The cancellation process.

With our move in only 3 weeks, I've finished canceling our utilities, cell phones, and my gym membership. I never enjoy canceling things. I always feel uncomfortable when the agent on the other end of the phone starts through their form comments: "Was there a problem with the service?", "Would you like to transfer your service?", "If you find someone to take over your cellphone you can keep the number".

But now I have a great answer. "We're moving to Switzerland". The response usually is "Oh, okay, we'll cancel the service".

Quick, painless. Love that.

Except with Verizon.

Verizon's customer service line is automated. Right off the bat I'm annoyed- the automated service line is the kind that requires spoken responses rather than touch tone inputs. Probably annoys me because it never picks up my responses and my end of the call sounds something like "no. no. NO!" followed by some punches of the 0 key to try to get a person on the line.

Anyway, I finally found my way to the cancellation section. I was told the wait was approximately 6 minutes and if I would like, I could have Verizon call me back when my turn came around. Nice! So I entered my phone number to have them call me back. But after that the call wasn't disconnected and I was transferred to another section of the automated service line. Assuming that it hadn't worked, I waited on the line.

Wrong decision. While I waited, Verizon called me back. Damn. So I hung up and tried again. This time I found my way to an automated cancellation section. Problem with this decision- I answered yes to moving out of the area and then they wanted to know what state I was moving to. Shoot. The 0 button couldn't get me out of that question so I hung up and tried a third time.

This time, I decided to wait on the line and not take any chances of getting transferred somewhere else. Finally after 5 minutes or so I was transferred to a customer service rep. Told her I wanted to cancel my service and saw an end in sight. Oops, nope- canceling phone service is handled by a "special" customer service department.

So she transferred me. And I waited for TWENTY minutes for this super secret special customer service agent who was the only one with powers to cancel my phone service. After what seemed like an eternity (aka 20 minutes listening to elevator music), someone picked up. It then took her another 5 minutes for her to cancel my phone service.

Overall, a good 45 minutes of effort to cancel my phone service. FORTY FIVE minutes!!! Comcast took five. And one phone call.

Now I just hope that it worked and I won't have to call in 3 weeks to remind Verizon to turn off our phone!