person?
Not at all. My current method is to block all numbers not in my contact list.. if they are important, they'll leave a voicemail. Works surprisingly well, actually.
Comcast and SiriusXM are by far the worst I've ever come across. They demand explanations, try to cut you deals, claim they have to transfer you to their manager who attempts to up sale you. I seriously had to get one of my debit cards reissued in order to get charges to stop and to get my XM radio account closed out.
I just cancelled SiriusXM earlier this week. They asked why and I said I just don't listen to it enough. They offered a month of a different package free. I said no. And that was it.
Leaving out of the country is generally more effective than leaving the service area - the arrangements you're describing rarely cross international borders, certainly not within North America (EU might be different).
"Well, I don't mean to overshare, but if you must know, I've been convicted of aggravated manslaughter and am scheduled for booking tomorrow afternoon. I won't be needing cable TV service for ten to fifteen years."
I did something similar when I moved to get rid of my wired phone service. I told AT&T I had signed a contract with Comcast and told Comcast I had signed a contract with AT&T.
It's my favorite answer, because it normally creates enough awkwardness on the call to make the other party want it over as quickly as possible.
And getting them on your side is always step 1.
Bonus points if they ask "I hope it's nothing we did" and you respond with an extra long pause and "I think it's best for everyone involved if we get this cancelled as quickly as possible."
I like having a bit of fun with cancellations once I catch on that they're not gonna make it easy.
"Please cancel my service"
"We'd like to retain your business is there anything we can do?"
"Is my service cancelled yet?"
"Why are you cancelling your service?"
"My service is still working, can you cancel it? Is this the cancellation department? Who will be cancelling my service?"
Just pretend like I didn't hear anything they said or asked and keep asking variations of that in an increasingly childlike wondrous tone. Sometimes you can hear the person on the other end getting audibly frustrated until they give in and cancel it just to get you off the phone-and when they finally go "Your service will be cancelled on this date, is there anything else I Can help you with?"
"NOPE THANKS!" and hang up.
Never fails to make me giggle madly. Is it patronizing? Sure. Do I care? No not really-I've asked nicely that I want my service cancelled. That really ought to be the start and end of it. Meeting retention rates is their problem, not mine.
Same thing with upselling at retail establishments. No I'm not a rewards member. No thanks I don't want to sign up. Yep I'm sure. Oh I'm quite aware that I can save 10% over $2500 spent. Hey can I just buy this pair of headphones and gtfo?
"Meeting retention rates is their problem, not mine."
Do you also maliciously fill out surveys with less than "excellent" ratings even after you are told that constitutes failure according to corporate management?
I understand the attitude of refusing to play the game, but that doesn't justify making things worse for other victims.
I fail to understand how repeatedly asking someone to cancel my service is being malicious, beyond depriving the company of the revenue they'd benefit had my membership continued.
It's not my job to go out of my way to help these folks meet their retention KPI. Categorically, full-stop and quite literally, that is not my responsibility. I'm a customer who used to pay money for a service, not a call-taker responsible for meeting certain metrics. I don't work for the cable company. I'm not their employee. I'm their customer.
If I don't want to be a member anymore, and I state as such, and repeatedly state as such when said company makes it as difficult as possible to cancel my membership-then I've satisfied my end of that particular transaction. I've stated my business request, I'm asking them in various manners to please honor that request. Where is the malice? If you want to point out that it's probably immature, then I'll probably agree with you. Comparing it to deliberately trying to tank a call-taker though by giving a deceitful and dishonest review I think is an incredible exercise in reaching.
So can you explain this for me? How are you drawing a parallel from me repeating my request to have my service cancelled with maliciously filling out customer response surveys in such a way that deliberately gives the call-taker a negative score?
> Do you also maliciously fill out surveys with less than "excellent" ratings
I've started doing this, although I wouldn't characterize it as malicious. I bought a car last fall and that started a ridiculous number of surveys coming my way. I contacted the dealership, the manufacturer, and the survey company asking for the surveys to stop. The dealer and manufacturer both responded saying they would take car of it. The survey company never responded.
The surveys keep coming so I fill them out randomly and return them. It isn't malicious because I'm genuinely dissatisfied with them because they can't stop the surveys.
It seems ironic to me that I've bought multiple cars from a dealership and I can't get them to update my email or postal address after well over a year. They apparently don't want to send me ads.
I know exactly what you are talking about. When my wife bought her last car, I stopped by the dealership after work to cosign all the papers and for some reason they entered my phone number into their database. They started calling me and each time I would tell them to call my wife because it's her car. It took probably 10 or 12 discussions with various people at the dealership to get our record updated. The general manager seemed to be as frustrated with their system as I was because he had to deal with me asking him over and over to fix the problem.
Why are you looking to cancel your phone plan?
Leaving the country.
They know they can't win me over and so they don't even try.