Althouse: "This is exactly what it feels like to cancel cable. This is not a sketch, it's a documentary."

November 7, 2021

"This is exactly what it feels like to cancel cable. This is not a sketch, it's a documentary."

That's the top comment — and I totally agree with it — on this:

44 comments:

Temujin said...: Finally! Laugh out loud funny. That only took 30 or so years.

Thanks for doing the hard part and wading through it all.; 11/7/21, 10:19 AM
Narr said...: OK, that was funny because it's true.; 11/7/21, 10:19 AM
Eric said...: Some years ago, I cancelled my cable service. As a customer, I received at least one special offer from them every week, so I anticipated being deluged with offers to get me back. None arrived for several months but then I got a phone call. My first statement to the agent was "You have to understand how much I hate your company." That ended the call and I've never heard back.; 11/7/21, 10:21 AM
Lars Porsena said...: A near perfect representation of what it is like. It took me about three weeks of calls, waiting for access codes, authorization codes, being put on hold only to have the call dropped, getting assurances that I would be called back and never hearing from them again. The only thing that want accurate was that there was no humor involved.; 11/7/21, 10:24 AM
Yancey Ward said...: When I moved down here to Tennessee to help my mother care for my father in 2011, I knew I wasn't going to be spending much time at my home over the next year or two, so I called up Charter to close my account, and I let them talk me into a suspension of the account for the time I was in Tennessee rather than a full closure- there would be no charges for the equipment (the cable box) during that time as an enticer. Sure enough, the bill for the next month arrived indicating that the suspension never took place. I called them again and this time I closed the account and asked them to bill me for the box since I didn't want to drive back to CT to turn it in. They agreed to do this. The next month the bill arrived again indicating no changes had ever taken place. I solved this by simply not paying. They kept sending bills for the next 6 months, then threatening letters, then nothing after about a year's time.; 11/7/21, 10:27 AM
Ceciliahere said...: No, not really accurate. Everyone in the skit spoke English without an indecipherable accent. But, it is SNL so that explains that inaccuracy.; 11/7/21, 10:37 AM
Ice Nine said...: This could all be obviated by going over to their office and doing it in person, could it not? Sure, driving time but that probably breaks even at worst. And think of the antacid you will save.; 11/7/21, 10:43 AM
etbass said...: Despite being assured that I could cancel a free trial of YouTubeTV on line, it would not work. I could not get through the battery of phone transfers so wrote a registered and timely letter to the CEO of YouTubeTV canceling my trial to avoid the first month billing.

It didn't work and my Capital One account began seeing monthly charges. Called Capital One to dispute the charges and found out I had to do this by mail. Did so, was ignored but began getting daily calls from Karen (believe it or not) with Capital One to collect the YouTubeTV bill.

A year later, I was still getting the calls when Capital One began collection activity. Several collection agencies later, it all finally petered out. A few months later, I tried to get a gas credit card and was told my credit was no good. I owe nothing, have income in six figures, and have never missed paying a bill on time (except the bogus YouTubeTV bill).

Life in the modern world is fabulous. I now use my daughters YouTubeTV credentials and pay nothing to YouTubeTV and feel no compunction whatsoever.; 11/7/21, 10:46 AM
tcrosse said...: Unfortunately the cable company is also my internet service provider, so they get me coming and going.; 11/7/21, 10:50 AM
gspencer said...: "Due to the unprecedented call volume your wait time is *** minutes. We look forward to serving you."; 11/7/21, 10:58 AM
rehajm said...: This was what it was like to cancel Sirius satellite radio. Now they are happy to cancel and sign you up for a streaming subscription at less than $15/month. Thanks Disruption!; 11/7/21, 11:18 AM
rehajm said...: Renting a car from Hertz was about the same only their website and their app were broken and the phone wanted to charge me 5 percent of my rental fee to speak with a live operator.

…and that’s all just to get them to take my money….; 11/7/21, 11:20 AM
cubanbob said...: I would be happy if cable was unbundled so I could only pay for internet and whatever channel I wanted to pay for.; 11/7/21, 11:24 AM
Xmas said...: The "No Nut November" reference was a winner.; 11/7/21, 11:25 AM
Readering said...: Accurate except the part about the land line. In LA they took away my land line. "But what about the next earthquake?" "Here's a battery."; 11/7/21, 11:40 AM
MayBee said...: I loved the "No Nut November". When I moved outside of LA, I could not get on the phone with my cable provider without them telling me about a deal on The Playboy Channel. It felt so weird.

Over the past several months, I've been moving my parents to a senior living center. Both of my parents are having cognitive issues and they need a lot of hand holding and explaining. It's been multiple days off from work, driving across the state and being away from home several nights a week, meetings with realtors, movers, doctors, pharmacists, handymen, cleaning people, charities to take donations, and someone to take left over stuff to the dump. In the middle of it, my dad needed surgery and all that entailed, and I took time away from home to help him and my mom through that.

And the one vendor who let me down was the cable company. They told me all I needed to do was bring the equipment from the old place to the new place. And I did, but because there was a land line involved, there needed to be some special internal notification so that the landline could be set up at a new address. I mean, obviously that isn't something I am supposed to know, but I would hope the cable people did. But no.

We're in the new place, and my parents don't know any of this, but their account was a disaster. In practice, it looked like everything but the landline was working. I spent hours on the phone with Comcast to try to fix it, and they finally said they needed to send someone out. I stayed an extra day at my parents waiting for that technician. Who apparently came, got to the parking area and to gain access.....called the land line.., which of course wasn't answered because that was the thing he was coming to fix. I called Comcast and to my surprise, just started sobbing. With all it had taken to move them, that pushed me over the edge.; 11/7/21, 12:03 PM
wild chicken said...: I managed to get cable tv channels off my spectrum accountby going to the office.

Not sure what would have happened if I'd tried to get rid of the whole thing.

Spectrum cable broadband is the only game in town here in Missoula.; 11/7/21, 12:03 PM
rrsafety said...: Why did they chose to pick on Spectrum?

SNL is on NBC which is owned by NBCUniversal which is owned by COMCAST.; 11/7/21, 12:18 PM
Andrew said...: Very funny. It's been years since I laughed at an SNL skit as much as that one.

I sent it to a friend of mine. He texted back:

"I agree - pretty funny / only thing better is if they would have had Patel from India on call."

True. But then the skit would have led to news articles starting with "Outrage over..." and making comparisons with Apu from the Simpsons. SNL still has to walk the line.; 11/7/21, 12:51 PM
Chris Lopes said...: Thanks to streaming, you only need your cable company as an internet service provider, if at all. There are only a gazillion and one streaming services (some of which are free) that can provide whatever TV fix you are jonesing for. The cable companies make it as tough as possible to cancel them because they know how easy it is to replace them. And yes, that was funny.; 11/7/21, 12:55 PM
Leland said...: I had the same trouble cancelling my Discover Card. It took 3 months before they could cancel it. Then 4 months after it was cancelled, a representative called me asking me if I had changed my mind. Nope. So why is that you left Discover? Because I was tired of all the phone calls. What calls sir? Like this one, always calling to sell me services I did not want.; 11/7/21, 1:25 PM
Rory said...: There are Robert Benchley stories about the frustrations of using things like telephones and self-serve elevators that seem dime-a-dozen until you realize they were the source material for Carlin, Cosby, and Seinfeld.; 11/7/21, 2:48 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Ha! Mine was easy. "Why are you cancelling?" "[Your competitor] offered me twice the speed at half the price plus $350 in gift cards for switching." "Okay. I've got you cancelled. Thank you so much."; 11/7/21, 2:55 PM
Mary Beth said...: Am I the only person in the US who hasn't had a problem with cancelling or changing services? Although, when I cancelled my cable, I didn't call. I unhooked all the boxes and collected all the remotes and went to the closest Spectrum office.

They did want to review my internet service, which was fine, since I ended up with the same speed (the fastest they have) but at a lower cost.

I try to avoid calling them because I hate being put on hold. Everyone's hold music is uncomfortable to listen to - like listening to a radio station that isn't quite tuned in. I'm convinced it's on purpose to get people to hang up in frustration.; 11/7/21, 3:10 PM
Dave said...: I ordered cable internet, and my agent was from Jamaica. I gave her my email address, and told her to email me. I am going to visit Jamaica soon. So far, I have been completely satisfied with my customer service experience.

However, I was adding service, not cancelling.; 11/7/21, 6:24 PM
Mark said...: rehajm said...

This was what it was like to cancel Sirius satellite radio.

------

My experience exactly. Cable was an absolute breeze in comparison; 11/7/21, 7:46 PM
jpg said...: I told them the reason I was cancelling was that I was going to be sentenced to prison.; 11/7/21, 8:05 PM
jpg said...: I told them the reason I was cancelling was that I was going to be sentenced to prison.; 11/7/21, 8:10 PM
Robert Roy said...: Hmm, no issues here with the black guy impersonating a Hispanic accent? What would we call that, brownvoice?; 11/7/21, 9:17 PM
Stephen St. Onge said...: jpg said...
"I told them the reason I was cancelling was that I was going to be sentenced to prison."

I will have to remember that one.; 11/7/21, 11:19 PM
West TX Intermediate Crude said...: That clip made me think back to the early days of Mrs. Crude's and my marriage. SNL was part of our Saturday night ritual; it had a lot of laugh-out-loud funny sketches like this one, that went on far too long, beating the dead horse into submission.
Still, worth watching and far better than the political dreck they feature in recent years.
Thanks for the clip, Ms. A.; 11/8/21, 5:40 AM
Lurker21 said...: Cable companies are also internet and phone companies nowadays, aren't they? There's one of their stores on every street corner, isn't there? So it wasn't hard to make an appointment, get there on time with the cable box, wait there for an hour or two and cancel cable.; 11/8/21, 7:23 AM
TaeJohnDo said...: One big issue with camping at State and National Parks is that they are on-line reservations only thru Reserve America. It will often show that many places are booked 100 percent, even though we can see open camp sites where we are there. Obviously people are booking sites and then not showing and there is no way to get into those sites. I hate it. But today, I just went to Reserve America to cancel a reservation, and found they want to charge me $5 to cancel. I have a State Pass - I paid nothing for the sites other than the mandatory $12 fee to have the "privilege" of using Reserve America to book the site. Give them another $5? Nah, screw them. Sorry capers. At least in NM they will open the site up after the first day of a now show. Many places will not do that.; 11/8/21, 10:34 AM
TaeJohnDo said...: One big issue with camping at State and National Parks is that they are on-line reservations only thru Reserve America. It will often show that many places are booked 100 percent, even though we can see open camp sites where we are there. Obviously people are booking sites and then not showing and there is no way to get into those sites. I hate it. But today, I just went to Reserve America to cancel a reservation, and found they want to charge me $5 to cancel. I have a State Pass - I paid nothing for the sites other than the mandatory $12 fee to have the "privilege" of using Reserve America to book the site. Give them another $5? Nah, screw them. Sorry capers. At least in NM they will open the site up after the first day of a now show. Many places will not do that.; 11/8/21, 10:37 AM
Skippy Tisdale said...: Just don't pay your bill and they will cancel. Zero effort.; 11/8/21, 10:52 AM
Skippy Tisdale said...: "Hmm, no issues here with the black guy impersonating a Hispanic accent? What would we call that, brownvoice"

No. Dominican.; 11/8/21, 11:40 AM
Bill Peschel said...: We're the 1 percenters who haven't had cable since 1995. We canceled when the TV broke and never went back.

Now we have Verizon internet and phone, but not TV service.

Not only have we not missed a thing -- we watch movies on DVD -- but we missed the drumbeat of the anti-Trump and pro-vaccine narratives. We read online news sources and analysis that showed clearly how the national media is dedicated to fueling their masters' narrative at the expense of their credibility.

It's like living in the world of "They Live," only without Roddy Piper.; 11/8/21, 2:19 PM
RLW said...: Still easier than cancelling AOL back in the day.; 11/8/21, 5:44 PM
ga6 said...: Next question: who owns Reserve America? Biden or Gore families?; 11/8/21, 5:47 PM
McGehee said...: Ah, yes. Customer Retention. And it's not just for cable TV and phone companies anymore. Months ago when I needed to change doctors, the new doctor wanted me to work with a different clinic than I had been.

A regional exec with the chain that operated the clinic I was leaving, called me to try to talk me out of it. He slandered the new doctor. He promised that HE COULD FIX the issues I had with the old doctor. He simply would not take no for an answer.

I had to hang up on him and refuse to take any more calls from him.

Three nurses from the old clinic came to work at the new one after I switched, so I know I wasn't the only one this guy had... charmed.

There are more stupid things under Heaven than are dreamt of in Horatio's philosophy, and we may never know which is the stupidest -- but Customer Retention has got to be a contender.; 11/8/21, 5:55 PM
Paddy O said...: I had an easy time cancelling but I was moving to where they didn't offer service. So maybe that's a good way to get out of the bother.; 11/8/21, 6:01 PM
mesquito said...: Ok. My mom passed away a couple of months ago. I need to cancel her satellite subscription. This post gives me permission to be an asshole from step one. Thanks.; 11/8/21, 6:20 PM
Buford Gooch said...: It's much easier in small town America. I called, spoke to a friendly representative, and had the deal done in fewer than 10 minutes. Local company operated by local people.; 11/8/21, 7:05 PM
Anonymous said...: Just goes to show that a bunch of monkeys can come up with something funny if they just randomly type long enough. Probably the first funny thing on SNL since the 80's or 90's.; 11/8/21, 7:37 PM