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Show HN: Cancel your Comcast in 5 minutes
- estsauver 11y agoHey HN, I was moving to Thailand ~6 months ago and I had to cancel my Comcast. Cancelling took way too long and was surprisingly frustrating. From talking with other people it seemed like the cancellation process was really frustrating for other people too, so we made this. My partner Eli (HN username: EliPollak) and I really want your feedback more than anything. We’re planning to expand into fixing other processes that are really more painful than they need to be. We’re around to answer questions/chat and we’re also available by email at founders@airpaperinc.com. Thanks!
- artursapek 11y agoThis is a great idea! Once you figure out a good model for making processes like this efficient it will probably be easy to apply it to all kinds of problems (as your splash page hints). Good luck with this project.
- estsauver 11y agoThanks! We'd love feedback as to what processes are painful. Keep us in the back of your mind when you're filling out paperwork and send us an email if it feels especially tedious? :)
- afarrell 11y agoHave you considered getting into the business of dealing with health insurance companies?
- zyxley 11y agoDirect pricing negotiation with hospitals might be easier. From what I understand many hospitals will reduce your bill, or set up a limited- or no-interest payment plan, if you're uninsured or underinsured and can make a coherent case about your inability to pay the full amount.
- URSpider94 11y agoInteresting, but hard. Due to HIPAA, most hospitals can't/won't speak with anyone but the patient about their bill. I sometimes have a hard time handling negotiations for my own spouse, depending upon how picky they are being.
- estsauver 11y agoYou know, we have considered it and we want to eventually. The problem is that hospitals typically want to deal with a company that's both more established than we are. They also typically have a much longer sales cycle. If you have any specific use cases/contacts, please reach out to us though. We might be able to make something work?
- afarrell 11y agoI don't, I just happen to know someone who does insurance company negotiations professionally, is pretty successful at it, and is looking to leave their current gig.
- 6502nerdface 11y agoThis exists, it's called an "advocacy service," and some employers offer access to these services as a benefit to employees. Aon Hewit operates such a service, for example. I recently received a large, surprise medical bill due to an error by the hospital, and the advocacy service did all the legwork/phone calling necessary to get it written off.
- ParadigmBlender 11y agoI personally do not like having to call every year to re-negotiate my internet service price at a resonable rate for another year. If that service was something you could provide, I would be tempted to use it! Especially if you kept track of when my intro rate would expire etc.
- avn2109 11y agoHow about landlord negotiations? When your landlord tries to raise your rent to above-market rates, it's a pain to look up what the fair rate is and then draft a competent counteroffer letter.
- estsauver 11y agoThis sounds great. There's probably also a fair amount of forms that have to be filed with Tenant boards in various places. Thanks!
- shostack 11y agoDo those letters ever work? They are either hoping you will pay, or willing to kick you out for someone that will, no?
- 15155 11y agoIf you're a paying (every month, no soliciting, ahead-of-time) tenant and a landlord is raising rent at all: they run the risk of losing a known quantity for a piece of shit tenant. Unless you're in a usurious, fucked up market (San Francisco), rental owners need to put a dollar amount on losing your tenancy. If you're paying $2000 a month, raising the rent 5% means that, for an extra $1000 (potentially), you'll spend your time and money showing, placing ads, screening prospective tenants. Time is money. Either you're doing this yourself, as an owner, or paying someone to do it. The other cost factor at work applies to the tenant: the "cost to move." It's hard to move in-town for less than $500, so this must be weighed.
- tacon 11y ago"it's a pain to look up what the fair rate is and then draft a competent counteroffer letter." Not that hard these days, viz. https://www.rentometer.com/ https://www.rentometer.com/
- thecosas 11y agoJust a heads up: found a typo in your bio on the FAQ page: http://www.airpaperinc.com/faq.html http://www.airpaperinc.com/faq.html "penaut" vs "peanut" Sincerely, Your personal spelling pedant
- elipollak 11y agoJust fixed that! Thanks for letting me know
- rickdale 11y agoBest deal for upgrading phone. Companies change from 2 year contract to no contract to whatever. I would like to pay $5 to just break it all down.
- egonschiele 11y agoI love this idea. I don't need to cancel Comcast yet, but I will definitely use AirPaper when I do.
- estsauver 11y agoThanks! We're glad you like the idea!
- sleepychu 11y agoI don't understand why your front page is so scrolly (Firefox on OSX) but I'm pretty sure it rendered wrong, I can scroll in the x axis past your nice pile of paper on the head of the page and despite my efforts I can't work out what 'Parkin...' you're making easier to get in SF.
- estsauver 11y agoHey! We're working on it, sorry, we should have done cross-browser testing before we posted it here. Sorry! ~Earl
- eel 11y agoI would suggest using HTTPS on your main domain. While you do include an iframe from a HTTPS source for the form that asks for a credit card, someone could MITM the main domain and replace the iframe source with something else, and the user might never know.
- estsauver 11y agoAbsolutely. It's fixed now, thank you for the feedback.
- ma2rten 11y agoI am getting cloudflare connection timeouts, when I try to open the site. Try setting caching headers on your static content. Sorry that I don't have more substantial feedback.
- picardo 11y agoI saw that you're collecting credit card numbers on your form... You know that if you are storing them on your servers, you need to follow FDIC regulations, right? Otherwise, you are exposing yourself to a huge liability. I'd also be worried about whether you are disposing the credit card numbers you collect after they are done in a timely and secure fashion.... Edit: I meant PCI, not FDIC
- chrisrogers 11y agoPCI is the regulating body. FDIC is just concerned with bank deposit insurance. Looks like they're using Stripe, so I'd suppose they're tokenizing those card numbers before dealing with them.
- estsauver 11y agoWe're using Stripe. We never see the credit card numbers. Cheers!
- jawns 11y agoHere's a suggestion: Whenever I go to a new health care provider (or even, often, a health care provider that I have an existing relationship with), I have to fill out those silly medical history forms, and I'm like, "Dude, shouldn't you know all this stuff already?" It would be nice to be able to say, "Hey, here's the doctor's office where I have an upcoming appointment. Find out what mundane paperwork they expect me to fill out, and fill it out for me." (Many offices now put the forms online so you can download them and fill them out ahead of time.) Granted, it really only works if I can enter the info once and have you save it and regurgitate it as needed, and then that gets into tricky territory because you're storing sensitive health-related information. But it really would be a valuable service.
- dnm 11y agoSite's down. Did it melt under the weight of making the HN front page? Error 524 Ray ID: 22f55b2fa1040f2d • 2015-10-03 02:55:01 UTC
- peteretep 11y agoAre you in Bangkok? If so, drop me a line...
- fgtx 11y agoHi! Since I'm not from US I have no idea whether this idea is good or not, but here are a few points from your fix form. - no email validation / phone number, zipcode, comcast client# mask: Your user could easily mistype something without noticing
- estsauver 11y agoThat's a great point! Right now we're manually following up with users if there's any problem, but I'll add better form validation to our roadmap. Thanks!
- jstx 11y agoI'm not seeing any validation for empty email form submission responses. I clicked a button and got a success page redirect.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- outside1234 11y agoGreat idea!
- nathancahill 11y agoCool idea! Your CSS/layout needs some love though, it's broken in FF (works better in Chrome).
- estsauver 11y agoShoot! I'll take a look right now! Thanks for letting us know.
- kevinrpope 11y agoit's wonky in IE11 as well. For example: http://imgur.com/8HP761w http://imgur.com/8HP761w
- estsauver 11y agoNoted. We're going to do substantial cross-browser testing. Both Eli and I are both honestly not that great with CSS, so it may take us a second or two.
- kevinrpope 11y agoNo worries - I appreciate you're probably slammed with many other things to do. I just wanted you to be aware of it.
- pavornyoh 11y agoI like this idea. Good job!! When will other services be added?
- frankthedog 11y agoI actually just cancelled my Comcast account yesterday. The process was pain-free and easy, just told them "I'm moving in X days and do not need service at the new address." Granted, it was true, but if you are having trouble cancelling for low-quality service or any other issue, you may have better luck using that reasoning.
- pragone 11y agoLikewise, I've moved 5 times in 5 years; each time, I call up and say I'm moving and need to cancel service, and each company - TimeWarner, Verizon, Comcast - has given me no trouble at all.
- curiousphil 11y agoA really tenacious sales person would try to convince you not to move... :)
- Kalroth 11y agoIt's a sad state when we have to lie to get out of a bad relationship.
- troels 11y agoListen Comcast - It's not you, it's me ...
- dntrkv 11y agoI seriously don't understand the hate Comcast gets, I've cancelled service with them 4 times now, and it was always a simple 5 minute call. I think their service is on par, or better, with any other internet / phone / cable provider of that size, they always manage to find me some discount on my service whenever I call and complain about the price.
- jjulius 11y agoIt all depends on the representative you speak with. There have been times where I've had to contact them and have had a pleasant experience, but as I detailed in another reply in this thread, I've also had godawful experiences where I simply couldn't believe the logic the representative was trying to apply to the situation.
- rochers 11y agoGreat idea and nice execution. Suggestion: add SSL / HTTPS to your website if you're collecting all this sensitive stuff about me.
- estsauver 11y agoAbsolutely. I'm actually embarrassed we forgot to set this up before launching. We should have it set up by Monday. Thanks for reminding us. ~Earl
- maerF0x0 11y agoYou should be embarrassed because you're asking for CC, Street address and CVV -- everything required to order anything online anywhere.
- estsauver 11y agoHey There! You're absolutely right. While the typeform was served over https and stripe handled the CC, we should have been https from the start. It's fixed now. Sorry! ~Earl
- dogecoinbase 11y agoNot to be "that guy" on HN, but if you can't do this right now you need to shut your form down until you can. Collecting this info without encryption is irresponsible.
- estsauver 11y agoIt's done. Things have been a little crazy, as you might expect. I'm actually sorry that it took that long.
- dogecoinbase 11y agoAwesome, thank you for taking care of that!
- blazespin 11y agoAll those legal services(wills, divorce, immigration, etc etc), of course, though I imagine they're already well picked over. Maybe you can partner?
- csears 11y agoReally like the conversational approach. Nicely done! It would be good to explain upfront how you actually do the cancelation, in this case sending a physical letter on my behalf. I had to fill out the form to get to that part.
- estsauver 11y agoFor sure. We've got a lot of feedback that we could be more clear on the mechanics of how it works. We're looking at adding something to the flow shortly. Thanks for taking a look!
- dreaminvm 11y agoLove the idea, although I wondering how user data will be protected across all of these different workflows?
- walterbell 11y agoHow does this work legally, are you acting as an agent, proxy or other authorized representative of the customer, when interacting with the vendor? On the topic of security: is the customer's identity information, e.g. authorization passcodes required by the vendor, deleted from your database after the transaction is complete? You may also want to add some details on encryption.
- elipollak 11y agoGreat question! In this case, you should of us as a highly trained personal assistant who is helping you cancel your Comcast. We help manage all the crappy parts of the process behind the scenes, but you're still the person actually doing the cancellation.
- walterbell 11y agoHow do you verify identity, e.g. could an attacker use this to cancel a target's service? When you call customer service, cable companies usually have a few security questions to confirm the customer's identity. A letter usually has a customer signature. How do you close the identity loop with the person keying data into your web form?
- estsauver 11y agoWe charge their credit card. We don't think it's likely that people will use this to maliciously cancel people's Comcast, but we'll absolutely cooperate with authorities in the event of identity theft.
- rrauenza 11y agoMalicious? Cancelling a random person's Comcast might be a random act of kindness!
- chrisBob 11y agoI like the idea a lot. This is one of the cases where most people try to fix something by calling even though they would be much better off sending in a form letter. Check your contract. It probably says something along the lines of "service will be terminated within 5 business days after written notification" but they sure don't guarantee anything good will come from calling customer service on the phone. I would be a little worried about basing a business on this because someone else could start a site with a free collection of the letters to download. Until then this would be well worth the money.
- xmly 11y agoI canceled comcast service at least twice so far. Not much trouble. But the key problem is after canceling, which other service you are gonna use...
- fredkbloggs 11y agoMaybe none? It's television, not sewerage.
- matthewmacleod 11y agoIt's Internet and phone service too. Quite reasonable to think of that as an essential service.
- estsauver 11y agoI think a lot of it has to do with the rep you're talking to. The call center workers allegedly get comp gated on % of retentions, so sometimes the agents really seem to fight the cancellation.
- wnevets 11y agoI canceled my comcast last week and I was on the phone for maybe 5 minutes. Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones?
- estsauver 11y agoIt really seems to range from 5 minutes to eternal. I'm glad it was painless for you. Cheers!
- pmalynin 11y agoI think you might have accidentally cancelled your site's internet too.
- estsauver 11y agoWe're working on it. We didn't expect quite this response.
- m3andros 11y agoGetting this error: Error 522 Ray ID: 22f2db80ca4a181c Connection timed out Traffic overwhelm?
- elipollak 11y agoUh oh! Should be fixed now. Thanks for letting us know :)
- dayjah 11y agoThe second-worst experience I had with cancelling a service was with Comcast. Briefly: called up, told operator I wanted to cancel, they put me through to a special sales team attempting to keep me, eventually I pushed it through. The real magic happens during the conversation with the sales rep; he asks why I want to cancel, I explain that the cost is high relative to the quality. He offers me more cost effective package, I explained that I had that package in the past and that the slow incremental increases in cost had turned me off them as a company. He goes on to say: "well, that is your fault, I'd never set up auto pay for a service" and continues to make the case that the convenience function of auto pay is actually an agreement with Comcast to increment the cost of my service without my explicit agreement to paying more. Wow. Just wow. Still, that's nothing compared to the calls I had with BT after someone hijacked my landline and placed hundreds of GBP worth of calls to Nigeria... but that is another tale for another HN story.
- smoreilly 11y agoIf the sales rep was arguing for you not to use auto pay he is the worst sales rep of all time.
- ramidarigaz 11y agoWhen I called to cancel my account I told them I was moving out of the country. Total lie, but it made the cancelation process really easy.
- aerovistae 11y agoYou know you've pissed off your customers when people start building business models around cancelling your services so they don't have to deal with you.
- estsauver 11y agoI think they knew they probably figured it out when they were voted the most hated company in America. http://consumerist.com/2014/04/08/congratulations-to-comcast-your-2014-worst-company-in-america/ http://consumerist.com/2014/04/08/congratulations-to-comcast...
- evilDagmar 11y agoYou know you've pissed off your customers when people build a service of cancelling your service on Cloudflare and /it/ begins to fail under load.
- shash7 11y agoLol still not loading after 15 hours. Comcast is rekt
- c3534l 11y agoPart of the reason is that they're hateo so much is because they know they're hated and flat-out don't care.
- smoreilly 11y agoThis is perhaps the most glorious thing I've seen on here in a long time. I didn't find a Chinese visa all that difficult though so I'm surprised to see that on the list of next issues.
- morgante 11y agoReally? You have to wait in a really long line for several hours at a bizarre location.
- koenigdavidmj 11y agoAm I the only one who never had trouble canceling? The process was just this: 1. Call, specify your account info, and say you're canceling. 2. They confirm that it's canceled and tell you to return the cable box (and modem, if you're renting one) to the local office. 3. You either put them in a big box out front, or if you're paranoid like me, you wait in line so that you get a receipt. 4. In a couple weeks, you get a check in the mail refunding you for the rest of the current payment period.
- estsauver 11y agoHey koenigdavidmj, I think it really depends. Sometimes you get a call center rep who doesn't really fight you on it, sometimes it's incredibly frustrating. Cheers!
- zyxley 11y agoIt probably depends on if you've got one of the reps who's worried about being fired because they've gotten too many "I want to cancel" calls. It's not unusual for call centers to 'motivate' their employees in that manner.
- zachrose 11y agoWhen a call center person asks if I've had a particular problem that's causing me to cancel, I say no. When they suggest that they might be able to help, or in any stall with canceling, I tell them I've changed my mind and now I have a problem with their customer service.
- electroly 11y agoHere's a related tip: you can skip step 1. Just show up at the local office with your equipment. They can take care of everything right there, and the office employee isn't trained to do customer retention so there's no hassle.
- engi_nerd 11y agoSee my other comment in this thread. There can definitely be a hassle when you take this approach!
- ergothus 11y agoWhile I'm a big fan of the idea of paying a small fee to let others deal with such hassles, this is one of the tasks I vastly enjoy. "You suck, you've always sucked, you overcharge, underdeliver, and have terrible customer service". Repeat with more emphasis the more they argue. Mostly I don't enjoy being a jerk, but most of the time they demand it. (Occasionally, when moving, it's been painless, and I have no need to be rude, but that's been the exception)
- estsauver 11y agoI've always felt it's tragic. I'm talking to some person in a call center, whose job/pay depends on me not cancelling to some extent on getting me to not cancel, and I'm absolutely going to cancel. But if you enjoy it, by all means continue to use the phone calls. I don't think we'll ever be able to replace the satisfaction of that phone call for you :)
- lfender6445 11y agoi'd like to try this without fearing it will actually cancel my account
- estsauver 11y agoIf you don't push the final button on the form after you enter credit card information, it won't cancel your account. You'll get to see almost everything. If you want to see a sneak peek of the follow-up steps, send me an email at earl@airpaperinc.com and I'll send you what our follow-up instructions/emails would look like. Cheers, ~Earl
- kayhi 11y agoHere's a recorded example of one person trying to cancel their service: https://soundcloud.com/ryan-block-10/comcastic-service https://soundcloud.com/ryan-block-10/comcastic-service
- treffer 11y agoThere is an online cancellation service in germany that will help you to cancel just about every contract: https://www.aboalarm.de/ https://www.aboalarm.de/ They have ready-made templates for many compaines (esp. ensurance and telco ones) where you just fill in your details, sign it via your touchpad and let them send it in a conforming way. I /think/ the business model is focused on post-cancellation: they'll show you other options for the canceled contract. I'm stunned that this does not exist for the US. It seems to work in Germany.
- estsauver 11y agoThis is fascinating. We didn't know this existed. Thank you!
- estsauver 11y agoHey Everyone! We were a little surprised by the response but our servers should be back. Please let me know at earl@airpaperinc.com if you see any more outtages. Cheers, ~Earl
- abritishguy 11y agoDown again
- estsauver 11y agoWe haven't quite bridged the gap between "low downtime deploys" to "no downtime deploys." We'll be working on that shortly. Things should be up again now. If they're not, please let me know at earl@airpaperinc.com
- homulilly 11y agoCool idea but I don't think I'd want to send personal information on a website without HTTPS.
- ck2 11y agoMember retention at many companies is often closed before 8am, just call early and then you end up talking to a regular person in billing and they do an immediate cancel. Alternately just pick a place the company doesn't have service and say you are moving there.
- Moral_ 11y agoI didn't even have to call to cancel my service. I ran my connection 24/7 for a month, pulled 33TB of data down, they dropped me as a customer. Most pain free process, and a nice fuck you to Comcast as well.
- blisterpeanuts 11y agoI would think you could open a port and run a porn download service and they'd cut you off pretty fast, as well.
- spinlock 11y agonow that's how you do it. Did you charge them an early cancelation fee?
- estsauver 11y agoThat's amazing! You were able to download 33TB of data off of a Comcast line! :)
- sp332 11y agoI didn't go that extreme, but I only got a warning after the first month.
- niuzeta 11y agoBrilliant.
- GhotiFish 11y agothey don't have clauses for overages?
- JoshGlazebrook 11y agoEverywhere but a few small markets have no cap at all. They suspended the 250GB soft cap years ago.
- PudgePacket 11y agoI'm curious what you were doing to achieve that!
- jason_slack 11y agoThe concept here reminds me of GovWorks.com (in the movie Startup.com). Their aim was to fix government red-tape. This reminds me of that documentary.
- estsauver 11y agoI haven't seen it but will add it to my queue of movies to watch. Thanks for the suggestion!
- tombrossman 11y agoNearly all of these contracts with Comcast or similar companies will have a postal address you can write to and cancel. Even if they provide no cancellation postal address, look up their 'Agent for service of process', this is always listed somewhere. I never call to cancel, this is a waste of time and not necessary. I've done this repeatedly (use certified mail, or recorded delivery, the term varies by country) and it's dead easy. I have cancelled service with no early termination fees at both Sprint and Verizon, and kept my subsidized phone while continuing on month-to-month service when they raised fees - a 'materially averse' change - always read the fine print. Same thing with AT&T dial-up back in the day. This service looks interesting but really there is no easier way than sending a proper business letter and keeping proof of delivery. Only once did a company dispute receiving my letter and I emailed a scanned copy of the proof of delivery and that was it. It sometimes helps to remind the company that falsely reporting a bad debt onto your credit record carries huge fines and you will definitely be checking to make sure they don't 'accidentally' forget or lose your paperwork, and that you have complete documentation and are prepared to defend. Be polite but do be firm, too.
- estsauver 11y agoYou absolutely can send a letter, that's actually what we're doing behind the scenes for you! We're hoping to eventually integrate things like having a task rabbit pick up your equipment and drop it off at the local Comcast to make the experience even more seamless. Cheers!
- tombrossman 11y agoHaha beautiful, I was just typing this same idea in my other reply. Good luck, you are saving people lots of hassle for a low price and I hope you do well.
- mratzloff 11y agoSeems like this business has a lot of room for liability. In the most minor example, who pays if someone from Task Rabbit tosses the equipment in the garbage?
- 11y ago
- andhess 11y agoI had to open a Comcast account after a roommate moved out. His checkout/my opening was very straightforward until the modem that worked for his account didn't work for mine. The "new system" that our account was directed through didn't accept the exact model for our modem, forcing us to get another one. And there is no way I would use their modem/router setup.
- engi_nerd 11y agoCancelling my Comcast service for cable television and internet involved these steps. 1) Gathering up all of my Comcast owned equipment (cable boxes and remotes, but importantly, NOT my cable modem, which I owned outright) and going to the local Comcast office. There I waited in a long line in a crowded, un-airconditioned office (in the heat and humidity of a hot August day in Maryland) for almost 2 hours. Then handing over the equipment and marking my account as cancelled took 25 minutes. 2) Calling the Comcast support line after they tried to bill me at the end of the following month for not actually supplying service to a home I no longer lived in. I was placed on hold for almost an hour before finally speaking to a representative, who told me that she didn't understand what the problem was because Comcast had no record of actually sending me a bill for the month after I moved. 3) Receiving a call a week later demanding I return my "Comcast owned equipment" before I could receive a refund on my deposit. I countered that I owned the modem outright and had merely given Comcast the MAC address of the modem so that they could authorize it on their network. The representative demanded that I prove that I actually owned the modem. The receipt I emailed from when I purchased the modem was not enough for them, they demanded "more proof" but could not actually offer an example of what proof I could offer. I hung up on that representative and immediately filed a Better Business Bureau complaint (I know, the BBB is a bit of a racket, but sometimes it gets some results). 4) The following day I received a call from a senior customer service manager apologizing for the "mix-up" with marking my modem as being a Comcast-owned piece of equipment. I received a refund of my deposit a few days later.
- estsauver 11y agoThat's incredibly frustrating. One piece of advice is to make FTC/FCC complaints instead of BBB complaints. Those agencies are actually pretty effective at suing companies into better business practices.
- engi_nerd 11y agoI have since learned the comparative uselessness of BBB complaints and the effectiveness of FTC complaints. This is the one instance where a BBB complaint worked for me. I've not had cause to make an FCC complaint since this happened, but I agree, the FTC has been very helpful.
- trevyn 11y agoTried to sign up for the SF parking permit thing, got a CloudFlare error 520.
- estsauver 11y agoHey! Thanks for trying to sign up. We didn't expect nearly this demand! Send me an email at earl@airpaperinc.com and I'll add you manually to the list. Thanks for understanding!
- lerxst 11y agoTheir website seems to have some trouble loading right now. Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JQPoiC4Se5EJ:www.airpaperinc.com/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JQPoiC4...
- estsauver 11y agoThanks! We didn't expect this to blow up quite this fast!
- dheera 11y agoIs there anything that prevents me from just sending an e-mail/snail-mail to Comcast with the statement "Please terminate my contract effective MM/DD/YYYY. You do not need to respond to this message. Thank you for your compliance." and just stop payment at the appropriate date as defined by the contract (likely the end of month MM)?
- orthoganol 11y agoChinese visa was painless for me. I think it's gotten a lot easier maybe with the advent of the 10 year American, I don't know when you last tried. How do you handle Comcast's security questions and all that? Why is there no https for a site with sensitive info? Have you guys actually done this for others, or is this a see what happens, figure it out along the way kind of side project?
- vskarine 11y agoError 522 Ray ID: 22f336647a6e1e65 • 2015-10-02 20:38:57 UTC Connection timed out Comcast is trying to DDoS? :P
- estsauver 11y agoI would say that it's more likely that my poor little Vultr.com server didn't expect to be handling quite the traffic load that was pouring its way.
- 1024core 11y agoIf you post on HN, you should expect a massive amount of traffic. This sounds rough, so don't take it the wrong way, but: if you couldn't anticipate the spike in traffic for your website, how will you handle a spike in (physical) traffic when people suddenly start using your service?
- estsauver 11y agoI would say that it's more likely that my poor little Vultr.com server didn't expect to be handling quite the traffic load that was pouring its way.
- tracker1 11y agoI had XM radio pretty early on... at one point I had three radios on the account (briefly), when I had called to cancel the third (as I no longer had that vehicle), I was then placed in a special queue for a different "cancellation department", not once but twice (after a 45 minute wait), the call was mysteriously (yeah right) dropped when they couldn't talk me out of it. After the third call and hold time, I cancelled the service outright... That is the most horrible cancellation experience I've ever had... I imagine people have seen equally bad from Comcast, and back in the day, AOL.
- abritishguy 11y agoJust say you are leaving the country - no more rententions.
- kylehotchkiss 11y agoOnce upon a time I lived at an apartment and comcast did not bill me for an entire year of internet. It was awesome. And more reliable than the comcast my parents paid for. Now I have Lumos, which is old Ntelos, which is even better than my free comcast.
- kisna72 11y agoThe only problem I see is you are asking personal info (Credit Card etc) without encryption. You should fix that asap. other than than, great job.
- estsauver 11y agoHttps is on. The typeform was always served over https, but it would have been possible to MITM us briefly. It should be fixed now. Thanks!
- asd 11y agoThe way I see it, they are rude to you by making you go through hoops, so I am rude to them. I repeatedly say "Please cancel" to every new rep I am transferred to and/or every time they ask me a question or go into a spiel. The only time I will not say "please cancel" is when they ask me any information that needs to be verified in order to cancel. This has worked with Comcast as well as a handful of other service providers that I wished to cancel. I have never been on the phone more than 6 minutes. Try it out.
- brandonbloom 11y agoThis is usually my strategy, but it failed hard with TWC. No matter what I did, they would redirect me to the automated "relocation" service and ask for my new zip code. They did this even when I told them I wasn't moving, they do it just to get rid of you. I even tried saying "I just no longer want internet, I feel like it is bad for my health." and sure enough "click Please enter the zip code...."
- enahs-sf 11y agothis is a great example of using typeform to bootstrap your way into providing a service. Really cool idea and i'm glad these guys are doing this — I can't wait to cancel comcast!
- estsauver 11y agoThanks! We're thrilled that it's something you're looking forward to! And typeform has been fantastic. We actually made a form for this ourselves, but the UI experience with typeform is so much better. They're really building a wonderful product.
- sabrinaleblanc 11y agoReally interesting idea! But I'm not sure how I feel about a company impersonating their customer cause that's what you would do right? I think people will be reticent to provide personal information...
- estsauver 11y agoWe actually just send a letter with the information that you provide.
- markbnj 11y agoComcast's customer service can be spectacularly aggravating, but are that many people really struggling with canceling their primary ISP? I would think something like "Move your Comcast service in 5 minutes" would be more useful. Perhaps even "Get a Comcast service call in 5 minutes." Now that would get some downloads in the app store.
- kelseyfrancis 11y agoIf you just call and tell them you're moving to an area that Comcast doesn't service, they don't give you any hassle at all.
- BlakeCam 11y agoOrganizing customers against companies that try to exploit their customers is an awesome concept. I suspect it will be a battle, but I wish you success, and hope you earn enough to make the effort worthwhile. What about expanding this?! Some companies frustrate me with their customer abuses, and you could organize customers against them. - Cell phone companies send bills that are confusing gibberish so we won't read them. So, provide a service that scans my bill and sends me a readable summary with red-lines on anything surprising or changed. - Banks and credit card companies send 'privacy statements' that are rambling non-sense. Provide me a service that scans my statements and gives me a nice summary of anything surprising. - Companies send endless offers for loans or useless services (paper 'spam') mixed in with bills. Filter this out for me. - Alert me to hidden fees. - Read the legalese and summarize it. Basically provide me a service that I will try to accept my bills and statements from monopolistic companies and give me a short, readable, reasonable summary. When something is unreasonable, help me protest or fight it, or find an alternative. Something like a consumers union, I suppose. I'd gladly pay well for this.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- basseq 11y agoMy recent Verizon cancellation went very smoothly. No "retention" specialists. Just said, "I'm switching to a competitor." I'm saving something like $50/mo with the change. Verizon sent me an email offering me a $40 statement credit to re-up. I laughed in their virtual faces.
- alokedesai 11y agoDamn, this is genius
- estsauver 11y agoThanks!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- zobzu 11y agowhy'd you have to lie to leave a service is inconceivable to me. such companies should be paying good money until this is rectified or simply banned.
- madgoat 11y agoI've cancelled Rogers up here in Canada in a painless, lie free, asshole way without resorting to swearing. It's easy, just say you want to cancel, act like an imbecile, refuse to be transferred to their retentions department. When they offer you a better deal, or ask why, just repeat "I want to cancel" over and over, and if they still give you guff, ask to speak to their supervisor (all after getting their name and agent number). I was able to cancel everything in under 5 minutes. Remember, you don't have to be nice or polite to them when they're trying to upsell.
- x1798DE 11y agoMaybe I just had a good person, but when I cancelled my Comcast, I just called up, they asked why, I said, "That's not important, just cancel it." and they just did it. That said, I think this might have been a few weeks after some high-profile example of someone recording them dicking someone around for a while, so maybe they had been told to dial it back.
- munificent 11y agoHa. I just got fiber installed yesterday and I've been meaningful to cancel my Comcast since then. Timely!
- kw71 11y agoEven after allowing thirdparty javascript I still can't read the site (get a san francisco park-what?) and the "Cancel my Comcast" button doesn't work. Blah. I'll call Comcast myself, and for $5 I'll show you how "http aref" works
- United857 11y agoThis won't work for everyone, but if you live near a Comcast brick and mortar store (e.g. Sunnyvale, CA), just go there. If you tell them you want to cancel in person, and bring all your equipment with you, the reps aren't going to argue with you much. There is of course still the time cost to wait in line (15-20 minutes on a weekend IME) but at least it saves in frustration in them trying to get you to change your mind.
- lazyant 11y agoThere should be a law (I know, too many laws!) that cancelation process should be the same as sign up, for example you can sign up online for many services but need to call for cancellation.
- trothamel 11y agoThis. I was about to post the same message, including the same parenthetical disclaimer. It seems like this should be an obvious consumer protection, and yet nobody talks about it.
- georgeott 11y agoThe first thing I do before signing up for ANY new service, is search for "How To Cancel".
- j_s 11y agoToll free customer service numbers are free calls in Skype, but Verizon Wireless doesn't accept Skype calls anymore. For them I've switched to using Google Hangout. This wound up with the bonus of supporting including my parents in the conversation (adding the phone call into a normal audio group chat). Sitting on hold isn't so bad when it's free and you can focus on reading Hacker News or whatever easily while you wait.
- chrissnell 11y agoI've never had a problem cancelling Comcast. I just tell them that I'm moving out of the country. There's no point in bothering to try to retain me.
- monopolemagnet 11y agoVisa to China sounds like a winner: Never had to do that myself, but it seems arcane, shady magic that some friends from Hong Kong know how to perform whenever we needed to go. There are plenty of these infrequent, but non-zero, official, lifestyle and corporate customer processes that are PITAs, for a variety of reasons. People would gladly pay to avoid the hassle themselves, where cost-efficient, eventually-expert, standardized "schlepping" can make a good business model or 10. Relieve pain for $; enough people will gladly hand you $ to make it happen.
- nobleach 11y agoI moved across the country to Comcast land. I had a decent job, so I signed up with all services (HD, phone and internet) After a few months, I realized I didn't need a phone and didn't care at all about HDTV. So I called and told them I'd be backing down my service to Internet and normal cable. I got a guy that informed me that I was under a 2 year contract and had no choice. He was absolutely terrible.... like so mean and insulting. I took it for a bit then I realized, I don't have to be yelled at by a CS rep! I told him that I felt very uncomfortable with the way he was talking to me. He got even more belligerent. It was surreal, I have never had someone speak to me like this. He told me I was stuck, and that his hands were tied. I hung up. I called back because I realized he might just have been full of "poo-poo". I got another CS rep. She was very pleasant. She said, "Mr Nobleach, it appears you're under contract." I said, "that's fair, can you send me a copy of the signed contract?" she replied, " well, your acceptance of equipment equates to a signed contact". I said, "ok, the contract I didn't sign will suffice. I do need my attorney to look over it". They agreed to knock me down to no contract and whatever service would work best. I can't say it's the right course of action. I really did have an attorney wanting to look at my "contract". I'm sure they'd stand no chance against Comcast. But it did get me out of some contract I never knew I was in.
- rascul 11y agoTook me about 5 minutes and no hassle to cancel Comcast. I simply took the equipment into the local Comcast office and turned it in, no dealing with phone representatives or anything. When asked why, I simply refused to answer and that was that.
- x71c4l 11y agoWhen I attempted to do this a couple of years ago, the line to return equipment went out the door and around the corner. We decided to just drop our equipment in their return box (and call later), which turned out to be impossible because the box was outdoors and overflowing.
- maaja13 11y agoSomeone is already offering to do it for $4 lol http://justcancelme.com/ http://justcancelme.com/