A small everyday moment that didn't feel quite right.
I recently had to cancel an electricity application I had submitted in advance for a move. The company offered two options for cancellation: phone or chat. I tried calling first, but the wait was so long that I eventually switched to the chat option.
The chat window appeared on the right edge of the screen, in a fairly small area. The agent first asked me to enter my application number, so I went back to the confirmation email, found the number, and typed it in. I expected the process to move forward from there.
Instead, the agent started asking for almost every detail I had already provided when I applied: my full name, address, phone number, date of birth, and even the specific plan I had chosen. The plan name wasn't clearly written in the confirmation email, so I had to rely on my memory and pick what I thought was the right one. At that point, I started to worry:
If I get this wrong, will the cancellation fail and will I still get billed later?
The conversation continued, and the operator's responses themselves did not feel especially inappropriate. But being asked to re-enter so much information, followed by such a light final confirmation, made the overall experience feel far from smooth.
At the end, the chat simply responded with a brief message saying that the cancellation had been accepted. There was no email confirmation, and nothing clearly showed what had been processed. Once I closed the tab, the chat disappeared and could not be reopened. There was no account or login where I could check the cancellation later.
When I told the agent that I was still worried, they said that, if I wanted a record, I could take a screenshot of the chat before closing it. That was practical advice, but it also made the gap more visible: the process was supposedly complete, yet the only record available to me was one I had to create myself.
If I wanted to confirm the cancellation again later, I would have to contact the company again—through the same phone line or by starting another chat and entering my information from the beginning.
