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Canceling My Kid's Disney "Toon Town" Account

August 4, 2007

Canceling an online account has become a real pain in the ass over the years. I know everyone has heard the story of the poor AOL user and the hell he went through to cancel his dial up account that time. I just had a very similar experience trying to cancel my daughter's Disney.com "Toon Town" account.

I noticed I never saw her playing the game anymore, so I asked if I should go ahead and cancel it. She said yes, she was done playing it, that it was a pretty boring game after a while. Just to be sure, I waited a couple of weeks and asked her again. She said yup, she was done with it, for sure. Kids grow up so fast.

So my plan to was cancel the account today. It's a weekend and it's 2 days before they're due to rape my credit card for another $10. I mean seriously, who doesn't agree with me that Disney has way too much fucking money already? Heh. Blizzard only charges me $15 a month for World of Warcraft and it's a 100 times better a game.

I tried to find a link to "Toon Town" on Disney.com, but I found nothing. Curious, I began to wonder how my daughter had found the game to start with. Well, Google to the rescue. Finally I arrived to the "Toon Town" site.

For whatever reason the site kept my browser in some sort of continuous loop, trying to force me to agree that I was not using IE to browse their site. After a while I realized what was going on. Sorry Disney, My Mac doesn't run IE, at least not without some Parallels VM help or Bootcamp. Luckily I have both installed.

So I rebooted and fired up IE. When I arrived back to their site I was again caught in some sort of endless loop with their site trying to force me into installing Flash. I didn't want to play the damn game, I just wanted to cancel the account. I tried clicking on a few links that seemed like they might help, Member Services, the FAQ, etc. Nothing helped, they simply we're not going to let me do anything without allowing a forced Flash plug-in install.

I have nothing against Flash, but in this context, having a forced install was quite annoying.

So I let the damn thing install Flash in my IE. Finally, I could read their FAQ.

Nowhere in the FAQ was any information on how to cancel an account. According to my children the level of boredom acquired from playing the game lead me to believe account cancellation information should definitely be located on the FAQ page.

After a few more minutes of searching around I found the number to call to cancel. W00t!

I called the number. The guy was sooooo sickeningly bubbly with happiness I wanted to puke. You can tell genuine cheerfulness compared to the fake sort you get from some people, especially on support lines. They probably sit around snortin' coke all day cause their video games are too fucking boring to play.

What self-respecting man would get a job in member services for a Flash-based Disney game like "Toon Town" anyway? I'd rather die, or be a windoze programmer or something.

I knew canceling an account of this sort with a huge company like Disney was going to be a total pain in the ass, but I tried my best to answer all the guy's questions so he would assist me more quickly. I provided him with precise answers to each and every question. It really felt like he was trying to find something I couldn't answer so he could refuse to assist. Account login, zip code, last 4 digits of the card, mailing address; it didn't seem like it would end. Finally he said he had located the account. I'm pretty sure he had found the account a long time before, but whatever.

Finally, after everything I had to do to get to this point, I heard the magical question, "How can I help you today, Mr. Donald?"

I told him very firmly I would like to cancel the account. He exclaimed how sorry he was to hear the bad news, and all that other crap they say when you're trying to cancel an account.

So next the guy puts me on hold. He didn't give me a reason, he just did it. He was probably going to take a piss, since that's about how long he was gone. I could just imagine reading something in the company handbook, "Always take piss breaks during member account cancellation calls". I'm not a pessimist, I just work in internet technology so I have a good idea how these things usually work.

When he came back on the line he said he was going to have to collect some additional information to proceed any further with canceling the account. WTF?

He said he needed to verify with another adult in the house, to be able to close the account. I exploded. "Verify what?", I yelled. "That I have indeed acquired permission from my 11 year old kid to cancel the account that I'm paying for with my credit card?" Jesus fucking Christ.

I had of course acquired the requisite permissions from said child approximately 48 hours prior to this moment. But why the hell did he need to know that?

Imagine a future time where society is so ruled by corporate media that internet savvy families are being required to attend family counseling from incidents of one parent turning off a child's game account without the other parent's "verification". Boycott Disney now I say!

I told him that it only took me 30 seconds to create the account, with only one credit-card-bearing adult present at the time. I told him firmly in a slightly louder voice to close the account now, that there were no other adults here to speak with him.

The guy started to ask me if I wanted to save the account, in case it was to be played later. I said no, close the account. He asked if I was sure no one else in the house wanted to play the account. I said no, close the account. He asked if I would consider a free month of membership in exchange for keeping the account open. I said no, close the account.

Mind you, at this point I had still kept my cool enough that I hadn't used a single curse word yet. That was subject to change at any moment however.

But then finally, the guy got the hint. He asked me to hold again while he proceeded with closing the account. Jesus Christ man.. I'm a programmer. I know how incredibly easy it is to put a big fat red "close account" button inside an admin interface. It's not lambda calculus (or rocket science).

He came back on the line and said the account was closed but started yet another sales pitch on how I should probably subscribe to their backup service, in case I changed my mind about reinstating the account at a later date. I broke in and interrupted him. I asked if this was all I had to do to make sure I wouldn't be billed again for the account. He said the account was closed but then started yet another sales pitch for something else. I hung up.

I'd advise staying away from Disney.com and "Toon Town" at all costs. Hopefully you will never have to go through this sort of thing like I did today. As I've stated previously, I hate big companies. It's gonna take at least four beers to calm my nerves.

Tags:

disney, cancel, toon, town

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