Canceling your cable and internet service can be a brutal experience. And Comcast may be one of the worst offenders. The company’s cancellation process has been well-documented with horror stories of customer service representatives refusing to let customers cancel their services or dragging out the process.
Despite vows to improve customer service, the process is apparently still so awful that a new $5 service has cropped up to deal with the cable giant for you.
Forget having to speak with customer service representatives who want to dissuade you from canceling your service or pressure you into pricier packages. AirPaper, a startup founded last month by Earl St Sauver and Eli Pollak, promises to terminate your Comcast service with no hassle, in under five minutes.
Through an online form, customers provide AirPaper with their name, email, phone number, address, and Comcast account number, as well as any other pertinent details, such as the date the service should be canceled and whether any equipment was rented, like a modem or cable box. And for $5, AirPaper handles the rest. The service sends a cancellation letter to your local Comcast branch and confirms the cancellation via email. The company expects the process to take a week, based on Comcast’s terms of service.
Since the Comcast cancellation service launched last Friday (Oct. 2), tens of thousands of people have visited AirPaper’s website to see how it works, the company told Quartz.
“The Comcast cancellation definitely touched something deep in people’s psyche,” said Pollak.
The startup hopes this will trigger change within Comcast, so that it can shift its focus to other areas that need improvement, like a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles or applying for government permits. “We hope Comcast just puts us out of business on this by making it easier to cancel services themselves, or we’d love to work with them,” said Pollak.
AirPaper is slated to roll out new services in the coming weeks that simplify other processes.
The two-man operation chose to kick off with the Comcast service after St Sauver had a frustrating time canceling his own service before a planned move to Thailand earlier this year.
“People don’t want to spend huge amounts of their time and energy on processes that don’t need to be hard,” said Pollak.
Comcast did not immediately respond to a request for comment.