Wish to cancel your account? You may do so conveniently with an Online Chat Representative during 6AM-6PM Pacific Time, Monday through Friday. Or, you may call us after hours at (323) 817-3205.
Interesting use of the word “conveniently”. After days of missing the window, I finally hit it at the right time. Here’s how that convenient chat went:
- Please wait for a site operator to respond. You are currently number 1 of 1 in the queue. Thank you for your patience.
- You are now chatting with ‘Mike B.’
- David Hansson: Hi there, please cancel my account.
- Mike B.: Hello, David. Welcome to online Fax support. I am Mike Berry, your online Live Support Representative. How may I assist you?
- Mike B.: I am glad to help you. Could you please provide me your fax number, registered email address and billing zip code for verification?
- David Hansson: 555555555, [email protected], 99999
- Mike B.: I am sorry, the zip code provided is incorrect. Please confirm the 4-digit PIN or last 4 digits of the credit card on file.
- David Hansson: pin: 1111
- Mike B.: Thank you for providing your information. Please give me a moment while I pull up your account.
- Mike B.: In the meantime, please type the number corresponding to your reason for cancellation:
- Mike B.: 1) Moving to another provider
- Mike B.: 2) Bought a fax machine
- Mike B.: 3) Business or role changed
- Mike B.: 4) Short term project completed
- Mike B.: 5) Financial reasons
- Mike B.: 6) Problems with faxing or billing
- Mike B.: 7) Dissatisfied with quality of service
- Mike B.: 8) Too costly
- David Hansson: no need for fax
- Mike B.: David, as we’d like to keep your business, I can offer you a discount and also waive your subscription fee for 1 month.
- Mike B.: The discounted monthly fee would be $12.95 per month. This new plan includes 150 free inbound and 150 free outbound pages monthly.
- Mike B.: There is no contract and you may cancel anytime. Shall I switch you to this plan?
- David Hansson: no thanks, just cancel
- Mike B.: Alright.
- Mike B.: I completely understand your wish to discontinue. Conversely, May I offer you a waiver of 2 months on subscription fee so that you can re-evaluate your needs?
- Mike B.: There is no contract and you may cancel anytime.
- David Hansson: no thanks, just cancel
- Mike B.: Okay.
- Mike B.: If you wish to consider the offer, I can set your account to auto-close at the end of the 2-month waiver period, wherein you need not have to contact us again for cancelling the account.
- Mike B.: However, if you choose to continue, you would need to get back to us so that we could remove the auto-closure of your account.
- Mike B.: Would that be fine with you?
- David Hansson: nope, canceling now is what I would like
- Mike B.: Okay, I will go ahead and cancel your account.
- Mike B.: An e-mail confirming that your account has been canceled will be sent to your registered e-mail address.
- Mike B.: Is there anything else I may assist you with?
- David Hansson: that’s it, thanks
- Mike B.: Thank you for contacting online Fax support. I hope you found our session helpful. Goodbye and take care.
- Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.
I hardly need to add commentary to illustrate just how ridiculous and unfair this process is, but I can’t help myself. If you allow a customer to signup 24/7/365, you should damn well allow that customer to cancel their service 24/7/365. If you allow them to signup self-service, you should damn well allow that customer to cancel by self-service. Anything less is just crummy.
(I wish credit card companies would help enforce consumer protection against this: Unless it’s as easy to cancel as it is to signup, chargeback is automatic).
Michael Prasuhn
on 31 Jan 14Wow, sounds like a move out of the gym/fitness club playbook. I’ve read stories of people who found it easier to cancel their credit card and get a new one than to cancel a gym membership.
Geof Harries
on 31 Jan 14I always feel bad for the people, like Mike B, who are told they need to behave in this way as the customer service rep. I want to believe they are actually reasonable humans in real life, but for the sake of keeping their job and getting a paycheque, they have to follow this pre-made script and do the hard (and uncomfortable) sell that almost nobody wants to do. No doubt these horrible sales methods come down as orders from above them.
Mart
on 31 Jan 14Respect David – you have way more patience than me. I’d have lost it at the guy way before that. Was that really a human being you were ‘speaking’ to? It would have failed the Turing test for sure if that was a machine.
David Andersen
on 31 Jan 14This is what happens when companies create ‘Customer Retention’ Departments and the incentives that go along with it. The mere considering of such a function should be a red flag to these businesses – why do we even need a group that begs for business and annoys people? Maybe we’ve got something wrong with our core business?
Tommi Forsström
on 31 Jan 14Just got rid of some of my company’s extra Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions. Their process was not 100% as byzantine, but not far from it either.
Why do we let companies get away with insane processes like these? Please tell me that in 10 years this madness has stopped. Getting Adobe / eFax out of your life is easy enough, but what about carriers & cable operators who have a de facto monopoly regionally and / or apply the exact same “retention playbook” as the next company.
Erik
on 31 Jan 14Don’t blame Mike B. Their responses are mostly pre-populated menu selections. That way their adherence to procedure can be guaranteed, AND they can work multiple windows at once. I’m sure he’s QA’s any time he offers a non-canned line too early, and randomly audited overall for everything, to keep his job. Scripting and script enforcement is always necessary in a high-turnover role like that. It’s when the wrong people get their hands on the script that it gets bad… like this. I had a similar experience when trying to sign UP for DirectTV service. My one question was about whether there was a contract. I eventually just closed the window because my question STILL hadn’t been answered and the rep was just repeating himself and spewing out offers and I decided I don’t want to deal with them!
Mark Littlewood
on 31 Jan 14Not the only telco that does this. A lot of them seem to be at it. We had terrible experience with JConnect. Google, ‘how do I cancel a jconnect account’ and almost all the results are people complaining about how impossible it is.
I ended up having to report my credit card as lost then reclaimed charges. Quite extraordinary that these kinds of businesses pursue such practices but I guess they must have made a conscious decision to rip their customers off from the outset.
Fortunately, there are lots of alternatives available now, we ended up using Twilio. Leaving Roach Hotel Operator JConnect
Bryan
on 31 Jan 14I used to use eFax years ago and lived thru this nightmare except, back then, you had to call them and deal with this shenanigans over the phone. Oddly enough if I ever need to start up a fax service again I will NOT be using eFax. If they had an easy cancellation process I would have used their service again. Kind of shot themselves in the foot with this crap as far as I’m concerned.
Anonymous Coward
on 31 Jan 14this reads like so many of the transcripts I have had with online chat components of service providers, including Dish TV for example, Verizon, AT&T, hilarious, its also funny when the chat takes a super long time between responses from the “operator”, thanks for sharing DHH
Andre Kibbe
on 31 Jan 14@Erik: I don’t think David was blaming Mike B. (though I would’ve replaced his username in the log). Everyone can infer that he’s compelled to follow a retention script. It’s obvious that the problem lies upstream.
Abdu
on 31 Jan 14At least they let me do it via chat which doesn’t require 100% attention and I don’t have to talk or listen to the rep. I would move the chat window to my secondary monitor and let the rep type away while I am working on my primary monitor. I understand why the cancellation process is lengthy and I don’t have to like it. Companies don’t let customer leave easily. I would rather do it via chat than a phone call where it’s harder to context switch. The whole thing takes less than 5 minutes and I won’t let it ruin my day. You probably wish all companies have your single-click-no-questions-asked cancellation process.
Travis Stoliker
on 31 Jan 14I just had a similar problem with FreedomPop yesterday. They don’t have a cancel button in their interface. Their forum instructs you to “open a ticket” to cancel your account. Yet when I did that 24 hours later a support rep replied to my ticket saying I must call in order to cancel. Then I called and sat on hold for 20 minutes, never able to actually speak to an agent or cancel. Luckily @jason was able to help me and got the CEO to give me a full refund and a personal email. However, he never did agree to just put a simple “cancel” button in the interface.
R.O.B.
on 31 Jan 14Same thing happens when trying to cancel SiriusXM. Takes about 15 minutes on hold, then another 7 minutes with the ‘customer retention’ specialist. Can’t cancel over the internet at all. Must call.
Mike
on 02 Feb 14Been through this many times and it is very frustrating. You should be able to cancel as easy as it is to sign-up. I guess they figure if you don’t take their deals they’ve lost you anyway so who cares if you get mad.
Mark
on 02 Feb 14Feel your frustration and agree with your sentiment all day long. Opting out of emails with some companies is just as ridiculous, and unbelievably, I had a hell of a time trying to reactivate my account with Adobe.
However, the last thing I would want to do is get the bank involved in this. They have their own issues, and would only add an unnecessary layer of complexity to what amounts to a botched up-sell attempt.
Chris
on 05 Feb 14I recommend a “virtual account numbers” service like the one Citibank offers for their credit cards. You can set the expiration date for cards or jump online and cancel them immediately.
Desi Matlock
on 05 Feb 14I only have online FAX service for some of my oldest (age-wise) clients who still send me everything by FAX. Printouts of their websites with changes scribbled on them in pen. Since I have no land-line (like most of my generation) I keep an online fax service through Skype called PAMFax. It works and was so much less of a hassle than eFax – cheaper, too. All the same, I reconsider whether I want to keep it every few months, and force those few technophobe clients to scan their printouts and email them.
Todd B
on 05 Feb 14Just had exact same experience with LogMeIn.com, compounded by their decision to STOP supporting their paid app (I paid $30 but others paid as much as $130) which connected to their free service, i.e. pay up-front instead of yearly. Now, the free service is gone and you have to pay $100/year. Too many cheaper alternatives that aren’t slimy.
Zach
on 06 Feb 14Had the same experience with them.
This discussion is closed.