Ryan Block, who works at AOL and at one time was Engadget’s editor-in-chief and is co-founder of gdgt, was moving and decided he wanted to cancel his Comcast service and start at his new home with a different provider.

Simple, right? Just pick up the phone, call Comcast and disconnect.

Well, no. It wasn’t that simple. Listen to this astonishing recording in which Block is badgered by a Comcast rep who demands to know why he’s canceling the service. It’s a train wreck.

As Block describes it, his wife started the process and he stepped in after she became upset:

This recording picks up roughly 10 minutes into the call, whereby she and I have already played along and given a myriad of reasons and explanations as to why we are canceling (which is why I simply stopped answering the rep’s repeated question — it was clear the only sufficient answer was “Okay, please don’t disconnect our service after all.”).

Have you ever had an experience like this when you tried to cancel a service?

[Via Glass]

Update: Comcast has released a statement saying it’s “very embarrassed” at the way Block was treated by its retention rep:

We are very embarrassed by the way our employee spoke with Mr. Block and are contacting him to personally apologize. The way in which our representative communicated with him is unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives. We are investigating this situation and will take quick action. While the overwhelming majority of our employees work very hard to do the right thing every day, we are using this very unfortunate experience to reinforce how important it is to always treat our customers with the utmost respect.

Update 7.16.2014: Slate explains why the Comcast retention rep was so aggressive. According to a former Comcast employee, his paycheck depended on it: