You may remember back in Dec I decided to start the journey of getting off ATT and trying the new Very Fiber service who are the first fiberoptic ISP available to the general public in my area. Ever. Unfortunately I had to go to the butthole of local ISP's, Optimum in the meantime. Well the day has finally arrived! Huzzah! This morning in a pleasant and fairly painless process, Vero Fiber was installed. They didn't even try to upsell me into a router I didn't need because he told me the Netgear router he noticed there was better than the one he brought. A shit company like Optimum would probably lie and make me pay monthly for a router I didn't need.
So the next phase was to cancel Optimum. I've heard horror stories and frankly fully expected it to be a chore to do but dumping ATT actually was pretty smooth. They basically were like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and just told me when my last day would be. So I wondered naively if the stories I'd heard were blown out of proportion. Well, let me tell you that just spent 40 mins on phone with this woman who's name I forget with a delightful, thick and vaguely Asian accent on a phone connection that let me hear myself talk a second after I said something. Which isn't very reassuring for a communications technology company. But before we even got into it she needed my account access code which is on my bill.. which I don't have because I'm paperless..which was a whole other fucked up situation from before. Anyway, now I have to log into my account on their website which for some reason the password I had saved is no longer correct. So while I'm on the phone with her I'm having to do the whole "forgot my password" shit. She keeps telling me "sir it's on the top corner of your bill" I swear this is done by them to make me want to give up on cancelling. Finally I find the code and then It went something like this: Lady: "Can I ask why you want to cancel your service?"
Me: "I just want to"
Lady: "can you tell me what is the reason?"
Me, already flabbergasted: "do I have to tell you?"
Lady: "I only ask because I see you have a really excellent promotion with us now I am wondering why do you want to leave"
Me: "I just want to leave and try something different"
Lady: "we will give you a month for free"
Me: "I don't want it. No thank you"
Lady: "BUT IT FREE WHY YOU WANT TO LEAVE?!!"
She couldn't understand why anyone could possibly turn down something that was free. She pushed me to this.
Me: "it's my right to not want to do business with your company"
Lady irritated: "BUT SIR ITS FREE SERVICE"
Me. it started to get personal "YOUR WIRES ARE RIPPED OUT OF MY WALLS. THE ROUTER IS IN THE BOX READY TO BE SENT BACK. I NO LONGER WANT YOUR SERVICE"
Lady: "....but sir it's a free promotion you dont have to be paying anything for one month..."
OMG! My coworker in the next office could hear me and was laughing. After another 20 mins of this back and forth, sounding defeated, she pauses for a few seconds and finally says she's transferring me to someone to terminate my service. While on hold but she pops back in every 40 seconds or so "I'm still working on this please hold for a few more mins and I'll be right back" She does this like 5 more times. I swear they do this on purpose so I have time to think about missing out on the sweet offer I passed up on. Finally get to the next person who's supposed to finalize my cancelation. Now at this point I've given up on ever seeing the free iPad I was supposed to get when I signed up but to fuck with them I ask about it. Of course he tries to sweeten the deal. 2 months free plus 3 years of $20/mo locked in with no contract. "and that way you can still get that free iPad" I really don't need or want an iPad but I mean that IS a sweet deal. Here's the thing tho; if this company would just have a decent fair price that didn't go up every year for no reason and just like, not be a shitty, lying, piece of shit company then maybe people wouldn't be immediately jumping onto the first legitimate competitor they've had in over a decade here. He signed off the call by trying to sell me their cellular phone service. Yea, no. Fuck off, Optimum.
Here's to Vero hopefully not turning into a shitty, greedy fuckjob of a company. Who am I kidding, this is Trump's America.
