I've canceled four streaming services in the past month. The experience, shall we say, varied.
One I got through Apple TV; one I got through Amazon. In both cases I clicked a button, and that was it. The Ghost of Steve Jobs did not come to me in a dream, shaking his head in disappointment. Jeff Bezos did not drive slowly past my house in a black van, scowling. Easy and/or peasy.
DirecTV: This was a bit more difficult. I had to talk to a customer retention agent, who are like marriage counselors who show up when you've filed divorce papers. Previously, they'd tried to keep me, but this time I got a nihilist who had decided that nothing mattered. In the long run the Earth would be swallowed by a flaming sun, and who was he to keep me from slipping the surly bonds and flying off? Nothing lasts; everything melts away in the forge of time. Or, as he put it, "Have a nice night."
The only thing left to cancel was SiriusXM, the satellite radio service. A while ago I wrote here about how I halved my bill by just suggesting I might cancel, but this time I was ... well, Siriusly canceling. Why? Because they'd redesigned the app and the website, making it unusable.
Now every time I open the app it gives me the opportunity to listen to Howard Stern. I do not want to listen to him. I do not want to look at him. I'm not particularly happy about living in a culture that still has space for this hairy old buzzard.
The app also wants me to check out some channels filled with music I do not like, inasmuch as it is not actually music but a series of flatulatory bass notes over which a tinny voice is boasting about his inestimable accomplishments.
It takes two or three or four taps to find what I want. My "favorites" are now called "library," which is as intuitive as calling your "friends" your "dormitory."
It is a complete failure, and judging from online forums, people feel as if their favorite meal-delivery service started dropping off bags of plague rats. Everyone has the same question: Did they not test this on actual people? I don't think so. They may have tested it on rocks, or anesthetized mollusks.
So I decided to cancel. It would be more sensible to spend the $10 on a hammer, and hit myself in the head with it once a month.
You wonder if anyone in the company is paying attention to the fuss: "Hmm. So. We roll out a new concept, and within a fortnight customers who've been with us for decades rage-quit en masse. Could there be a connection?
"Nah. They probably all died. That's it. They died before the app came out, and the survivors are just getting around to canceling."
Alas, you cannot cancel without "chatting" with some overworked fellow on the other side of the planet who's handling 27 other chat windows at the same time. It took 37 minutes. I was offered a low-low-low package — 26 cents a decade, and Howard Stern personally calls you up and reads transcripts of the show — but I replied, "No. No. NO. LET ME GO, I BEG OF YOU."
Whereupon the retention agent texted, somewhat huffily, that it was his duty to inform me of these special rates.
His duty. As if they took an oath. As if there's some fellow awake in the dark at 2 a.m., sitting in the kitchen with a glass of whiskey and a cigarette, thinking about how he'd let that guy cancel after 17 minutes on hold, didn't tell him about the special offer where you can get all the music channels for a dollar a year except Howard Stern gets to live in your spare room. Full disclosure: He has gas issues, lots of gas issues, but it's the best deal we'll have all year. Didn't say a word. He'd let himself down. He'd let them all down. He had a duty, dammit.
If I were king of the forest, I'd pass a law that said all subscription services must have a web page with a big red CANCEL button you can hit at any time. It would keep them on their toes. They could see exactly what it was the customer was using that made them bail.
(With an exemption for newspaper columnists, of course.)
james.lileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 • Twitter: @Lileks • facebook.com/james.lileks
