Why is it so difficult to cancel a contract that should auto expire anyway???

After being a customer for 4 years, I decided to cancel my contract that was due to expire in October as not only have I been refused an update on my phone, after looking around, I can get the same deal + an extra 2 gb of data for less than half the price of my existing tarif.   Given it has a clear end date and no option to turn off Auto-Renew, one would think that there is no need to cancel anything, it would just expire..you know, like contracts do...

However, just to be sure, I pressed the right buttons online and was told that i have to call up O2 DE in the next 10 days..  So I did and was told in no uncertain terms that I had 3 months to the day to cancel the contract.  As I was 19 days too late (with no reminders, prompts etc, just decided to check my account after a conversation with a new co worker at work) I am now being told, tough luck, you have to pay for at least another year!

What is this dumbfuckery all about?  If there was an option to turn off Auto Renew from within the Online Portal, or if the O2 shop I got the contract from in the first place explained that in the O2 world, a contract has a completely different meaning, fair enough, but how the heck do you expect a customer to remember 3 months before the expiry date (again with no prompts, emails, alerts etc) and make a decision?!  Yes, I am aware of Rolling contracts (my cable has one for instance, as does the rent on my flat, with no end date, so you have to give a notice period) but if something expires in 24 months, then it should bloody well expire, not decide to trap you for a further year (which would mean its a 3 year contract, with a get out clause after 21 months)

Whilst I'm at it, does Customer Service here in Germany take on a whole different meaning?  Perhaps instead of being helpful, assisting the customer and taking ownership, it means instead be as unhelpful, rude and antagonistic as humanely possible?  At least that's the training the O2 call centre staff seem to have received...

I have tweeted and posted on FB my dissatisfaction, no doubt it will be read by yet another "supervisor" with the social and customer service skills of Roadkill, but I shall persist and I shall continue to voice my dissatisfaction either for the next 15 months or for however long it takes for someone in their ivory tower to get off their backside and actually realize that perhaps their is another meaning to "Customer Service"