The New York State Attorney General is suing SiriusXM, saying the satellite radio company makes the process of canceling long and burdensome. Sirius is accused of forcing subscribers to talk with an agent before canceling, then deliberately drawing out those conversations.

The attorney general also says Sirius trains its agents to not take “no” for an answer. But there are many companies that make it hard for customers to get out of subscriptions.

Canceling a subscription is kinda like going to a gym class: You might need some motivational sayings, however cliche, to get through it. So, motivational saying No. 1: Be strong. 

“Tell yourself ahead of time, ‘I am not going to get talked into anything,'” said Teresa Murray with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, or PIRG.

She advises having all your account information written down in front of you and not getting distracted by any promotions a customer service agent offers. 

“Because otherwise, you’re gonna be in the same situation again,” she said. “Rotting on hold again.”

That brings us to motivational saying No. 2: Be ready to put in the time.

“If you’re going to upgrade, guess what? It’ll happen in like two minutes. If you want to leave, you might be on hold for a little while,” said Raghu Iyengar, a marketing professor at Wharton. 

If you can’t get through to a real person, Iyengar said to read the fine print to see if there are other ways you can get in touch with a company.

And when you do get ahold of someone, PIRG’s Teresa Murray said that you’ve gotta be nice.

“Because you know, the person on the other end of the phone call, they’re just doing their job,” she said.

And to avoid the pain of cancellation — financial and otherwise — Murray suggests being mindful of what you subscribe to in the first place.

And that brings us to one final well-known saying: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.