So you've decided to cancel your cable subscription -- maybe you're tired of all the shady crap these companies have been pulling recently , or maybe you figured out how to use that Netflixster thing your grandkids keep telling you about. In any case, well done! Now you don't have to put up with their ridiculous bullshit anymore!

4 Canceling Your Subscription Is Absurdly Difficult Canceling Your Subscription Is Absurdly Difficult

Say you want to leave Comcast, so you decide to handle this the same way you'd end a relationship: through the Internet, obviously. After all, just a few clicks on Comcast's site can you get you a subscription, so it should be equally easy to opt out, right? Nope, for that you have to call a representative, who, as this recorded call that went viral last week shows, might hassle you for 10 minutes to try to get you to stay. If your monitor doesn't have a fist-shaped hole by the time you reach minute two of that recording, you're a better person than us.

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Minute five.

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Why's the customer service representative pleading like an unseen hit man has a gun to his head? Because he's going to be in Comcast's shithouse if he lets the canceling customer -- whose call he took out of sheer fucking kismet -- waltz off without his account intact. The most the employee can do is scream out an infinite labyrinth of words and pray the customer becomes bored, confused, or frustrated enough to keep the damn account. (That, or starve to death.)

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And it's not just a Comcast problem. Back in 2006, one AOL representative famously tried to get a canceling customer's father on the line to cajole him into staying with AOL. Time Warner sweet talks you when you try to leave, but once you say no, they go from "I promise I'll change, babe!" to "YOU'LL PAY, MOTHERFUCKER" -- as in, you'll literally have to keep paying them unless you physically return your cable box to one of their offices, which of course involves putting up with limited hours and DMV-level line length. Comcast does this, too, by the way, and it's no coincidence: These companies know their customers hate them, so they try to make leaving them as inconvenient as possible.