On cancelling Verizon service

Wow, switching cell carriers is apparently a big deal to the carriers. They go to a *lot* of trouble to keep people, which says to me they're making a lot of money on us.

Anyway, all I wanted to do was cancel my Verizon service.

Try #1

This afternoon I called their customer service line. I kindly asked them to cancel my service, saying that we'd already switched to AT&T. (I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to guess why.)

That operator proceeded to literally spend an entire hour with me on the phone, taking me down different paths obviously designed to keep me with Verizon: "With all cell carriers you have 30 days to change your mind, just go back and cancel." "You owe it to yourself to try this new Verizon phone, no cost or obligation, I'll even ship it to you free and give you both lines next month for $15. If you don't like it, ship it back free and you pay nothing." "AT&T's coverage is bad, their support is bad, and they're more expensive, you should definitely select your network carefully." "You know you can give your lines to someone else? Or convert one to a landline?"

Literally a whole hour of this!

Wow. That was emotionally draining. I had great reasons for switching, but this lady had several strong avenues, totally dodging my reasons and trying to remove any excuses I had for not staying on.

Finally, I just said, "You know, you're right, I need to think about this before I make any decisions. Thanks..."

"Oh, you're quite welcome. We're so glad to have you as a Verizon customer."

(As an aside, I am sad to go -- in any group of people I always had better cell coverage than everybody else. Verizon's been good to us. It's only 2 years, though, and a lot will change by 2011.)

Try #2

Two hours later, I was a little smarter.

me: "Hello, I'm calling to cancel my service."

Verizon: "Oh sure we can help with that. Were you concerned about the cost, or the phone? or the network?"

me: "No, just personal reasons."

Verizon: "Uh... Okay, I understand. You know you have several options for these lines .... Have you considered any of those?"

me: "Yeah, we understand all those things but we just need to do this."

Verizon: "Okay. It's asking me to put a reason in here and they won't let me put 'personal reasons' in there..."

me: "I guess 'expense' would be the best thing to put, but it's complicated."

Verizon: "Okay."

Done and done.