Customer service policies are often designed to reduce cancellations, not make them easier.

So when an elderly man tried to cancel his landline, the call turned into a battle of persistence.

You’ll want to read on for this one!

You hang up, no you!

Someday I will be a saint… but today is not that day.

I just heard an agent give my 80-year-old father-in-law a very, very hard time about canceling home phone service.

This rep wasn’t taking no for an answer.

She wanted to upsell services, etc., and get personal information she did not need to complicate what was supposed to be an easy request.

It went on for a while like this.

Finally, the relative stepped in and set the rep straight.

I finally stepped in and shut that down, confirmed a cancellation, and handed the phone back to him and walked away.

The agent insisted it was nothing personal, just company policy to engage in “customer retention” efforts.

He moved across the country.

Even still, the rep’s persistence didn’t stop.

He told her that—there is no retention possible.

Still, she kept him going in circles unnecessarily.

But now, the roles seem to have reversed.

I can hear the agent now begging him to hang up from the other room.

This call agent cannot end the call.

Company policy is that the customer ends the call.

So the rep has to listen to every word they have to say.

My father-in-law cannot hear her, as he and my mother-in-law are happily chatting away about elderly bodily functions and peanut butter crackers with apples while this poor agent is literally begging them to end the call.

I will not end her nightmare.

Now that’s some good karma.

What did Reddit make of all this?

A fellow call center employee confirms that the no-hang-up policy is real.

Old people aren’t the only good candidates to perpetrate this kind of malicious compliance.

“Customer retention” doesn’t always account for real life.

When a customer service rep asks how you are, very rarely do they care to know the full story.

This customer service rep retained the customer… just not the way they planned!

You’ve gotta love it.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.