This is a French perspective where such a reaction would be normal. I did it twice, one company called to say I am in the wrong, I asked them to please repeat so that I can record that for the lawsuit.

They hung up and never called back.

Bell Canada and other big Canadian corporations have direct access to credit report records. If not paid, they will spoil your credit report. A credit report is essential in Canada for things such as credit cards, mortgage, car loan, and sometimes even for renting an apartment or home. With a poor credit report score all this would become more expensive or even unavailable.

Customer service provided by large corporations in Canada is sometimes absurdly poor, but you can't do much about it because there are simply no reasonable alternatives.

Same goes for a credit card, you can ask you ban for a reverse charge and disallow any further charges from that company.

This credit report thing is a real pain in the US/Canada, from what I see in various posts and comments.

When I eventually gave up and called, the representative tried to convince me not to cancel by describing the various scenarios in which emergencies could happen (including my family getting hurt) and I wouldn't be reachable without the phone plan.

This wreaks fear into most merchants, not only because fraud policies at banks greatly favor the buyer, but also because too many reversals within a certain period can cause a payment processor to charge higher rates on all transactions indefinitely, sometimes even if the merchant always cooperates.

Edit: Also usually works with most check cards, but I've come close to losing with them a couple times, whereas real credit cards are practically bulletproof in my experience unless you're just attempting some kind of egregious fraud.

If they use invoice based billing then i make sure it's easy to cancel.

Don't support businesses with shady practices.

The other thing I learned - if your card is lost and you get a new credit card, I thought I had to update the number for the subscriptions. Nope, some services like Comcast knew my new number automatically, while others didn't. I don't know how this works.

Let people cancel, confirm they've cancelled, and then ask for feedback. Put a feedback box on the confirmation page, imvite them to reply to the confirmation email. If you really must know, send a letter, and make one phone call (leave a message when they don't answer).

Anything else is abuse, and they're leaving you because you're abusive.

https://baremetrics.com/blog/i-sold-baremetrics

https://xenon.io

Big companies like Comcast are just doing this to extract every penny.

A startup trying to survive and make their product better for customers--or fix something that went wrong--is completely different situation IMO.

I'm okay with an optional questionnaire, and I often fill them out when I cancel a service. But if it wants me to call to cancel, and especially if it deliberately makes the call longer and unbearable, I have all the reasons to be angry about it. I don't care if it's a struggling startup. A startup is an organization, not an actual life; I'm not going to pity it.

Obviously, an optional questionnaire is not as effective as forcing a call onto the customer. But it's the right thing to do.

True. I'm questioning where is the trade-off and balance between making it more difficult to cancel vs. trying to fix what's wrong.

If I need to do anything more than sending the message (on my own schedule - this part is important, I manage my personal life on nights and weekends) saying “hi, I’d like to cancel please” in order to actually have service cancelled and billing stopped, I’m likely to be frustrated and not give any feedback.

I’ve had very positive experiences with reps replying to confirm my service was cancelled, and then initiating a quick conversation about why I asked for that. I’m usually happy to offer at least some quick feedback, because I didn’t feel like I was being held hostage.

I’d still prefer virtually any other no-contact mechanism for ending an agreement for consumer services, though. Offer me winbacks if you want, add an optional exit interview to the process. But really, please don’t gate my ability to end an agreement I’m theoretically able to cancel at any time behind a manual process that’s any more difficult than my signup was. The intent is different but the end result is the same for the customer.

It's important to be reasonable about this, though. Email isn't secure, and anyone could send an email pretending to be you. If there are irreversible consequences to cancelling, such as deleting personal data held on the service, not only would it be irresponsible to accept an unverified email message as a cancellation request, it could actually be illegal in various places (under the GDPR, for example).

Not providing a straightforward cancellation option via a website where the customer's identity has already been confirmed using their normal credentials is a different matter entirely.

If a customer emails to cancel, just email back a cancellation link that requires signing in. I think that's a good middle ground.

Obviously if someone does email asking to cancel, a suitable method of cancellation should be explained to them.