> It's not like that at all, because it encourages more services for people with disabilities, instead of taking them away.
I mean you could argue the same for parking right? If everyone parked in the disabled section then you'd encourage having more such parking. And this also requires paying a representative more hours to deal with emails etc. It's not like there's zero cost.
In most cases (private parking lots) it isn't illegal to take a disabled parking space. The fines a private company levies against you don't have any merit (though of course they can refuse you entry and sue you for damages or whatever).
Parking spaces on public roads is a separate issue, and it's more in line with driving in a bus-only lane (technically illegal but it is because you need a particular permit -- so it requires more than just being disabled).
My point is that your are jumping the gun with discussions of legality here. The litmus test should be wheter it's shitty to lie about a disability in order to cut through reselling bullshit. Other commentors have more than adequately covered this topic though.
> And this also requires paying a representative more hours to deal with emails etc. It's not like there's zero cost.
Generally, if I'm cancelling a service, I could not possibly care less about how much it costs the company to process my cancellation. That's completely their problem, and I'm not about to make it mine.
>> And this also requires paying a representative more hours to deal with emails etc. It's not like there's zero cost.
> Generally, if I'm cancelling a service, I could not possibly care less about how much it costs the company to process my cancellation. That's completely their problem, and I'm not about to make it mine.
This was not the point of my comment. The point wasn't to sympathize with the company for their costs. The subjects of concern were other people with disabilities who may have otherwise been helped by the same representative (who probably also couldn't care about the company's costs either). The point of mentioning the costs was that the costs imply they can't just instantly add representatives to avoid affecting other such customers.
That is a poor analogy, because the service of car parking is already available to everyone.
A better analogy might be sidewalk ramps, which probably get used ten times more often for prams (strollers) than for wheelchairs. If they were absent or faulty, complaints by owners of prams can help grease the wheels of local government.
Sure, the service of cancellation is already available to everyone too. I also don't see how a sidewalk ramp is a better analogy since it's pretty obvious when someone needs to use it at the same time so that you can know you're not getting in their way. Over here you have no idea.
Car parks are a scarce resource. If I use a car space, I am monopolising the resource for the duration.
Sidewalk ramps are not a scarce resource; my use of them doesn't in any way detract from their use by a disabled person. Any visible use of them ultimately benefits everyone.
Online cancellation (compared to telephone cancellation) is like the latter, not the former.
> Sidewalk ramps are not a scarce resource; my use of them doesn't in any way detract from their use by a disabled person. Any visible use of them ultimately benefits everyone.
> Online cancellation (compared to telephone cancellation) is like the latter, not the former.
Wait, what? No, it's like the former. How do you know these agents handling your cancellation weren't assigned to handle similar cancellations from other deaf customers? How do you know the representatives don't have to go through extra procedures (such as documenting and obtaining authorizations for the non-standard cancellation, or bothering more reps to figure out whom to forward the inquiry to) that wouldn't take them far more time than it would take the phone agent? Meaning you could well be taking up a resource that was reserved for disabled folks, slowing down the responses for them in the process. Heck, even if the amount of time spent isn't any more than for a phone call, it's likely to be a separate set of agents handling these special requests than taking calls, meaning you'll still be slowing down this service for those who actually cannot use the phone.
What I find baffling is that neither you nor anybody else is making the most compelling counterargument I can see here, which is that cancellations aren't time-sensitive, so a slower reply would be unlikely to do anyone much harm as a result of slow service. Meaning it's one way you could argue disabled people are not suffering any tangible harm from slow replies. But to argue that it doesn't even affect the service provided to them in the first place is bizarre, especially if you think about what would happen if tomorrow everybody decided to follow this advice and do the same thing.
I see the misunderstanding. You're assuming that cancellations would still be handled by humans shuffling paperwork, whereas I'm optimistically assuming cancellation would be handled by computer software, much like it is when you cancel an exclusively online service like Netflix.
Though even in your scenario, you are assuming that a company wouldn't adjust its resources as telephone usage drops and written submissions increases. And yes, the point you make in your second paragraph also applies—a written cancellation request places the time onus on the company rather than the customer.
But either way, it is always a good thing if the methods used by people with disabilities are mainstreamed rather than treated as oddball special exceptions.
I mean you could argue the same for parking right? If everyone parked in the disabled section then you'd encourage having more such parking. And this also requires paying a representative more hours to deal with emails etc. It's not like there's zero cost.