"You Wanna Cancel Your Credit Card?!?"
Have you ever tried to cancel a credit card, close a bank account, or (shudder) terminate your AOL service? Some of these companies can really put you through the ringer with their "customer retention specialists" who ask you endless questions, then try to talk you out of your decision to cancel. They lay on the guilt, question your sanity, and make it sound downright unpatriotic.
I had such an experience today, when trying to cancel my Amazon.com Visa card. There's no balance on the account, so I figured I would call the number on the back of the card, tell them I wanted to cancel the card, and that would be it. Not so...
The first person I spoke with after navigating a few levels of voice prompts asked me if I was having a wonderful day. I told her yes, and that I would like to cancel my account. She transferred my call to someone else, and after being on hold for a short time, I was greeted by "Randy" (name changed to protect the guilty).
Randy identified himself as a Customer Support Supervisor and asked how he could help me. I told him I wanted to cancel my card. That's when the dark coulds rolled in. Here's how our conversation went from there:
Randy: Can you tell me why you want to cancel your card?
Me: I have no further use for it.
Randy: You have no further use for the card??
Me: That's right.
Randy: What was it that made the card "unbeneficial" to you?
Me: Can we skip to the end of the questions and just cancel the account?
I recently read the story of a guy who called to cancel his AOL account. They kept him on the phone for 15 minutes, asked endless questions, insulted him and then demanded to speak to his father. (The guy was 35 years old.) I knew I wanted to cancel, and I didn't want to participate in a pointless Q&A session. So I persisted...
Randy: Nope. (long pause)
Me: Can I speak to someone else who can help me cancel?
Randy: No, I'm the only one. Just me.
Me: Okay, Randy, I'm going to start recording this call now. Will that be alright?
Randy: No, that's not alri...
Me: Okay, I just started recording.
(Click!) Randy hung up on me.
Resistance is NOT Futile
Apparently it's okay for THEM to record calls for "training or verification purposes" but they sure don't want YOU to record what THEY'RE saying. Maybe it would prove embarassing to them if folks knew what a hassle it really was to cancel an account.
I called back right away, punched in my account number, and the next thing I heard was "Your account is closed. The balance is zero dollars." Well that's exactly what I wanted! So it seems that if you tell the phone rep you want to cancel, and that you're going to record the call, they can cancel your account in under ten seconds. That's good to know... I have another card I need to cancel. :-)