Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Cancelling Home Phone

Intro:
     I have come to realize that I no longer use my home phone for anything other than to deny offers to remortgage my house and people surveying me so I decided to get my home phone shut off.  Everyone who I come in contact with via phone is usually through my personal cell phone and I no longer give anyone my home number anyways.  The last straw was when I was filling out an application and I couldn't even remember my own home phone number.  I had to look it up on my cell phone just to get it.  Dealing with the phone company was just torturous though and a little time consuming.

The beginning:
Kind of what my phone actually looks like
     To try to start this off right, I got all of my information in order: my last bill, my credit card to pay off the remaining balance, and had the number to call directly to customer service.  I was only expecting a 20 minute conversation at max yet what I got was much different.  I had to deal with a machine that only wanted voice commands or wait until the end to dial in with a number pad.  Then once I got through that little "maze" I finally got told that wait time was approximately 10 minutes.  As it turns out, 10 minutes really means 25 minutes before you get to speak to an actual person.

The Cancellation:
     Well I thought I was fully prepared for this yet when I finally got to the point where I would cancel the service I had to answer a series of questions just to verify that I was who I was saying I was.  I couldn't even remember some of the answers to these questions since they had to do with stuff from about 5 or 6 years ago.  The questions consisted of asking me what my salary was in 2006, who my favorite super hero was, and about a dozen others.  I should add that all of these questions were in fact multiple choice with the last choice being "none of the above".  I missed about 6 of my own questions but for some reason or another the person dealing with me decided to move me along anyways. 
THERE WAS A POP QUIZ?!?!?!


     Then there was the bombardment of offers from the company that I shot down.  For each and every single offer I was thrown I would give them a stern no and provide reasons that they couldn't argue for to keep me around with them.  No i didn't want a different plan, and no I didn't want to bundle up my internet, television and phone for a fantastically cheap price.  Thankfully the person helping me understood what I was trying to do and just left it at "not interested" for everything without asking me why or bothering me.  I know the only reason he asked me about changing plans and all that is because it is procedure so I was already anticipating them asking me all of that.  



Conclusion:
      If you have come to the same realization I have, which is to cancel your phone, be prepared to wait to static music for a long time.  Have all of your information ready to go so you do not end up taking up too long doing this or having to call back because you weren't ready with your information.  I've learned that being patient isn't necessarily the hardest traits to master but it helps you in keeping a cool head while over the phone. 

Comments:
     What are some of your stories about cancelling services or moving services?  Are there any "horror" stories that some of you guys have that involve this?  I personally had the hardest time when I moved a few years back transferring services.  I got billed for cancelling satelite services when I really tried to just "move" them to a new location and then I kept getting over charged for other things such as installation, even though I did it myself" and activation fees.

8 comments:

  1. This is true for cancelling anything with any company, they seem to make it as hard as possible.

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  2. Yeah, I got rid of mine ages ago.

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  3. So true! Vigorously nodding my head in agreement!

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  4. land lines are really expensive for how obsolete they are especially that whole idea of long distance in a global world.
    followed

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  5. oh but we still have use of it back here in nepal :)

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