AOL Cancel
 

I saw this guy yesterday on The Today Show. Don't you wish we could all get away with this.

"At one point or another most of us have had to experience the impossible task of cancelling AOL. This guy records his experience in customer service hell, it's really unbelievable. Sorry about the blimps, we needed something to play over the audio."

http://www.break.com/index/aolhell.html

We had our own problems with aol when we first got our pc in '94 I think.

We joined for a month or so, and decided to go to a local ISP advised by a friend who was/is a computer guru. Toni was still a student and I was working a lame ass job, so $ was tight, and for almost 3 months we kept bouncing checks at the beginning of the month when we shouldn’t have and we finally found it was AOL who after canceling, never stopped billing us.

After so strong loud words from us, they refunded the $ and paid for the over draft charges.

I tell everyone I know who will listen, avoid AOL like the plague. I have a friend who was friends with a former IT guy for aol, and he shared some true horror stories on aol policies.

I periodically change credit and debit cards just to clean out the people charging them :) That was the end of AOL this last time I used them. Nice and easy without having to explain anything to anyone.

It's kind of hard to believe that AOL claims they are outraged by the way their customer service guy acted and he was now fired. Is there any reasonable reason to not have a cancel account button or form on AOL other than to try to convince people leaving to stay?

My kids where using AOL and I just canceled it a few days ago. We had a "free" 90 day trial and don't you know it, I saw a full months price charged to my account 2 days after joining! I then went through customer service hell trying to get rid of it. I'll just stick with a good old browser and monitor what my kids are doing on line, thank you!|angry|

I heard that call on O & A earlier this week - good to hear the "John" got fired |thumb

The best part is all the bad press AOL is getting now. I read that almost 50,000 people have canceled since the recording was released. And now, they are canceling without the hassle. Funny what one guy with a tape recorder can do. He did more in a week that 1000s of other people complaining has done in the past years.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13447232/

To put this claim to the test, CNBC reporter Matt Lefkowitz called again. Here is a rough transcript:

CNBC: I want to cancel my AOL account.

He was promptly disconnected.

He tried again.

CNBC: I need to cancel my AOL account. I never really use it. ... Well, if I can cancel it anytime, why can't I cancel it now? Can I just cancel my account?

It took him 45 minutes to finally get his account canceled.

A friend of mine tried to quit once, but he was convinced he should keep it.

Not only that, they signed him up with some computer education scam. AOL told him it was gonna be 1 free video, but somehow he got 4 video packs mailed to him, and a bill for over $200!

Even now he he bitches about his slow connection, yet he still won't switch over to high-speed. I bug him about leaving the babysitter behind, but he insists it's his computer. |banghead|

I love AOL users. |violin|

I hope that AOL will crash and burn!
They've sucked for many, many, many, many, (etc), years!
And it's time for them to go bye, bye! |waves|
:D

I wish I'd of recorded it when I cancelled my account a few years ago, I went through the same thing. I remember telling the lady at one point "I just want to cancel the account!" and she ignored me, reading her lame ass sheet why I should stay with them. I will never sign up with them again, that was horrible. |banghead|

I used to be a credit collector for Providian out here in Ca. Talk about a messed up job. Well I tell you a good 30% of all our collection calls were because of AOL. They would charge a card that would be turned off by reusing old authoriztion numbers. Everytime someone would call before even looking you knew it was charges from AOL for $29.95 and everytime and I mean 100% it would be AOL..

I like alot of people when 1st got a computer did have an account. But when I got tired of sitting on the phone for 1 hour trying to cancel. I kind of did what Jim did. I called the CC company and told them to not allow AOL to charge on the card. Account got canceled very fast after the first payment did not go through. I got a call from them telling me there was a problem with charging the card. I said no problem, I dont want the service and hung up.
I think this company will over time have a very very hard time with retaining customers. When you go to broadband you learn very fast you don't need them to surf the internet. Took me 6 months to get my mom off of AOL and when she did leave. She now loves not having it. Now it's my brother-in-law I need to move off.