Sky TV makes you beg to cancel your subscription

Yesterday, I linked to a recording of a phone call between a stunningly obnoxious AOL customer service representative and a poor soul who had to beg him to cancel his account. Today, Creation Robot emailed me to let me know that he had a similar experience with Sky TV in the UK.

After a few minutes pass by where he threw various package names at me and I batted them back by repeating the manta ‘No, I just want to cancel.’ He changes tack and talks about the movie channels so I butt in and point out there is no need to follow his script, I just want to cancel. He changes tack again and inadvertently gets my full attention.

‘What do other people in the house watch?’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ he ties to butt in so I just talk over him, ‘I didn’t ring up to argue with you, just to cancel.’

‘I’m not arguing Mr. X, just trying to help; as you have been with us for some time.’

‘Well, not any more.’

‘You want to cancel because it’s too expensive? But everything goes up in price,’ I wonder where he was going to go with that, but I was annoyed and cut back in.

Link

Reader comment: Losiu says:

The solution to this problem is quite simple. Use Amex card as auto draft payment method for any phone/inet/tv/other-vulture account. Then, if said vulture does not cancel, call Amex. They will take care of it for you. (I'm in no way associated with Amex, just a happy customer).

Reader comment: pj says:

You can use Sky's reticence to cancel your connection to your advantage - if you have a sky system that's outside the warranty period and it's developed a fault then rather than asking sky to repair it (and incur a £75 fee) you can simply tell them you want to cancel, they'll fight a little and propel you up their system to someone else who's job seems to be to prevent cancellations - they will then offer to repair your equipment at NO charge as long as you keep your subscription. You can use the same technique to score a reasonable discount off sky instead.

For the record I cancelled Sky very easily, but I did tell them that was giving up TV.

Reader comment: Bob says:

You know, a simple "I'm recording this conversation for my blog" and "Would you please repeat your name" would probably go a long way towards shortening the cancellation process. I haven't tested it, since I don't have an account at SkyTV or AOL, but it might help.

Update: Here's another one, this time from j2.com(an online fax service that I use).