7 ms·

Pro tip: Email them to cancel. When they tell you they only cancel on the phone, tell them you're deaf and can't talk on the phone. Works every time.

by harryh 11y ago

levemi 11y ago
Why do I have to become dishonest to cancel a service? I don't want to do that. I don't want to lie. This is terrible. This doesn't make it any better or easier to cancel. I don't want to lie and I shouldn't have to.
- nksjndfdf 11y ago
  Hack their shit and cancel it yourself. Works every time.
- throwanem 11y ago
  > Why do I have to become dishonest to cancel a service? Because the service provider is dishonest already.
  - 794CD01 11y ago
    That doesn't make it okay to lie to them. Where did you learn morality? Ancient Babylon?
    - throwanem 11y ago
      Whether it's okay to lie to them has no obvious bearing on whether it's necessary. Where did you learn morality? A shallow reading of the New Testament?
      - 794CD01 11y ago
        From my parents, thanks. I fail to see how it's "necessary" in any sense here. Nobody's going to die because I called the company to cancel my account instead of emailing them.
        Cpoll 11y ago
        Three hours of my life, spent waiting on hold, are going to die.
        794CD01 11y ago
        If you choose not to do anything else while waiting to speak to a CSR, it's a bit silly to complain.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      The fallacy is in considering a corporate account-management procedure as 'them'. There's no person there. There's a process set up. Do what you have to, to defeat the obstacles presented by that process.
      - throwanem 11y ago
        Like all such processes, this one is defined by people, and implemented mostly in terms of a set of actions available to those employees of the corporation who handle cancellation requests. Telling such a person that you're deaf, and thus unable to communicate by voice telephone, is no less a lie because that person happens to be acting on behalf of his employer. If your morality forbids lying, then this lie violates it no less than any other. There seems to me a somewhat troubling trend of reaction to the widely derided "corporate personhood" principle in law, by deliberately depersonalizing such "persons" to an extent which appears to me to increasingly include not only the "corporate person" per se, but the actual people persons who constitute that corporation, and who implement and act upon its policies - to regard the modern corporation as a faceless alien behemoth, after all, is of necessity to overlook the fact that it is an organization of people, in theory (if to a somewhat greater extent than in practice) around a common goal. Your comment here is squarely in this line. "There's no person there", after all, is blatantly erroneous: of course there is a person there, otherwise there'd be no one to whom to worry about lying. It's been a while since I last reread The Authoritarians, but I seem to remember this kind of depersonalization being a significant theme in its analysis of how your category of authoritarian followers become willing to countenance human rights abuses. In that light, it surprises me to see you express a perspective which includes precisely that kind of elision, and I'm curious whether you see a substantive difference where I do not.
        JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Yet there is also a process. Its impersonal by design. You are not even likely to talk to the same person twice. So the rules are different. If you pretend its a one-on-one relationship, you will be manipulated, lied to and frustrated. Miss Manners reports trying to get her newspaper address changed. She called several times, but no result. Finally an agent told her that they are instructed to not do anything unless the customer was angry. She politely asked "Would you put me down as having been livid?" He politely agreed. Did she lie? We all know we're just trying to get the system to work for us. Today, when you can't even begin to talk to a real person on the other end, you have less (no?) requirement to pretend you're interacting with one.
    - darpa_escapee 11y ago
      Lying isn't inherently wrong. You aren't lying to a person with feelings, you're lying to a faceless operation that is fucking you over.
      - 794CD01 11y ago
        >Lying isn't inherently wrong. Perhaps not to you. Morality is personal, and to me this comment is abhorrent.
        function_seven 11y ago
        Let me pose to you another scenario, and you tell me if you think my actions where abhorrent: Whenever I work from home, there's often a knock at the door from someone trying to sell me solar panels. It's always a hard sell, they don't take "no" for an answer, and I don't have the time to deal with it. So when they ask if I'm the homeowner, I respond, "No, I rent.". They thank me and continue on their way.
        794CD01 11y ago
        Yes. Just tell them you're not interested or don't answer the door. There's no need to lie.
        darpa_escapee 11y ago
        Do I look fat in this dress?
      - etatoby 11y ago
        This. It's clearly important to treat people with respect, even when they find themselves in a job position whose description goes against your interests. But you wouldn't be lying to them, as I can assure you the customer service worker couldn't care less whether you're really deaf or not. As an analogy, telling a lie via telegram only counts as lying to the recipient, not to the post office clerks typing and handling the telegram. In fact you would be lying to a faceless entity that is not a human being, whose charter clearly states that its purpose is to extract as much money as possible from you and funnel it somewhere else. Where to? Into the (ultimate) pockets of people who have built this entire construction in order to be as removed as possible from the moral and legal implications of the faceless entity's actions. Not to mention remaining very well hidden. Cowards and thieves, at the very least. Whether you believe I'm lying to the faceless entity or to the cowards and thieves who built it that way (which is a valid philosophical point) I have no qualms whatsoever doing either thing.
    - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      >That doesn't make it okay to lie to them. You are right. What makes it okay to lie is that no harm is done to anyone I care about not harming. That they made themselves someone I no longer care about harming is their own issue.
      - turar 11y ago
        Moreover, the person you'd be lying to couldn't care less if you're lying or not. The person is most likely paid by the hour and is counting down hours to clock out and go home.
      - 794CD01 11y ago
        Sorry, I'm not a consequentialist. And if harm is your criterion, what harm is done to anyone by calling customer service to cancel your account instead of lying so you can do it via email?
        chimprich 11y ago
        Any company that treats is customers so badly is likely to have a long hold period if you phone them up, probably by design. Calling them could easily take half an hour and my life only contains a finite number of half hours. I'd like to think that I could do something productive with that time that would make my life or the world slightly better. Plus the frustration of sitting on hold would negatively impact my health and state of mind. That seems like quite a lot of harm; certainly not worth an empty idealistic gesture that would not help anyone.
        794CD01 11y ago
        You can do something productive regardless. It's really baffling how many people seem to treat being put on hold as something that requires you to actively devote time to. Is this an age thing?
        Lawtonfogle 11y ago
        Being put on hold does put limits on what one can do. Can I be at the movies? Can I be having a discussion with friends and family? Can I driving? No to all of these (without having a performance impact). Being put on hold does far more damage than lying in this particular case.
    - tamana 11y ago
      I learned morality from my grandparents who survived the Nazis, and some who did not. When smeoen someone knifes me, I don't ask permission to escape.
      - 794CD01 11y ago
        "Escaping" isn't immoral. Lying is.
- softawre 11y ago
  What? Sorry, deaf humor. (I agree with you).
mizchief2 11y ago
Email them to cancel and if they don't, contact your CC company and have them stop payments.
kels 11y ago
What if I'm trying to cancel a music streaming service?
- jtolmar 11y ago
  The company might not believe you, but many deaf people do listen to music. Deaf doesn't have to mean total silence, it can also mean that sound is so muffled or distorted that you can't understand the spoken word. Music still has some value, if you crank it up.
- ovulator 11y ago
  All the better reason to cancel, no?

Pro tip: Email them to cancel. When they tell you they only cancel on the phone, tell them you're deaf and can't talk on the phone. Works every time.

by harryh 11y ago

Pro tip: Email them to cancel. When they tell you they only cancel on the phone, tell them you're deaf and can't talk on the phone. Works every time.

levemi 11y ago

Why do I have to become dishonest to cancel a service? I don't want to do that. I don't want to lie. This is terrible. This doesn't make it any better or easier to cancel. I don't want to lie and I shouldn't have to.

nksjndfdf 11y ago
Hack their shit and cancel it yourself. Works every time.
throwanem 11y ago
> Why do I have to become dishonest to cancel a service? Because the service provider is dishonest already.
- 794CD01 11y ago
  That doesn't make it okay to lie to them. Where did you learn morality? Ancient Babylon?
  - throwanem 11y ago
    Whether it's okay to lie to them has no obvious bearing on whether it's necessary. Where did you learn morality? A shallow reading of the New Testament?
    - 794CD01 11y ago
      From my parents, thanks. I fail to see how it's "necessary" in any sense here. Nobody's going to die because I called the company to cancel my account instead of emailing them.
      - Cpoll 11y ago
        Three hours of my life, spent waiting on hold, are going to die.
        794CD01 11y ago
        If you choose not to do anything else while waiting to speak to a CSR, it's a bit silly to complain.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    The fallacy is in considering a corporate account-management procedure as 'them'. There's no person there. There's a process set up. Do what you have to, to defeat the obstacles presented by that process.
    - throwanem 11y ago
      Like all such processes, this one is defined by people, and implemented mostly in terms of a set of actions available to those employees of the corporation who handle cancellation requests. Telling such a person that you're deaf, and thus unable to communicate by voice telephone, is no less a lie because that person happens to be acting on behalf of his employer. If your morality forbids lying, then this lie violates it no less than any other. There seems to me a somewhat troubling trend of reaction to the widely derided "corporate personhood" principle in law, by deliberately depersonalizing such "persons" to an extent which appears to me to increasingly include not only the "corporate person" per se, but the actual people persons who constitute that corporation, and who implement and act upon its policies - to regard the modern corporation as a faceless alien behemoth, after all, is of necessity to overlook the fact that it is an organization of people, in theory (if to a somewhat greater extent than in practice) around a common goal. Your comment here is squarely in this line. "There's no person there", after all, is blatantly erroneous: of course there is a person there, otherwise there'd be no one to whom to worry about lying. It's been a while since I last reread The Authoritarians, but I seem to remember this kind of depersonalization being a significant theme in its analysis of how your category of authoritarian followers become willing to countenance human rights abuses. In that light, it surprises me to see you express a perspective which includes precisely that kind of elision, and I'm curious whether you see a substantive difference where I do not.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Yet there is also a process. Its impersonal by design. You are not even likely to talk to the same person twice. So the rules are different. If you pretend its a one-on-one relationship, you will be manipulated, lied to and frustrated. Miss Manners reports trying to get her newspaper address changed. She called several times, but no result. Finally an agent told her that they are instructed to not do anything unless the customer was angry. She politely asked "Would you put me down as having been livid?" He politely agreed. Did she lie? We all know we're just trying to get the system to work for us. Today, when you can't even begin to talk to a real person on the other end, you have less (no?) requirement to pretend you're interacting with one.
  - darpa_escapee 11y ago
    Lying isn't inherently wrong. You aren't lying to a person with feelings, you're lying to a faceless operation that is fucking you over.
    - 794CD01 11y ago
      >Lying isn't inherently wrong. Perhaps not to you. Morality is personal, and to me this comment is abhorrent.
      - function_seven 11y ago
        Let me pose to you another scenario, and you tell me if you think my actions where abhorrent: Whenever I work from home, there's often a knock at the door from someone trying to sell me solar panels. It's always a hard sell, they don't take "no" for an answer, and I don't have the time to deal with it. So when they ask if I'm the homeowner, I respond, "No, I rent.". They thank me and continue on their way.
        794CD01 11y ago
        Yes. Just tell them you're not interested or don't answer the door. There's no need to lie.
        darpa_escapee 11y ago
        Do I look fat in this dress?
    - etatoby 11y ago
      This. It's clearly important to treat people with respect, even when they find themselves in a job position whose description goes against your interests. But you wouldn't be lying to them, as I can assure you the customer service worker couldn't care less whether you're really deaf or not. As an analogy, telling a lie via telegram only counts as lying to the recipient, not to the post office clerks typing and handling the telegram. In fact you would be lying to a faceless entity that is not a human being, whose charter clearly states that its purpose is to extract as much money as possible from you and funnel it somewhere else. Where to? Into the (ultimate) pockets of people who have built this entire construction in order to be as removed as possible from the moral and legal implications of the faceless entity's actions. Not to mention remaining very well hidden. Cowards and thieves, at the very least. Whether you believe I'm lying to the faceless entity or to the cowards and thieves who built it that way (which is a valid philosophical point) I have no qualms whatsoever doing either thing.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    >That doesn't make it okay to lie to them. You are right. What makes it okay to lie is that no harm is done to anyone I care about not harming. That they made themselves someone I no longer care about harming is their own issue.
    - turar 11y ago
      Moreover, the person you'd be lying to couldn't care less if you're lying or not. The person is most likely paid by the hour and is counting down hours to clock out and go home.
    - 794CD01 11y ago
      Sorry, I'm not a consequentialist. And if harm is your criterion, what harm is done to anyone by calling customer service to cancel your account instead of lying so you can do it via email?
      - chimprich 11y ago
        Any company that treats is customers so badly is likely to have a long hold period if you phone them up, probably by design. Calling them could easily take half an hour and my life only contains a finite number of half hours. I'd like to think that I could do something productive with that time that would make my life or the world slightly better. Plus the frustration of sitting on hold would negatively impact my health and state of mind. That seems like quite a lot of harm; certainly not worth an empty idealistic gesture that would not help anyone.
        794CD01 11y ago
        You can do something productive regardless. It's really baffling how many people seem to treat being put on hold as something that requires you to actively devote time to. Is this an age thing?
        Lawtonfogle 11y ago
        Being put on hold does put limits on what one can do. Can I be at the movies? Can I be having a discussion with friends and family? Can I driving? No to all of these (without having a performance impact). Being put on hold does far more damage than lying in this particular case.
  - tamana 11y ago
    I learned morality from my grandparents who survived the Nazis, and some who did not. When smeoen someone knifes me, I don't ask permission to escape.
    - 794CD01 11y ago
      "Escaping" isn't immoral. Lying is.
softawre 11y ago
What? Sorry, deaf humor. (I agree with you).

mizchief2 11y ago

Email them to cancel and if they don't, contact your CC company and have them stop payments.

kels 11y ago

What if I'm trying to cancel a music streaming service?

jtolmar 11y ago
The company might not believe you, but many deaf people do listen to music. Deaf doesn't have to mean total silence, it can also mean that sound is so muffled or distorted that you can't understand the spoken word. Music still has some value, if you crank it up.
ovulator 11y ago
All the better reason to cancel, no?