Cancelling Cell-C fibre [HOWTO]

The_Potty_1

The_Potty_1

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So I've had a fibre contract with Cell-C / Vumatel for just over 2 years, I've been on their nastiest entry-level offering (4 down, 1 up), and felt it was time to scale up. After reading the extremely helpful 'Comparing ISP networks' thread, I decided to switch to Cool Ideas, and jump to 50/5.

Perhaps unsurprising to some, I am having some trouble cancelling my contract. In lieu of flaming them, I thought I would post my experience, to entertain and delight those in similar situations.
 
Subject: Cancellation of C-Fibre
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2018 10:48:46 +0200
To: [email protected]

Hi

I would like to give one calendar months written notice to cancel my C-Fibre contract.

My Account Number is #######.

As my contract has run for over 24 months, there should be no remaining costs for installation, connection, or the Wifi router.

The date of termination of services can be either the 25th or 31st of October 2018. Please notify me which date you prefer.

Please send me a final statement at that time so that I may settle the account.

Note that I am switching to another fibre provider, I assume they may contact you regarding transfer of the CPE.

Regards
 
Subject: Cancellation of C-Fibre [Incident: 180925-000245]
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2018 11:03:46 +0200 (CAT)
From: Cell C <[email protected]>

Dear MR ********,

Thank you for contacting Cell C. We have received your email and one of our consultants will contact you within 24-48 hours. Should you wish to follow up on an existing query, please email [email protected] or call 135.
For manual payment confirmation, please email your proof of payment to [email protected] or fax 084 167 641.

Kind regards,
Cell C Customer Service
 
Subject: Re: Cancellation of C-Fibre [Incident: 180925-000245]
Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2018 17:35:54 +0200
To: Cell C <[email protected]>

Hi

Ten days ago I sent you notification of termination of service.

In return I received this automated notification of receipt of message. After that, nothing.

You will have to forgive me for being somewhat cynical, but this could go two ways.

1) You cancel my service as instructed, without further interaction. This is OK, however I feel that you as a company may be needlessly writing off potential return customers. Someone who has previously been a customer should be easier to sell to than someone who has never been a customer. On the other hand, if you routinely poison your customer's attitudes towards you, that is ... sub-optimal.

2) You pretend I never contacted you, continue to bill me, and eventually threaten to sue for non-payment. I call this the Telkom approach. Please note that I have been a Telkom customer, their service was mediocre but OK, but their termination procedure so filled me with rage that I will forever recommend to everyone I know to avoid them for any service.

My point is, I have used Cell-C for two years, the connection was reasonable, if unremarkable, the client service was OK, I don't actually hate your company, and at this point I may use you again. I would just like to suggest that you don't do anything that Telkom thinks is OK, and we should all get out of this reasonably happy.

Regards
 
Subject: Welcome to COOL IDEAS :)
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2018 14:46:18 +0200
From: Cool Ideas <[email protected]>
Reply-To: Cool Ideas <[email protected]>

Cool Ideas

Dear ************,

Thank you for signing up with us. Your new account has been setup and you can now login to our client area using the details below.
 
I'm not particularly sure how this goes, so at midnight on the 31st, I turn off the CPE. In the morning, I plug in the new router, reboot the CPE, and go to speedtest.net. Which reports Cell-C as my provider, and shows 4Mb/s.

I go to the Vumatel site, and order the same Cool ideas 50/5 contract I had already ordered. Much waiting and rebooting, finally I call Cool ideas, who say they cannot take over the service until Cell-C release it.

I call Cell-C, listen to 15 minutes of soothing music, and hang up.
 
Subject: Re: Cancellation of C-Fibre [Incident: 180925-000245]
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2018 10:56:31 +0200
To: Customer Service <[email protected]>, [email protected]

Hello again.

I feel like I'm doing all of the talking in this conversation. Oh right. That's because I am. I just spent 15 minutes on hold to your customer care helpline. Now I accept that with service like this, your employees may not wish to talk to your customers. I also accept that with employers like you, your employees may wish to resign, or blow their heads off. I feel for them. Nevertheless, I would like some customer care.

I have given you 35 days notice of my intent to cancel this contract. I have entered into a new contract. My new provider tells me that you need to release my contract before they can begin providing.

I'm curious how other people notify you? Is there a secret handshake? Was I supposed to go to that bastion of unprofitability, the post office, and send you a registered letter? Not having done so, do you expect me to do it now, and give you a further 30 days? That would be unfortunate.

For now, a response will be nice. Perhaps one of those automated ones? At this point even talking to a machine would be lovely.

Yours in anticipation.
 
Subject: Cancellation of C-Fibre [Incident: 181102-000241]
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2018 10:57:35 +0200 (CAT)
From: Cell C <[email protected]>

Dear MR ********,

Thank you for contacting Cell C. We have received your email and one of our consultants will contact youwithin 24-48 hours. Should you wish to follow up on an existing query, please email [email protected] or call 135.
For manual payment confirmation, please email your proof of payment to [email protected] or fax 084167641.

Kind regards,
Cell C Customer Service
 
I phoned cell-c again at 12:30, and got through to an operator after less than a minute. Who was lovely, and said I need to email <[email protected]>, clearly state my desire to terminate the contract, and include my ID number so they can find the account. Please note I had included my account number in the above emails, but not my ID, so perhaps that's the problem.
 
Subject: Fwd: Acc No.######### - Cancellation of C-Fibre
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2018 13:00:21 +0200
To: myfibre <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], Cell C <[email protected]>, Customer Service <[email protected]>

Hi

It appears I sent this to the wrong address? So, to repeat, I would like to cancel my C-Fibre contract.

My Account Number is ########.
My ID number is ########.

Note that I thought I was giving you 30 days notice in good faith, and I have already started a new contract with Cool ideas from the beginning of November. I would therefore like you to terminate the contract with immediate affect. I am happy to pay the pro-rated fee for the first 3 days of November, which should come to around 10% of the monthly fee, or R70.00.

Please also send me a final statement, so I can settle the account. Do not send an infoslip, as I do not have the means or inclination to open those. A PDF will be fine.

Note also that while you probably don't what your customers to cancel their contracts, pretending that such a thing is impossible, or obfuscating how to do it, is just a good way to piss people off.

Regards
 
Subject: [Postmaster] Content Alert Notification
Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2018 13:00:38 +0200
From: [email protected]

This is a content alert notification message.

The message indicated below matches content alert policies set by the system administrator(s).

Message information:

Intended Recipient : Fibre Direct <[email protected]>
Message Subject : Fwd: Acc No.******* - Cancellation of C-Fibre
Message Date : Fri, 2 Nov 2018 13:00:21 +0200
Message Status : The message has been placed on HOLD - action required

Content Policies Triggered:

- Policy (Latest Profanity)

found term ["piss" "pissabed" "pissant" "pisshead" "pissing" "pissed"] in BODY_TEXT, score is 1

Number of hits for this term: 1
Matched text: piss
 
Opening one is so easy, yet cancelling a contract is one of the most difficult things. Hope they sort it out soon.
 
Subject: Your interaction 181102-000336 with Cell C
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2018 15:02:56 +0200 (CAT)
From: CellC <[email protected]>
Reply-To: CellC <[email protected]>

Dear MR *****,

At Cell C, we are committed to providing you with excellent customer service, and we rely on your feedback to continuously improve.

We would like to find out more about your recent interaction with our Email Contact Centre. Please take a few moments to complete our brief survey - your participation is of great value to us.

Please click here to participate.
Regards,
Cell C

If you do not wish to receive any further emails from us or take part in future surveys, please click here to unsubscribe
 
Frankly, I'm annoyed that they can only be coerced to provide a basic service under threat of bad press. Fine. I'll go and coerce them, they'll pretend to be surprised and shocked that anything like this could have happened, I'll thank them like a grovelling idiot, and we'll all move on.
 
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: Fwd: Acc No.#@#@#@#@# - Cancellation of C-Fibre
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2018 13:12:04 +0200
To: myfibre <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], Cell C <[email protected]>, Customer Service <[email protected]>

There is quite an extraordinary amount of whole lot of nothing happening here. But not the nothing that you get when someone simply doesn't know you exist. This is a different nothing. This is the nothing you get when someone is hiding under their desk to avoid you. Hellooo under there! You don't look terribly comfortable, would you like a pillow?

(Yes I know, people hide from me a lot. I have no idea why :p )

Well I could be wrong, but .. well let's talk about money. Specifically, paying for services. Yes I know, paying sucks. I'm particularly bad at paying, as you should be aware.

Historically, on around the 6th of every month, you email me a statement, which I typically ignore, because it's an infoslip, which I can't be bothered to figure out how to open. I could probably infer that you want to be paid, but I somehow don't.

Then, around the 25th, someone phones me up and very sweetly asks if I could pay. Which I then typically do.

The thing is, you haven't called since September. I can tell, because I haven't paid since September. In fact the same day as I originally asked to terminate the contract.

So, is this how it's going to be? You're going to give me nasty entry level internet forever for free, and not let me upgrade? What a curious business model. Perhaps you should check with someone if you're doing it right.

Regards
 
.. and here's the problem. There's absolutely no way Cell-C are going to interact with me, because there's no path to victory. The thing is, do I want to be right, or do I want 50 down, 5 up? Silly question, give me POWERR!

I've possibly proven, if only to myself, that Cell-C are a bit dickish. Unfortunately, they're not even remotely unique among our crop of service providers. I ultimately blame Telkom, who normalised atrocious service before any of these companies even existed. Cell-C even absorbed some of the cost of Telkom's dickishness when they took me on, I spent a month or so cancelling my Telkom ADSL, and Cell-C, being fully aware of this toxic environment we're in, gave 3 months free fibre service as a perk of switching over.

So, dear Cell-C, I accept you cannot respond to me. However, what I want is not a mystery. Your path to victory is clear. Quietly contact Cool ideas, tell them you've released my contract, and I will wake up one sunny morning to 50 down, 5 up. And lo, it was good.
 
Huh. OK lots of activity from Cell-C, although no actual progress yet. It seems they do track hellopeter pretty closely, and don't seem to track mybroadband.
 
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