For $5, They’ll Cancel Your Comcast Service

Photo by John Murdock via Instagram

With the tagline “bureaucracy made surprisingly pleasant,” AirPaper  has a novel business mission: It’ll cancel your Comcast service for $5 — in five minutes.

To the masses who’ve spent long hours on hold with Comcast, $5 may sound like a steal. Canceling your service likely means waiting on hold for a customer-service rep then being transferred to a supervisor who’ll offer a cheaper price or more services to keep you subscribing. Think free HBO or a lower rate on your Triple Play (even though you never use your landline phone.)

AirPaper says it takes all the trouble out of the process by allowing you to fill out a questionnaire online, then doing the dirty work for you.

“Billions of hours of beautiful human life are lost each year to terrible but required processes. At AirPaper we’re dedicated to helping people spend as much time as possible doing the things they love,” the company’s website says. “We love turning bureaucratic processes into surprisingly pleasant processes we call “AirPapers.” Sound too good to be true? Try our Comcast Cancellation process or sign up for one of our processes that are coming soon. We think you’ll like working with us.”

The site asks for your name, email address, Comcast account number and other information to get the process going. It also reminds you that you have to return rented equipment before your service can be cancelled.

Don’t think it’s worth it? AirPaper would surely have been a help to this guy who repeatedly tried to cancel his service during an epic 18-minute call, only to be berated by a customer-retention specialist. “Tell me why you wouldn’t want faster Internet!” 

Or this guy who waited on hold for more than three hours trying to cancel his service, only to be told that the office was closed for the day.

To be fair, Comcast announced a customer-service overhaul in May that includes the building of three new service centers in the United States, employing 5,500 workers; tripling the size of its social care team to serve customers more quickly on Twitter and Facebook; and offering a $20 instant credit if technicians are even one minute late to service calls.

Meanwhile for AirPaper, the company has its sites set on other bureaucracy: Getting a San Francisco parking permit; obtaining a Chinese visa; or gaining San Francisco business tax registration.