I hate talking in the phone to people I don't know so intensely that I have wasted hundreds of dollars on various things because I procrastinated calling to cancel.

This effect is real, and companies know it, and design their cancellation processes to extract extra money from people.

Mate, I mentioned up above that the process by which I cancelled was a chat box that intermittently ate maybe three minutes. Not mentioned was I did it while cooking breakfast.

The best experience would have been no human intervention necessary, but for a process where someone was involved, it was incredibly straightforward. They gave me an offer, I refused it, and nobody had to be a dick about it and no phone calls were made.

Then that part has changed. I had to talk on the phone when I canceled about 8 years ago

Someone informed me in a different part of the thread that this apparently is the California cancellation experience from the New York Times, which I wasn’t sure of. Like I said above, I was expecting a button or link because that is more akin to how I actually signed up, but there you go.

Unfortunately that leaves the phone option as the remaining option for everyone else.

They don't have the right to my attention. If they were to cancel my service due to lack of payment (for example), do you think they would engage me in a dialogue to discuss it or just send me a notice in the mail?