It shouldn't be this hard

My partner has always been wary of paying bills automatically – either by credit card or with automatic deduction. I always sort of understood why that gave him the jibblies, but it wasn’t until last month that this became crystal-clear for me. Last year we signed up for Vonage service at home and at his shop. After six months of trying to fix problems with his fax line, we attempted to cancel the shop service last summer. They dicked us around for six months, swearing that they would cancel our service, “forgetting” to do so, and continuing to hit our credit card. When we called back to yell at them, they claimed that they had no record that we wanted to cancel, and that they would take care of it. And we would start all over again.

No lie: I finally called my credit card company to report my card stolen solely so that I could obtain a new card with a new number.*

Vonage = Evil. Do not EVER give them a single cent.

Now XM Radio, which up to this point has made me a very happy customer, is dancing dangerously close to the same edge. Last month we sold my car, and I called on January 13 to cancel the XM service on the radio in that car. Keep in mind that I’m not canceling my account. I’m keeping two radios and canceling a third because I sold that car. I tried to cancel the radio for the first time on January 13. That was a nightmare experience, but I finally got hold of someone who said she would cancel the service. And then she offered to send me a new radio for my new car, pre-authorized and ready to go.

“What kind do you want?”, she asks.
"I don’t know,” I say.”
Well, we can give you up to three days to decide if you’d like to call us back.”
"Cool. Thanks.”

That was three weeks ago. Yesterday I realized they hadn’t deleted my radio yet... and that’s where things really start to go downhill. Here’s a list of everything they’ve done wrong since then.

• I sent one of those “contact us” e-mails asking how to delete a radio (and gave them my radio ID) and got an automated response that they would reply in 24 hours. They didn’t.
• They do not provide any way to disconnect a radio online. Or if they do, they damn sure don’t make it easy to find.
• Their automated attendant (which has a cutesy name like Kylie or Kayla or Skank Whore or whatever) requires you to announce your needs so that all of your co-workers can hear you. I don’t know which company started that idea, but it sucks. STOP IT NOW.
• Kylie/Kayla/SW cheerfully tells you that you can interrupt her at any time, and she’s lying. If you try to interrupt, you find yourself trying to shout so that you can be heard over a computer.
• At one point, Kylie/Kayla/SW suggested that I should say “Manage Account” if I want to activate or deactivate a radio. And when I got hold of Joey $2-an-hour, he said he couldn’t deactivate radios. “Then why is that an option on your automated attendant!?”, I ask, clearly losing my patience. “Yes sir, we know, and we’re working to change it.” And he gave me another number to call.
• I call the other number and get hold of someone from a foreign country. I’m really NOT a xenophobe. I’m trying to learn two different foreign languages because I think it’s a mortal sin to visit another country without being able to speak the language, and I’m trying my damnedest to minimize my accent. And I don’t care if you want to hire little green men from Neptune to staff your phone center, but hear this: If I’m calling customer support, there’s a good chance that I’m already pissed off, and I NEED TO BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THE PERSON ON THE OTHER END OF THE PHONE WITHOUT ASKING HER TO REPEAT EVERYTHING SHE SAYS.
• After I explained that we were canceling the radio because we sold the car, and I turned down her offer to purchase a replacement radio (because I have a feeling that’s why they refused to cancel my service last month), she went through an entire script about how wonderful XM is, and do you know that you can hear sports, commercial-free music, and local traffic and weather reports? Yes, I do. Because if you were paying attention, you’ll notice that I’ve had the service for 18 months, and I’m keeping two other radios.

She did do one small thing that redeemed XM radio in my eyes. She offered to credit me for a month’s service since the last lady obviously didn’t cancel the radio. So to recap:

• Give me what I ask for the first time. To do otherwise is called stealing. (That comment is aimed more at Vonage than XM, since XM did correct their error.)
• Either let me handle it myself online, or give me to someone who is qualified and willing to give me what I ask for.
• Have a human answer your e-mails.
• Screw it: have a human answer your phone.
• If you have to make me talk to a machine, let me use the keypad to navigate.
• If you change your options, MAKE SURE YOU UPDATE THE ATTENDANT.
• If your caller calls the wrong number, you better be able to transfer them. Especially if you don't publicize the number he was supposed to call.
• If you must ask your call center to read marketing scripts to customers, make sure the scripts are appropriate. Your employee wasted a whole lot of breath telling me something I already knew.

Final summary: they did finally fix it, but I had to go through A LOT of trouble to make it happen. But if that radio still shows up on my account, you’ll hear about it here.

*Yeah, this is a nasty way to deal with it, but after six months of trying to be nice and continuing to be charged, they honestly left us with no choice.