“Cancellation Specialists”

I fully understand that I am in sales and that I use classic sales tactics and training to better assist my students in making their school decision. I get it, I am a sales person. But I really hope that I am nothing like the cheesy AT&T sales person who just tried to pull one over on me.

I have had an unused second line on my cell phone plan for roughly 4 years. The phone companies are genius (on a side note does it mean that I am not one since I always misspell the word “genius?”) They set it up so that you get a discounted new phone every year, but only if you renew your contract for another year. Works well for me because I have been with AT&T for about 9 years, however when you add a second line for someone you are dating, not so brilliant.

Now that it is August my second line is finally able to be cancelled without a penalty and I am super pumped to have a lower cell phone bill. I was happily pondering the reduced amount as I jumped on AT&T’s website to find the customer service number. That was when this experience started to turn ugly. For Sales, click here. For Sales regarding your bill regarding your cell service on Jupiter, click here. Type in your password for online access…access denied. Seriously? I was thinking to myself that I really just want to talk to someone but the website phone number hunt was nothing compared to what happened when I actually found the number (not sure how it just popped up when I accidentally clicked somewhere that wasn’t what I thought I needed.)

The first person who attempted to “assist” me told me that I am not being charged for a second line. I was very disappointed because I was looking forward to that lower cell phone bill but I thanked him and hung up, only to look up my bill online and find that indeed I was being charged every month for that extra line. Thanks, sir. Of course I had already closed the magical portal to the customer service number so I had to rediscover it (again, no clue where it is if you are experiencing a similar issue.)

The second time I called I was passed around to three different people who all asked me the same questions in three different ways until I was finally on the phone with the Cancellation Specialist, i.e. Sales Person. His falsely chipper over annunciated sales voice thanked me for my patience and I immediately lost all patience with him and the whole situation.

“And who am I speaking with today?” He asked.

“Ann London.” I mean, who else would it be? At this point I have told them my name, address, phone number, social security number, pass code and number of freckles 10 times already.

“Alright Miss London, I understand that you want to cancel the second line on your phone plan, now tell me, what’s going on with you?” And his voice dropped into fake concerned “I’m here to help you” guy tone.

“You want to hear my whole life story? Ok, well I had a girlfriend and she joined my phone plan so that we could save money. Well we broke up because she was crazy and I tried to cancel the line then but she had just received a brand new phone so I kept the line inactive until I was able to cancel it without a penalty the size of my mortgage payment. About that time, girlfriend number two and I were cohabitating so she took over the second line, again so that we could both save money. ‘Both save money’ in both instances meant that I paid while the girlfriend in question saved money by not paying at all. Second girlfriend ditched her AT&T line when she didn’t want me to catch on that she was texting her new ‘friend’ 23.5 hours out of the day. Second girlfriend is now sleeping with her ‘friend’ and I will never share a line with someone again. So now I have had this line for 4 years and I want it gone…immediately.”

I am assuming that this situation is not in Cancellation Specialist’s training manual so he was quiet for a second. But he was a determined little sales guy, probably new, so he asked me if my ex wanted to keep the line and have it transferred to her. I told him I didn’t know he would have to call her himself, since I don’t care whether she has a place to live, much less a phone.

This is when I started to break him down and I could almost feel him wondering where he had gone wrong during his sales pitch. He switched directions and asked me if I had a laptop, presumably to sell me overpriced internet service.

“No.”

Denied again. I had demoted him to Customer Service Representative at this point, and he begrudgingly cancelled the line, and amazingly was able to change my rate plan so that I am saving $20 per month on my cell phone bill. I pointed the savings out to him before we said our goodbyes and he muttered “yeah.” I was able to get him to do the opposite of his intentions and he loathed me for it.

Long story short, don’t share phone plans with people unless they also sign their soul to you in writing as a good faith deposit. Secondly, always be prepared for Cancellation Specialists and their crappy sales training. You can come out on top without pulling a Chandler Bing and being forced to shout “I wanna quit the gym!!”