This Blog Is Full Of Crap

There's a procedure that customers have to follow to cancel a server or services on the server.

It's to prevent accidental cancellations or malicious cancellations in the rare circumstance some twit leaves their account and password exposed to malcontents.

Because it's a lot easier to request a cancellation and then get confirmation than to, say, get that server replaced, order backups, change DNS entries if the IPs have been reassigned, etc.

It's not brain surgery to go into the portal and select the cancellation link for follow-up confirmation, but it's not obvious, either.

At least 20 times a day, someone writes an email or a ticket (in varying degrees of rage and frustration) asking to cancel their server or services.

There's a canned response telling them the step-by-step procedure.

The common responses:

• Did you cancel my server?
• Um, that makes no sense.
• I'm gonna sue you!
• I'm just gonna tell my credit card company to ignore the charges.
• Just shut up and do it, you shit-eating platypus-fucker!

With any procedure, there's going to be people who truly don't give a flying fuck what the procedure is. They just want to walk up to the clown's head and shout that they want five Jumbo Jacks and a Coke.

But if there's perfectly ordinary people who get hung up, stumped, or frustrated by your procedure, that's a pretty good sign that your procedure leaves room for improvement.

Here's a suggestion: improve it.

Write out every step of the procedure in a decision tree, and then ponder what it takes to answer each decision.

Then, grab some folks off the street and run them through the maze.

If nobody makes it from one end to the other, that's a good sign that you need to make it simpler.

Fitness centers rook you in with splashy commercials, false hopes, and money-back guarantees that aren't worth the shit in their shit-eating-grins.

Canceling service with those assholes is like a trip to the dentist through Landmine Acres.

They pretty much set the standard for sliminess.