Ugh. I hate companies that make you call to cancel.

No, I do not want to hear about all of the amazing offers that I'm missing on, nor do I want you to offer me some paltry negotiation to try and make me stay.

Well, that's one way to keep customers from cancelling your service!

Seriously, I don't understand why companies make it so hard to stop doing business with them. I would think such a practice would alienate someone who might in the future need/want to do business with you again.

When our clients leave, we wish them well, and give them anything they need to make their transition to a new agency easier. We do that not because we're happy to lose their business but so that someday they might come back to us.

Appears that they don't want people to cancel, so doubt that a 'cancel my subscription' button would actually work if they had one.

I've used this site before to cancel. You don't need the button. Just shout "cancel!" at the computer screen. Sometimes you have to do it a couple of times.

@PinkBox: That's been a big pet peeve of mine. You can open bank accounts, credit checks, other services online. You can completely destroy your credit, run overdraft fees and do other irreversible financial damages to yourself online. But cancel? Oh no, "Please call!"

It always irritated me eTrade let me open an account online but wouldn't let me close due to "lack of identity verification". Yet, they didn't need me to verify my identity to OPEN the account.

Identity Guard won't let me cancel online either. Nope. I tried calling, and after 20 minutes on hold... I gave up.

@HiPwr: haha, I'll be sure to try that.

@PinkBox:

It's fine with me. When I call to cancel, I make sure I'm listening to some particularly loud music. I mute it for a while once they pick up and I tell them I want to cancel. Once they start going into their retention speech, I start turning up the music and put the person on speakerphone. When they ask me about something, I answer startled "Uhhhh... whah? Sorry, I was doing something else. Are you still asking if I want to keep the service? If that's the case, no."

Eventually they get the idea that I'm completely ignoring them. Deadens their soul and they give up sooner. Plus I get to enjoy music and get other things done.

I also make sure to bring the portable phone to the can with me if I gotta go while they're on their spiel. Being lactose intolerant and having forgotten to use lactase pills earlier in the day helps end the conversation really quickly.

@HiPwr: It heartens me to know that this works. I haven't shouted "cancel", but I have shouted other kinds of instructions at my screen before.

Hmm. I just canceled my Blockbuster subscription a few weeks ago and was able to do it online. Granted I did have to wade through about 4 screens of "are you sure you want to do this?" and "can you tell us why you're canceling?" before finally finishing the process. Perhaps if they stopped making their plans less and less attractive and added some Mac support for their online viewing they wouldn't have to depend on laziness to prevent people from canceling?

I canceled online a couple weeks ago just fine. Movies weren't getting delivered, so I unfortunately had no other choice. The process couldn't have been any easier. I wonder if this is a recent development, or if perhaps her browser isn't rendering the page correctly.

I like the above two comments canceled online as well. They basically accused me of fraud because my local BB was slow in returning/checking in movies.

There's a link, not a button, below the two buttons for keep/change. Unless something was wildly wrong with her account and it didn't provide it for her (and by wildly wrong I mean lots of movies out, financial discrepancies, etc)

@wheresmymind: I'm trying to cancel because apparently a TV series was released on DVD two weeks ago and Blockbuster has yet to add it to their inventory.

Also no Mac support.

Reminds me of AOL back in the day. You had to call to cancel and they would would offer you X free months to stay. I went 2 years without paying them a cent before I moved on to Broadband.

Clearly the page was designed by cretins. They also misused "affect". Twice.

Blockbuster seems to be in a world of hurt right now. We should be lenient on them for being unsuccessful. Interestingly, the local blockbuster to me was forcefully close because the franchisee borrowed 140K against it and didnt pay up. So the bank sued and received a writ to seize all property and have it sold at auction. Sheriff was there to monitor the situation. Owner didnt have a problem with the situation and never bothered about it. Didn't warn customers or employees. Sucks that the property is being sold in Phoenix 2 hours away. Not worth the drive.

Maybe it's like the Sorcerer's Stone - only there if you don't intend to use it.

Sounds like Adam & Eve. I kept getting their mailings, and in them it said to visit their website or call a number to stop the mailings. I could find nothing on their website regarding their mailings and stopping them. I finally called the number to get them to stop. Fotunately, they gave me no pushback and were very cordial about my request.

@PinkBox: hey, what about the companies that make you call to cancel & when you call you get "BOO-BEE-BOOP! the number you dialed is not in service. please check the number & dial again."

yeah, that's always fun.

@Cyberxion101: There is supposed to be a link in the middle of the page that says "No, thanks. Please just cancel my subscription". The screenshot above doesn't show it -- maybe someone else can post a more inclusive view of it.

It may be a poorly-designed site, but that doesn't mean the cancel option doesn't exist.

Perhaps the cancel button is under "change my plan". Another possibility is the browser she's using - sometimes Firefox doesn't show everything and I have top open Internet Explorer for the page to load properly. Still - that's a progamming issue - programmers should make sure that pages load properly on all major browsers...

@PinkBox:
AHHH AOL.. i remember those days...

and all/most dating websites

@parad0x360: that's what i thought of when i first saw this. i don't know about you, but they absolutely refused to let me refuse the 6 months! i was all like, "nah, just cancel it" & they were all like, "ok, no problem! here's 6 months on us & if you still want to call, call us back!" & i was all like, "no, just cancel it" & they were all like, "sure thing! but if you change your mind, you have 6 months..." JUST CANCEL THE FRICKIN SERVICE!

i kid you not, i broke my first cell phone that day...& 6 months later, i had to call to cancel my service. :(

has anyone else noticed that the brick and mortar stores are no longer getting all new releases right away? no store within a 50 mile radius of me has either Eastbound & Down or Entourage season 5. They are both currently "Very long wait" online. I specifically went with Blockbuster for the in-store exchange. if they are making that less easy, I'll cancel and go to netflix.

@HiPwr:

I usually shout a particular word.

Starts with an "F".

So far my compuer has failed to deliver on that instructions, although occasionally the Internet will offer to fulfill the command. Usually when I least expect it.

@tbax929: Yeah, but your business is not being run by a bunch of obnoxious snobs that believe their failing business model is the greatest thing since the internet started the day their web site went online.

@Cyberxion101: Maybe they just recently removed the cancel button (because too many people were using it) and just forgot to remove the reference to it.

@Michael Belisle: Damn, your eyes are good. Granted, I didn't read the entire screenshot, but even after going back to look at it, I had to really look at it to find the 2 spots with the mistakes. Good catch.

@chauncy that billups: Just a heads-up regarding Netflix: As a new customer, you should be able to get the new stuff quickly (they want to ensure you're happy). But as time goes on, you will find that the new releases to get tagged with a "very long wait" status. Me, I am not in a hurry to see the new stuff, so I don't mind. I've got The Longest Day coming tomorrow. [www.imdb.com]

And they are rolling out Saturday processing to their distribution centers, so you can get things turned around even faster.

I really don't understand why they're not making it... heh

Are you running any automatic ad-removal software, like Adblock? It's very possible that the clickable image for cancelling happened to fall into a filter.

@PinkBox: I've used Blockbuster online a couple times and never had to call to cancel. They must have changed it recently.

@ncpeters: I used Blockbuster Online for a short while too, and was able to cancel online. That was years ago, however.

@Skaperen:
Well, that's true... can't argue with you there.

@PinkBox:
I went to check my Blockbuster Online subscription right now. When you go to click cancel it's url points to /winbacksubscription

LoL to that right there. No wonder the OP couldn't cancel, it's all in the URL.

My wife and I were going to switch to Vonage until I read about how it's nearly impossible to cancel. So we switched to Skype instead.

Here's a clue to corporate America: Treating current customers like shit is not a good way to get new customers. In this brave new connected world, you simply cannot get away with it any longer.

@HiPwr:

LOL!

I actually canceled a couple of weeks ago and the same thing happened to me. I knew they allowed you to cancel online but all that came up was the number to dial. I tried just about every link they had to try and cancel online, and couldn't find it. So I gave up and was going to call later in the day.

A few hours later when I had time to call, I went to the website to get the number where it was located before (same place as in the picture above). This time instead of the number, they had the actual "Cancel" button and I was able to cancel online without a problem. So I guess sometimes its there and sometimes it isn't.

@mac-phisto: It's actually "BOO-BAH-BEEP".

Yeah I'm sure it was just a big "mistake." They simply "forgot."

Ballbuster.

@chauncy that billups: I have a feeling Blockbuster is going to go under soon. Several locations have shut down recently...the one near me doesn't even stay open past 8 or 9 at night anymore.

@HiPwr:
I declare bankruptcyyyy ! +1 to whoever gets that

@Skaperen: Failing business model FTW+++!!!

This happened to me when I used Blockbuster's website to let them know I received a cracked DVD in the mail. I got to a web page where I was supposed to click "OK" and the button was not there. I'm using Safari on a Macintosh. I pressed Command-A to select all the stuff on the page and the "OK" button appeared.