The obvious answer is that it's been tested to result in fewer cancellations.

The optimization is for short term profit, not for customer experience.

If you care about customer experience, talk to the government, not businesses

When I cancelled my cable internet, I had to call and decline three increasingly appealing “final offers” (spaced out by some pleasant-but-awkward small talk).

As soon as I said no to the third, the rep said they would disconnect the account, and that was it. Super weird, especially to think that that is literally someone’s job, all day long, every day. Hopefully they get to rotate in and out of that desk.

For wireless you don't actually have to call. You can just ask your new provider to port the phone number and your subscription on your old provider will be deactivated.

But yes, it's bullshit and it's worse for those other services.

I've recently got a preloaded Visa that doesn't effect credit that I'll be using for shit companies that I have to deal with so I can just cut off the funding instead. Problem should take care of itself.

It's shocking to me that you can't simply stop paying when you don't want to use a service anymore - you have to ask them to stop taking your money. When you actually think about it, it's ridiculous and unacceptable.

This is a standard, and terrible, practice with many large companies. They want you to call them so a "customer retention" specialist can try to talk you into not cancelling. They'll usually offer you a great deal to stay.

" Why you need to contact us

We need to speak with you directly in order to process your cancellation request and ensure you are informed of any details relating to your account changes."

this is BS.

Rogers is an abysmally bad company in terms of market near-monpolization and customer service, BUT, from the point of view of someone in telecom:

There is a non zero risk of unauthorized 3rd parties making service changes or cancellations to somebody's account, so it's standard procedure to have a customer service rep ask some basic security questions of the account holder before proceeding with a port, change or cancellation.

You don't want just any random person who stole your login/password to the rogers portal to be able to port your cellphone number away, right?

There's a valid reason why a few barriers should be introduced to cancelling someone's service or making significant service changes, before the company can be totally satisfied that it really is the authorized account holder making the change.

You get security problems like people trying to port away someone's number to receive SMS for "SMS 2FA" (which is not really 2FA at all, that's a whole other shitshow) to hijack cryptocurrency trading accounts or similar. Or any other service that can have its credentials reset by sending an SMS to the "authorized" phone number.

In addition to the risk of fraud for things like porting numbers away, there's things like disgruntled ex-girlfriends/ex-boyfriends trying to cancel peoples' services.

All of that said, it is also a sad fact that C-level execs at big consumer-abusive canadian telecoms consider it totally fine to introduce whatever arbitrary barriers they can to reduce the level of customer churn.

There is the factor that a great many Rogers customers have been tricked at the start of their service into signing up for 12, 24 or 36 month term contracts, so arbitrarily cancelling service can have financial implications for the customer if they didn't look in detail at what they signed up for when they started the service. Even with BYOD device plans, the 3rd party Rogers resellers in Canada such as Glentel get a buttload more commission from locking people into 24 month contract terms, so they do that as the default now unless you look carefully at what you're signing.

Because you're not in California, and the Canadian government hasn't forced an end to this bullshit practice.

I have a question, maybe it is unethical, maybe I am really that close to the spectrum I need it, but here it goes.

Has anyone used TTY functions/ Services for the deaf/disabled to communicate with customer service to enable you to not actually talk to people on the phone?

Count yourself lucky. I once had a phone company that needed a FAX to cancel. And even then they didn't.

Germany recently passed a law because of this. Providers who offer contracts over the internet now have to also show a "Cancel"-Button that cannot be hidden behind sub-menus. It's really great.

what happens if you just cancel the recurring payments from your card?

Use Paypal or whatever as a proxy and cancel them there, or ask your bank to not honor the debits.

Then they can call you if they are interested.

But indeed, this shit should be illegal practice.

SiriusXM is the notorious offender. Easy sign up, but to cancel you need to call or chat within business hours.

Maybe that is their way of confirming that you are a real person who actually wants to cancel and not some bot programmed to wreak havoc on some company by canceling many of their customers' service.

Democracy being highly illusory may have something to do with it - I suspect such policies (this is just one among many) being legal is not The Will of The People.

Did you have to call them to set up service?

In conservative towns, a call is usually a sign of mutual respect between the two parties involved. Making everything digital destroys the community between buyer and seller and is a reason why there is service fatigue and exhaustion in left-leaning communities today.