After the web agent gives a very long-winded pitch (that sounds canned) and gives her two free months of service to try to keep her around, the woman writes: "I just want to cancel. I had to make a phone call and then was misdirected by the other chat service twice. This is wasting my time. Please just cancel my service and stop harassing me." But the pitch -- far too long to quote here -- continues. And then goes on some more.

Finally, the customer writes:

"The extreme annoyance of this 'customer service' experience has cancelled out years of a good business relationship. I DON’T WANT THE TWO MONTHS. I WANT YOU TO CANCEL THE ACCOUNT NOW AND I WANT AN E-MAIL CONFIRMATION OF THIS TRANSACTION, SINCE YOU OBVIOUSLY ARE INCAPABLE OF ACTUALLY PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT THE OTHER PERSON IS ASKING FOR."

Boing Boing has a post on "How to cancel a service" -- it's apparently become so difficult that the public needs a tutorial. The advice? Call during off hours. That way you're less likely to reach a dreaded "retention agent." If your agent is rude, call back and try another one. Try telling them you're moving, even if you aren't. If you say you're moving outside their coverage area, they can't do much. The last bit of advice was this:

"Also, it would be helpful to remember that the representatives in retention are paid to retain you as customers--threatening to record the call, asking for their name or ID, or asking for a supervisor will not do anything. All calls are recorded and the representatives have responses they are required to give for every customer question or complaint. The rep who actually gets in trouble will be the one who disconnects you immediately without trying to retain you, not the one who spends twenty minutes using every tactic in the book the company wrote for him."

Are their any agents or managers out there who want to weigh in on this? What's your retention policy? Anyone have any best practices they'd like to share? Tell us.