Ha, not as hard as I expected but still like 4-5 steps with a bunch of dark patterns (highlighting the buttons that don't downgrade, etc). The screen that's like "OK, you want to downgrade, but tell us why" gave me flashbacks to that nightmare Comcast cancellation call[0].
At what point can you just state something like the following?
> I am recording this phone call. I am terminating our service contract, and have communicated this by mail as well as verbally as we speak. Any further attempts to charge me for this service I have cancelled shall be disputed and reported to the police for attempted fraud. Good day.
I don't consider it abusive. Or at least I'm perfectly ok being an "abusive" customer to an abusive company.
Bit of a tangent but you know I always really hate telemarketing calls or just people I don't know phoning me generally because sometimes it's very hard to tell spam calls from the 1 out of 10 times it's a legit call you actually need to take. So I figured out a trick that works ok-ish. I answer the call and I say nothing. I wait for the other side to speak. Often it's a confused "hello???". If I don't recognize your voice and/or you don't introduce yourself and state your business I effectively screen you without giving you license to launch into your sales pitch. So far it has been a good compromise.
Sales people on the street trying to heckle me often get incredulous, well a minority but it happens, when I walk by completely ignoring their existence. It's like... I know it's in the social contract that if someone addresses you you are supposed to respond, but I crossed that clause out before signing because I knew it would be abused like this.
People that don't know you that approach you out of the blue either want your time, your money, or your body. I don't owe them shit and especially not the time of day. The exception to this rule is that some people are tourists that are a little stuck and need help. It's pretty easy to delineate those cases and I almost always help.
I dunno. I find the world abusive fullstop. So I just give it the fewest possible avenues through which to abuse me and don't go down the ones that I can see lead to abuse. I feel no need to feel badly about the way I behave in this regard and am ok with people thinking I'm an asshole for doing it.
[0] https://soundcloud.com/ryan-block-10/comcastic-service