Bummer!
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I called Virgin Media (UK) to cancel my broadband last September - contract was about to expire, monthly cost would double, and I was moving out in a few months. Spoke first to one of their operators for 10 mins and she confirmed lots of details, then passed me to ‘retentions’.
The retentions guy read through all the notes, and said “wow, you’ve been with us for 29 years, I’m keen to see what we can do to keep you as a customer”.
So I told him I was moving to Japan for at least a year. His response: “Ah. I suppose even if I offered you a 90% discount that wouldn’t help”
Amazing what they can do for you in a pinch…
Near the end of the call, he said ‘Japan sounds interesting… would you mind if I asked what you were going there to do?’. Had a nice chat for another 5 mins. Best Virgin Media interaction I ever had!
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Secret hack to terminating the retention script early: tell the person “I have to report to prison next Monday.”
Or so I’ve heard. Probably doesn’t do your credit rating any good though.
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I’ve not had that much luck with Virgin Media, although I’ve only been with them for a couple of years. No matter how much I threatened to leave they flat out refused to offer me the same deal they offer new customers 
. I did end up on a much better deal than what they were originally going to bump me up to but it’s annoying to have to go through that every 18 months.
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That only works if you’re in good standing. If you’re known to be a pain in the ass (for example you have an extensive call and complaint history) they are just as likely to call your bluff and fire you as a customer if you’re actually a profit sink. If you talk to a retention specialist they will have all this data.
I’ve found it’s often just as effective to not necessarily threaten to cancel but just call and say, “my bill is too high, can you do anything to help make it lower?” (Failing that, then you can try the cancellation gambit.)
Even if you do have health insurance you can get and use these. They are especially useful if your can only reliably get a medication at a certain pharmacy and that pharmacy doesn’t accept your insurance. (Speaking from experience.) They can sometimes even offer better discounts than your insurance copay.
One thing that’s not mentioned but can go a really long way is a little kindness toward the CS rep you’re talking to. They are almost certainly overworked and underpaid. They know you don’t want to be talking to them. They can often only do so much to help. Simply not being an asshole can often open more doors than the alternate.
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When I lived in Japan between 2007 and 2011, my internet bill was about the same as it had been in the UK, but instead of an ADSL copper wire connection providing about 15Mbits down and 4 up, I had 100Mbits in both directions.
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I rarely shop using store credit cards. I only do if they are offering special discounts. One fine day a couple months ago I went to two stores and used their credit cards.I paid both of them 1 day and 2 days late. I was shocked to receive bills for late charges nearly as much as the original bill ($39 and $42). Yikes! I called and worked my way thru the automated system and spoke to a real person to get the fees waved. It was a call center somewhere foreign (India I assume). I think corporations use these call centers not only because they are cheap, but also they think consumers will just give up after saying “what?” so many times.
Moral: Don’t give up so easily.
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My spouse had a bad habit of opening new store credit accounts in order to get the “10% off if you open a new account with us” discount to the point where she had 5 or 6 different open accounts at one particular clothing store. We never carried any balance but at some point a payment got crossed and they applied a credit to the wrong account while allowing the other account to lapse into collections.
We literally spent years dealing with their Indian call centers and was never able to communicate that they had already received our payment and no amount of yelling, begging, pleading or faxing of the cancelled check could convince them that they screwed up. That one snafu was like a bad penny and kept resurfacing years later as one debt collector after another kept hounding us for the same $98.37. We had to explain it on our mortgage application almost a decade later.
Suffice to say that we learned our lesson and no amount of “special discount” is worth the hassle or aggravation. We pay cash for everything now and eschew all credit offers.
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