This is NOT an aberration...it is how these people do business
I worked for both AOL and Verizon, and can report from personal experience that the poor customer service representative would like nothing more than to simply comply with a customer request to cancel service. What most people don't know is that the customer service representative is then harassed by a supervisor for failing to "save" customers from canceling the service. If said customer service representative has too many failures to "save" customers from canceling, they are taken off the phones and forced to review their "techniques" for saving customers. If there is no "improvement", they are written up or terminated. I've witnessed some supervisors warning employees that they were not allowed to cancel a customer account without supervisor approval. Wow. I feel for the people working in call center sweatshops. I'm willing to bet the poor guy on this call was only worried about keeping his job. The players from AOL and Verizon usually migrate to other companies with large customer service workforces. Make no mistake, this is exactly how companies like Comcast do business.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
