You always seem to be thrown into this game of ring around the rosy/ round robin whatever you want to call it when you need to cancel a service and leave the country soon after; there are always hoops you have to jump and you can never see what’s coming up from around the corner. I’ve experienced this many times but most recently with Moviestar. I think I have probably spoken to every agent English or Spanish in the Madrid area. I have been tranfered for hours on end and by the end of the day people knew my name without even seeing it pop up on their screen or having me tell them (they must all be in the same room mocking me haha). Anyway, my point is it is never easy and you just have to stick to your guns and you’ll get what you want, it just may take 10 hours.
Here is a run through if you need to cancel your Movistar internet/land line in Spain:
1. . You need to cancel (dar la linea de baja) 15 days in advance. So plan ahead. You don’t want to cancel your internet the day before you leave town because it is quite the process. As far as I’ve found you can only call 1004 (the free from a moviestar phone hotline) to cancel or do anything. Call them from your movistar landline! First off it is free, second is that it really screws them up if you call from a moviestar mobile or other phone and you will end up on hold for 6+ hours no joke.
2. . Apparently your internet and your land line are a separate cancelation process even though many agents will tell you they both will be canceled if you just cancel one (don’t believe them). Even though you pay for them both in a monthly bundle the cancelation process is separate. To cancel your telephone line it must be 10 days in advance. I learned this the hard way even though I insisted to the agent that he must cancel both separately immediately, I ended up paying 3 months I wasn’t even in the country. Which leads me to the next point.
3. . Cancel your automatic deposit! (You can only do so by calling 1004) The only problem with this is if you have to pay the roll over bill the next month. I thought that if I canceled my direct deposit that I could pay the remainder of my bill when I handed in my router (as they said I could), no such luck. I had to go to the post office to pay a moviestar bill, they won’t accept bill payment at any storefront. So this complicates things especially if you are leaving the country but if you aren’t coming back then moviestar won’t chase after you (wink wink hint hint).
4. . Return your router! If you forget or don’t get a receipt they will charge you up to and over 100 euros a month until you either cancel direct deposit or return the goods. You can return the router to any store front but wait for the receipt. Oh and you have to give them the long cancelation number that the phone operator gave you when you arrive with your router (don’t get it wrong!).
5. . Expect to spend 2-10 hours on the phone most of it on hold listening to the same shitty Built to Spill song that they haven’t changed in years. It is meant to drive you crazy and make you hang up so no one has to deal with you. This is also why you should call from a free moviestar line.
6. . If you want to talk to someone in English expect to wait 2 hours before you hear a human voice. And expect to be transferred back to Spanish when you need to cancel; although the English speaking agent may be listening in to help you get out of arguments they could get lost in the transfer so brush up on some techy jargon and grow some cojones to throw some sass back at them when it is given because it happens.
7. . It is a pain in the ass but really depends on the agent you get and how clear their connection is. Oh and all this is worth it because no matter what any realtor/agency manager tells you, it doesn’t cost you a cent to cancel/break your contract with Movistar early. It only takes time.
8. . Save every statement, receipt, phone number, name etc. and don’t expect to get any money back if you end up getting scammed into paying more.
9. . Plan ahead; you can never foresee all the hoops you will have to jump through up to the last minute.
10. . After you have made it through this process you will feel like you could run this company and hell maybe you should because they run it like they aren’t an international company, although they provide the best coverage in most areas but hell they are a chaotic mess. I can’t help you choose an internet provider because I heard they are all the same when it comes to cancelation but I can shed some light on the situation. I know there isn’t much information out there. So good luck and I hope this helps.
I am quite the movie addict. I’ve seen my share of classics, a lot of good, bad and some I’m ashamed to even name; but what’s great about learning a new language is that you can watch even the bad ones and feel ok about it because it’s like a form of “study” even though probably a lot gets lost in translation. The best part about watching movies dubbed in Spanish is that the dub over stars here in Spain are awesome and sometimes make the characters more bad-ass when needed; it makes the bad movies endurable. Here is a mini example of how Spain dubs can be 10 times better than other dubs: Adventure Time Opening