
Show HN: Cancel your Comcast in 5 minutes - estsauver
http://www.airpaperinc.com/
======
dayjah
The second-worst experience I had with cancelling a service was with Comcast.
Briefly: called up, told operator I wanted to cancel, they put me through to a
special sales team attempting to keep me, eventually I pushed it through.

The real magic happens during the conversation with the sales rep; he asks why
I want to cancel, I explain that the cost is high relative to the quality. He
offers me more cost effective package, I explained that I had that package in
the past and that the slow incremental increases in cost had turned me off
them as a company. He goes on to say: "well, that is your fault, I'd never set
up auto pay for a service" and continues to make the case that the convenience
function of auto pay is actually an agreement with Comcast to increment the
cost of my service without my explicit agreement to paying more.

Wow. Just wow.

Still, that's nothing compared to the calls I had with BT after someone
hijacked my landline and placed hundreds of GBP worth of calls to Nigeria...
but that is another tale for another HN story.

~~~
ramidarigaz
When I called to cancel my account I told them I was moving out of the
country. Total lie, but it made the cancelation process really easy.

~~~
fredfoobar42
Yup. That's how I cancelled Comcast.

Me: "I'm moving."

Clerk: "Oh, where to? We can set up your service ahead of time so it's ready
when you---"

Me: "Ireland."

Clerk (disappointed): "Oh."

~~~
rb2k_
Same for me when I was moving to Germany.

The only question I got was: "Is there a roommate or somebody else that could
take over the account?"

------
tombrossman
Nearly all of these contracts with Comcast or similar companies will have a
postal address you can write to and cancel. Even if they provide no
cancellation postal address, look up their 'Agent for service of process',
this is always listed somewhere. I never call to cancel, this is a waste of
time and not necessary.

I've done this repeatedly (use certified mail, or recorded delivery, the term
varies by country) and it's dead easy. I have cancelled service with no early
termination fees at both Sprint and Verizon, and kept my subsidized phone
while continuing on month-to-month service when they raised fees - a
'materially averse' change - always read the fine print. Same thing with AT&T
dial-up back in the day.

This service looks interesting but really there is no easier way than sending
a proper business letter and keeping proof of delivery. Only once did a
company dispute receiving my letter and I emailed a scanned copy of the proof
of delivery and that was it.

It sometimes helps to remind the company that falsely reporting a bad debt
onto your credit record carries huge fines and you will definitely be checking
to make sure they don't 'accidentally' forget or lose your paperwork, and that
you have complete documentation and are prepared to defend. Be polite but do
be firm, too.

~~~
estsauver
You absolutely can send a letter, that's actually what we're doing behind the
scenes for you! We're hoping to eventually integrate things like having a task
rabbit pick up your equipment and drop it off at the local Comcast to make the
experience even more seamless.

Cheers!

~~~
tombrossman
Haha beautiful, I was just typing this same idea in my other reply. Good luck,
you are saving people lots of hassle for a low price and I hope you do well.

------
estsauver
Hey HN,

I was moving to Thailand ~6 months ago and I had to cancel my Comcast.
Cancelling took way too long and was surprisingly frustrating. From talking
with other people it seemed like the cancellation process was really
frustrating for other people too, so we made this.

My partner Eli (HN username: EliPollak) and I really want your feedback more
than anything. We’re planning to expand into fixing other processes that are
really more painful than they need to be. We’re around to answer
questions/chat and we’re also available by email at founders@airpaperinc.com.

Thanks!

~~~
avn2109
How about landlord negotiations? When your landlord tries to raise your rent
to above-market rates, it's a pain to look up what the fair rate is and then
draft a competent counteroffer letter.

~~~
shostack
Do those letters ever work? They are either hoping you will pay, or willing to
kick you out for someone that will, no?

~~~
15155
If you're a paying (every month, no soliciting, ahead-of-time) tenant and a
landlord is raising rent at all: they run the risk of losing a known quantity
for a piece of shit tenant.

Unless you're in a usurious, fucked up market (San Francisco), rental owners
need to put a dollar amount on losing your tenancy.

If you're paying $2000 a month, raising the rent 5% means that, for an extra
$1000 (potentially), you'll spend your time and money showing, placing ads,
screening prospective tenants. Time is money. Either you're doing this
yourself, as an owner, or paying someone to do it.

The other cost factor at work applies to the tenant: the "cost to move." It's
hard to move in-town for less than $500, so this must be weighed.

------
Moral_
I didn't even have to call to cancel my service.

I ran my connection 24/7 for a month, pulled 33TB of data down, they dropped
me as a customer. Most pain free process, and a nice fuck you to Comcast as
well.

~~~
GhotiFish
they don't have clauses for overages?

~~~
JoshGlazebrook
Everywhere but a few small markets have no cap at all. They suspended the
250GB soft cap years ago.

------
frankthedog
I actually just cancelled my Comcast account yesterday. The process was pain-
free and easy, just told them "I'm moving in X days and do not need service at
the new address."

Granted, it was true, but if you are having trouble cancelling for low-quality
service or any other issue, you may have better luck using that reasoning.

~~~
jjulius
I'm really glad that that excuse made the process so painless for you, but I
do have a cautionary tale about that.

Two years ago, I called them and tried cancelling my service because, like
you, I was moving and my new landlord was providing Comcast to me as a part of
my lease agreement. Despite my insistence that my landlord already had an
account setup for me at my new house, I was kept on the phone for 30 minutes
and the representative insisted that it would be beneficial for me to have my
own account/service at my new house in addition to the line that's already
there, and that I should just transfer my service. You can imagine how
frustrated and furious that conversation made me.

I don't mean to deter people from using that excuse, because it still honestly
seems like that should be the easiest way to cancel your account, but I do
want people to bear in mind that it all depends on the representative you
speak with.

~~~
ryanSrich
I've canceled Comcast service several times now. I've got a pretty good
routine down. Basically you just preference the call with "I'm canceling my
contract with Comcast today. There is no discount, inventive, or conversation
that you can give me that will convince me not to cancel. This cancelation
needs to take less than 5 minutes and the phone call is being recorded".

------
engi_nerd
Cancelling my Comcast service for cable television and internet involved these
steps.

1) Gathering up all of my Comcast owned equipment (cable boxes and remotes,
but importantly, NOT my cable modem, which I owned outright) and going to the
local Comcast office. There I waited in a long line in a crowded, un-
airconditioned office (in the heat and humidity of a hot August day in
Maryland) for almost 2 hours. Then handing over the equipment and marking my
account as cancelled took 25 minutes.

2) Calling the Comcast support line after they tried to bill me at the end of
the following month for not actually supplying service to a home I no longer
lived in. I was placed on hold for almost an hour before finally speaking to a
representative, who told me that she didn't understand what the problem was
because Comcast had no record of actually sending me a bill for the month
after I moved.

3) Receiving a call a week later demanding I return my "Comcast owned
equipment" before I could receive a refund on my deposit. I countered that I
owned the modem outright and had merely given Comcast the MAC address of the
modem so that they could authorize it on their network. The representative
demanded that I prove that I actually owned the modem. The receipt I emailed
from when I purchased the modem was not enough for them, they demanded "more
proof" but could not actually offer an example of what proof I could offer. I
hung up on that representative and immediately filed a Better Business Bureau
complaint (I know, the BBB is a bit of a racket, but sometimes it gets some
results).

4) The following day I received a call from a senior customer service manager
apologizing for the "mix-up" with marking my modem as being a Comcast-owned
piece of equipment. I received a refund of my deposit a few days later.

~~~
estsauver
That's incredibly frustrating.

One piece of advice is to make FTC/FCC complaints instead of BBB complaints.
Those agencies are actually pretty effective at suing companies into better
business practices.

~~~
engi_nerd
I have since learned the comparative uselessness of BBB complaints and the
effectiveness of FTC complaints. This is the one instance where a BBB
complaint worked for me. I've not had cause to make an FCC complaint since
this happened, but I agree, the FTC has been very helpful.

------
asd
The way I see it, they are rude to you by making you go through hoops, so I am
rude to them. I repeatedly say "Please cancel" to every new rep I am
transferred to and/or every time they ask me a question or go into a spiel.

The only time I will not say "please cancel" is when they ask me any
information that needs to be verified in order to cancel. This has worked with
Comcast as well as a handful of other service providers that I wished to
cancel. I have never been on the phone more than 6 minutes. Try it out.

~~~
brandonbloom
This is usually my strategy, but it failed hard with TWC. No matter what I
did, they would redirect me to the automated "relocation" service and ask for
my new zip code. They did this even when I told them I wasn't moving, they do
it just to get rid of you. I even tried saying "I just no longer want
internet, I feel like it is bad for my health." and sure enough " _click_
Please enter the zip code...."

------
aerovistae
You know you've pissed off your customers when people start building business
models around cancelling your services so they don't have to deal with you.

~~~
evilDagmar
You know you've pissed off your customers when people build a service of
cancelling your service on Cloudflare and /it/ begins to fail under load.

~~~
shash7
Lol still not loading after 15 hours. Comcast is rekt

------
walterbell
How does this work legally, are you acting as an agent, proxy or other
authorized representative of the customer, when interacting with the vendor?

On the topic of security: is the customer's identity information, e.g.
authorization passcodes required by the vendor, deleted from your database
after the transaction is complete? You may also want to add some details on
encryption.

~~~
elipollak
Great question! In this case, you should of us as a highly trained personal
assistant who is helping you cancel your Comcast. We help manage all the
crappy parts of the process behind the scenes, but you're still the person
actually doing the cancellation.

~~~
walterbell
How do you verify identity, e.g. could an attacker use this to cancel a
target's service? When you call customer service, cable companies usually have
a few security questions to confirm the customer's identity. A letter usually
has a customer signature. How do you close the identity loop with the person
keying data into your web form?

~~~
estsauver
We charge their credit card. We don't think it's likely that people will use
this to maliciously cancel people's Comcast, but we'll absolutely cooperate
with authorities in the event of identity theft.

~~~
rrauenza
Malicious? Cancelling a random person's Comcast might be a random act of
kindness!

------
treffer
There is an online cancellation service in germany that will help you to
cancel just about every contract:
[https://www.aboalarm.de/](https://www.aboalarm.de/)

They have ready-made templates for many compaines (esp. ensurance and telco
ones) where you just fill in your details, sign it via your touchpad and let
them send it in a conforming way.

I /think/ the business model is focused on post-cancellation: they'll show you
other options for the canceled contract.

I'm stunned that this does not exist for the US. It seems to work in Germany.

~~~
estsauver
This is fascinating. We didn't know this existed. Thank you!

------
rochers
Great idea and nice execution. Suggestion: add SSL / HTTPS to your website if
you're collecting all this sensitive stuff about me.

~~~
estsauver
Absolutely. I'm actually embarrassed we forgot to set this up before
launching.

We should have it set up by Monday. Thanks for reminding us.

~Earl

~~~
dogecoinbase
Not to be "that guy" on HN, but if you can't do this _right now_ you need to
shut your form down until you can. Collecting this info without encryption is
irresponsible.

~~~
estsauver
It's done. Things have been a little crazy, as you might expect. I'm actually
sorry that it took that long.

~~~
dogecoinbase
Awesome, thank you for taking care of that!

------
koenigdavidmj
Am I the only one who never had trouble canceling? The process was just this:

1\. Call, specify your account info, and say you're canceling.

2\. They confirm that it's canceled and tell you to return the cable box (and
modem, if you're renting one) to the local office.

3\. You either put them in a big box out front, or if you're paranoid like me,
you wait in line so that you get a receipt.

4\. In a couple weeks, you get a check in the mail refunding you for the rest
of the current payment period.

~~~
electroly
Here's a related tip: you can skip step 1. Just show up at the local office
with your equipment. They can take care of everything right there, and the
office employee isn't trained to do customer retention so there's no hassle.

~~~
ams6110
Yep. I periodically go in to the local office and say I'm looking to cut my
costs and I'd hate to cancel but can they put me on one of their promo plans
(which they say are only for new customers). They will normally do this with
no fuss. The people who work there are local community citizens and it's just
a job for them. They don't really care.

------
kayhi
Here's a recorded example of one person trying to cancel their service:

[https://soundcloud.com/ryan-block-10/comcastic-
service](https://soundcloud.com/ryan-block-10/comcastic-service)

------
xmly
I canceled comcast service at least twice so far. Not much trouble. But the
key problem is after canceling, which other service you are gonna use...

~~~
fredkbloggs
Maybe none? It's television, not sewerage.

~~~
matthewmacleod
It's Internet and phone service too. Quite reasonable to think of that as an
essential service.

------
nathancahill
Cool idea! Your CSS/layout needs some love though, it's broken in FF (works
better in Chrome).

~~~
estsauver
Shoot! I'll take a look right now! Thanks for letting us know.

~~~
kevinrpope
it's wonky in IE11 as well. For example:
[http://imgur.com/8HP761w](http://imgur.com/8HP761w)

~~~
estsauver
Noted. We're going to do substantial cross-browser testing.

Both Eli and I are both honestly not that great with CSS, so it may take us a
second or two.

~~~
kevinrpope
No worries - I appreciate you're probably slammed with many other things to
do. I just wanted you to be aware of it.

------
pmalynin
I think you might have accidentally cancelled your site's internet too.

~~~
estsauver
We're working on it. We didn't expect quite this response.

------
ck2
Member retention at many companies is often closed before 8am, just call early
and then you end up talking to a regular person in billing and they do an
immediate cancel.

Alternately just pick a place the company doesn't have service and say you are
moving there.

------
nobleach
I moved across the country to Comcast land. I had a decent job, so I signed up
with all services (HD, phone and internet) After a few months, I realized I
didn't need a phone and didn't care at all about HDTV. So I called and told
them I'd be backing down my service to Internet and normal cable. I got a guy
that informed me that I was under a 2 year contract and had no choice. He was
absolutely terrible.... like so mean and insulting. I took it for a bit then I
realized, I don't have to be yelled at by a CS rep! I told him that I felt
very uncomfortable with the way he was talking to me. He got even more
belligerent. It was surreal, I have never had someone speak to me like this.
He told me I was stuck, and that his hands were tied. I hung up. I called back
because I realized he might just have been full of "poo-poo". I got another CS
rep. She was very pleasant. She said, "Mr Nobleach, it appears you're under
contract." I said, "that's fair, can you send me a copy of the signed
contract?" she replied, " well, your acceptance of equipment equates to a
signed contact". I said, "ok, the contract I didn't sign will suffice. I do
need my attorney to look over it". They agreed to knock me down to no contract
and whatever service would work best. I can't say it's the right course of
action. I really did have an attorney wanting to look at my "contract". I'm
sure they'd stand no chance against Comcast. But it did get me out of some
contract I never knew I was in.

------
lazyant
There should be a law (I know, too many laws!) that cancelation process should
be the same as sign up, for example you can sign up online for many services
but need to call for cancellation.

~~~
trothamel
This. I was about to post the same message, including the same parenthetical
disclaimer. It seems like this should be an obvious consumer protection, and
yet nobody talks about it.

------
ergothus
While I'm a big fan of the idea of paying a small fee to let others deal with
such hassles, this is one of the tasks I vastly enjoy. "You suck, you've
always sucked, you overcharge, underdeliver, and have terrible customer
service". Repeat with more emphasis the more they argue.

Mostly I don't enjoy being a jerk, but most of the time they demand it.
(Occasionally, when moving, it's been painless, and I have no need to be rude,
but that's been the exception)

~~~
estsauver
I've always felt it's tragic. I'm talking to some person in a call center,
whose job/pay depends on me not cancelling to some extent on getting me to not
cancel, and I'm absolutely going to cancel.

But if you enjoy it, by all means continue to use the phone calls. I don't
think we'll ever be able to replace the satisfaction of that phone call for
you :)

------
j_s
Toll free customer service numbers are free calls in Skype, but Verizon
Wireless doesn't accept Skype calls anymore. For them I've switched to using
Google Hangout. This wound up with the bonus of supporting including my
parents in the conversation (adding the phone call into a normal audio group
chat).

Sitting on hold isn't so bad when it's free and you can focus on reading
Hacker News or whatever easily while you wait.

------
BlakeCam
Organizing customers against companies that try to exploit their customers is
an awesome concept. I suspect it will be a battle, but I wish you success, and
hope you earn enough to make the effort worthwhile.

What about expanding this?! Some companies frustrate me with their customer
abuses, and you could organize customers against them.

\- Cell phone companies send bills that are confusing gibberish so we won't
read them. So, provide a service that scans my bill and sends me a readable
summary with red-lines on anything surprising or changed.

\- Banks and credit card companies send 'privacy statements' that are rambling
non-sense. Provide me a service that scans my statements and gives me a nice
summary of anything surprising.

\- Companies send endless offers for loans or useless services (paper 'spam')
mixed in with bills. Filter this out for me.

\- Alert me to hidden fees.

\- Read the legalese and summarize it.

Basically provide me a service that I will try to accept my bills and
statements from monopolistic companies and give me a short, readable,
reasonable summary. When something is unreasonable, help me protest or fight
it, or find an alternative.

Something like a consumers union, I suppose. I'd gladly pay well for this.

------
andhess
I had to open a Comcast account after a roommate moved out. His checkout/my
opening was very straightforward until the modem that worked for his account
didn't work for mine. The "new system" that our account was directed through
didn't accept the exact model for our modem, forcing us to get another one.
And there is no way I would use their modem/router setup.

------
x1798DE
Maybe I just had a good person, but when I cancelled my Comcast, I just called
up, they asked why, I said, "That's not important, just cancel it." and they
just did it.

That said, I think this might have been a few weeks after some high-profile
example of someone recording them dicking someone around for a while, so maybe
they had been told to dial it back.

------
lerxst
Their website seems to have some trouble loading right now. Cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JQPoiC4...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JQPoiC4Se5EJ:www.airpaperinc.com/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

~~~
estsauver
Thanks! We didn't expect this to blow up quite this fast!

------
chrisBob
I like the idea a lot. This is one of the cases where most people try to fix
something by calling even though they would be much better off sending in a
form letter. Check your contract. It probably says something along the lines
of "service will be terminated within 5 business days after written
notification" but they sure don't guarantee anything good will come from
calling customer service on the phone.

I would be a little worried about basing a business on this because someone
else could start a site with a free collection of the letters to download.
Until then this would be well worth the money.

------
tracker1
I had XM radio pretty early on... at one point I had three radios on the
account (briefly), when I had called to cancel the third (as I no longer had
that vehicle), I was then placed in a special queue for a different
"cancellation department", not once but twice (after a 45 minute wait), the
call was mysteriously (yeah right) dropped when they couldn't talk me out of
it. After the third call and hold time, I cancelled the service outright...

That is the most horrible cancellation experience I've ever had... I imagine
people have seen equally bad from Comcast, and back in the day, AOL.

------
csears
Really like the conversational approach. Nicely done!

It would be good to explain upfront how you actually do the cancelation, in
this case sending a physical letter on my behalf. I had to fill out the form
to get to that part.

~~~
estsauver
For sure. We've got a lot of feedback that we could be more clear on the
mechanics of how it works. We're looking at adding something to the flow
shortly.

Thanks for taking a look!

------
monopolemagnet
_Visa to China_ sounds like a winner: Never had to do that myself, but it
seems arcane, shady magic that some friends from Hong Kong know how to perform
whenever we needed to go.

There are plenty of these infrequent, but non-zero, official, lifestyle and
corporate customer processes that are PITAs, for a variety of reasons. People
would gladly pay to avoid the hassle themselves, where cost-efficient,
eventually-expert, standardized "schlepping" can make a good business model or
10. Relieve pain for $; enough people will gladly hand you $ to make it
happen.

------
madgoat
I've cancelled Rogers up here in Canada in a painless, lie free, asshole way
without resorting to swearing.

It's easy, just say you want to cancel, act like an imbecile, refuse to be
transferred to their retentions department. When they offer you a better deal,
or ask why, just repeat "I want to cancel" over and over, and if they still
give you guff, ask to speak to their supervisor (all after getting their name
and agent number).

I was able to cancel everything in under 5 minutes.

Remember, you don't have to be nice or polite to them when they're trying to
upsell.

------
United857
This won't work for everyone, but if you live near a Comcast brick and mortar
store (e.g. Sunnyvale, CA), just go there.

If you tell them you want to cancel in person, and bring all your equipment
with you, the reps aren't going to argue with you much.

There is of course still the time cost to wait in line (15-20 minutes on a
weekend IME) but at least it saves in frustration in them trying to get you to
change your mind.

------
kisna72
The only problem I see is you are asking personal info (Credit Card etc)
without encryption. You should fix that asap. other than than, great job.

~~~
estsauver
Https is on. The typeform was always served over https, but it would have been
possible to MITM us briefly. It should be fixed now.

Thanks!

------
orthoganol
Chinese visa was painless for me. I think it's gotten a lot easier maybe with
the advent of the 10 year American, I don't know when you last tried.

How do you handle Comcast's security questions and all that? Why is there no
https for a site with sensitive info? Have you guys actually done this for
others, or is this a see what happens, figure it out along the way kind of
side project?

------
markbnj
Comcast's customer service can be spectacularly aggravating, but are that many
people really struggling with canceling their primary ISP? I would think
something like "Move your Comcast service in 5 minutes" would be more useful.
Perhaps even "Get a Comcast service call in 5 minutes." Now that would get
some downloads in the app store.

------
dheera
Is there anything that prevents me from just sending an e-mail/snail-mail to
Comcast with the statement "Please terminate my contract effective MM/DD/YYYY.
You do not need to respond to this message. Thank you for your compliance."
and just stop payment at the appropriate date as defined by the contract
(likely the end of month MM)?

------
wnevets
I canceled my comcast last week and I was on the phone for maybe 5 minutes.
Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones?

~~~
estsauver
It really seems to range from 5 minutes to eternal. I'm glad it was painless
for you.

Cheers!

------
basseq
My recent Verizon cancellation went very smoothly. No "retention" specialists.
Just said, "I'm switching to a competitor."

I'm saving something like $50/mo with the change. Verizon sent me an email
offering me a $40 statement credit to re-up. I laughed in their virtual faces.

------
homulilly
Cool idea but I don't think I'd want to send personal information on a website
without HTTPS.

~~~
estsauver
It should be fixed! We had https enabled but I hadn't set up the redirection
from http yet.

Cheers,

~Earl

------
kw71
Even after allowing thirdparty javascript I still can't read the site (get a
san francisco park-what?) and the "Cancel my Comcast" button doesn't work.
Blah. I'll call Comcast myself, and for $5 I'll show you how "http aref" works

------
fgtx
Hi! Since I'm not from US I have no idea whether this idea is good or not, but
here are a few points from your fix form. \- no email validation / phone
number, zipcode, comcast client# mask: Your user could easily mistype
something without noticing

~~~
estsauver
That's a great point! Right now we're manually following up with users if
there's any problem, but I'll add better form validation to our roadmap.
Thanks!

~~~
jstx
I'm not seeing any validation for empty email form submission responses. I
clicked a button and got a success page redirect.

------
vskarine
Error 522 Ray ID: 22f336647a6e1e65 • 2015-10-02 20:38:57 UTC Connection timed
out

Comcast is trying to DDoS? :P

~~~
estsauver
I would say that it's more likely that my poor little Vultr.com server didn't
expect to be handling quite the traffic load that was pouring its way.

~~~
1024core
If you post on HN, you should expect a massive amount of traffic. This sounds
rough, so don't take it the wrong way, but: if you couldn't anticipate the
spike in traffic for your website, how will you handle a spike in (physical)
traffic when people suddenly start using your service?

------
rascul
Took me about 5 minutes and no hassle to cancel Comcast. I simply took the
equipment into the local Comcast office and turned it in, no dealing with
phone representatives or anything. When asked why, I simply refused to answer
and that was that.

~~~
x71c4l
When I attempted to do this a couple of years ago, the line to return
equipment went out the door and around the corner. We decided to just drop our
equipment in their return box (and call later), which turned out to be
impossible because the box was outdoors and overflowing.

------
kylehotchkiss
Once upon a time I lived at an apartment and comcast did not bill me for an
entire year of internet. It was awesome. And more reliable than the comcast my
parents paid for.

Now I have Lumos, which is old Ntelos, which is even better than my free
comcast.

------
sabrinaleblanc
Really interesting idea! But I'm not sure how I feel about a company
impersonating their customer cause that's what you would do right? I think
people will be reticent to provide personal information...

~~~
estsauver
We actually just send a letter with the information that you provide.

------
smoreilly
This is perhaps the most glorious thing I've seen on here in a long time. I
didn't find a Chinese visa all that difficult though so I'm surprised to see
that on the list of next issues.

~~~
morgante
Really? You have to wait in a really long line for several hours at a bizarre
location.

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chrissnell
I've never had a problem cancelling Comcast. I just tell them that I'm moving
out of the country. There's no point in bothering to try to retain me.

------
estsauver
Hey Everyone! We were a little surprised by the response but our servers
should be back. Please let me know at earl@airpaperinc.com if you see any more
outtages.

Cheers, ~Earl

~~~
abritishguy
Down again

~~~
estsauver
We haven't quite bridged the gap between "low downtime deploys" to "no
downtime deploys."

We'll be working on that shortly. Things should be up again now. If they're
not, please let me know at earl@airpaperinc.com

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blazespin
All those legal services(wills, divorce, immigration, etc etc), of course,
though I imagine they're already well picked over. Maybe you can partner?

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kelseyfrancis
If you just call and tell them you're moving to an area that Comcast doesn't
service, they don't give you any hassle at all.

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maaja13
Someone is already offering to do it for $4 lol

[http://justcancelme.com/](http://justcancelme.com/)

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jason_slack
The concept here reminds me of GovWorks.com (in the movie Startup.com). Their
aim was to fix government red-tape.

This reminds me of that documentary.

~~~
estsauver
I haven't seen it but will add it to my queue of movies to watch. Thanks for
the suggestion!

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munificent
Ha. I just got fiber installed yesterday and I've been meaningful to cancel my
Comcast since then. Timely!

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dreaminvm
Love the idea, although I wondering how user data will be protected across all
of these different workflows?

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trevyn
Tried to sign up for the SF parking permit thing, got a CloudFlare error 520.

~~~
estsauver
Hey! Thanks for trying to sign up. We didn't expect nearly this demand!

Send me an email at earl@airpaperinc.com and I'll add you manually to the
list. Thanks for understanding!

------
m3andros
Getting this error: Error 522 Ray ID: 22f2db80ca4a181c Connection timed out

Traffic overwhelm?

~~~
elipollak
Uh oh! Should be fixed now. Thanks for letting us know :)

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enahs-sf
this is a great example of using typeform to bootstrap your way into providing
a service. Really cool idea and i'm glad these guys are doing this — I can't
wait to cancel comcast!

~~~
estsauver
Thanks! We're thrilled that it's something you're looking forward to!

And typeform has been fantastic. We actually made a form for this ourselves,
but the UI experience with typeform is so much better. They're really building
a wonderful product.

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pavornyoh
I like this idea. Good job!! When will other services be added?

~~~
estsauver
As fast as we can work out the logistics. Some of these are relatively easy.

"Parking permits" is easier than "tax registration" which is easier than
"Chinese visa," but it also super depends on demand.

~~~
pavornyoh
Understood and thanks for answering.

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abritishguy
Just say you are leaving the country - no more rententions.

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zobzu
why'd you have to lie to leave a service is inconceivable to me. such
companies should be paying good money until this is rectified or simply
banned.

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outside1234
Great idea!

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lfender6445
i'd like to try this without fearing it will actually cancel my account

~~~
estsauver
If you don't push the final button on the form after you enter credit card
information, it won't cancel your account. You'll get to see almost
everything.

If you want to see a sneak peek of the follow-up steps, send me an email at
earl@airpaperinc.com and I'll send you what our follow-up instructions/emails
would look like.

Cheers, ~Earl

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alokedesai
Damn, this is genius

~~~
estsauver
Thanks!

