AOL cancelation horror stories

[LuLu550]

I'm still trying to collect AOL cancelation stores to include with my formal complaint to NYS attorney general Elliot Spitzer. If you have one, please add it to this thread. I will black out references to DU and user names.
Thanks,
LuLu

[Jacobin]

1. What's so horrible about having your AOHell service cancelled?

It should be considered a relief. Just sign up with a local ISP and pay half the cost of AOHell and get better service and not get trapped on the sites they promote.

Or maybe I'm missing your point?

[hlthe2b]

2. they are probably referring to repeated attempts to have it cancelled...

I know of many folks who, despite certified letters, repeated emails, phone calls and online messages, still were being billed months later.

[sendero]

3. and that my friend....

.... is what Chargebacks are for. It you are paying on a card, simply call your CC company, tell them this account has been cancelled long ago and you want to dispute the charge.

The bottom line is no matter what AOL says, you can get the charge removed. And you should - because what they are doing is fraud.

Friends don't let friends use AOL. :)

[MUAD_DIB]

15. I had cancelled AOL a long time ago

in November of '98. A few months later (January '99) I noticed an AOL bill on my credit statement.

Curious, I called up AOL and asked what up? Why I am I still being billed for what I had cancelled 2 months earlier.

"Oh we're sorry. We thought that you said that you were going to call us back to cancel once you had made up your mind." (paraphrased, but danm close)

After explaining that I wanted the charges expunged from my credit they agreed to do so, but this is the kicker: the employee that was helping me said "Thank you for using AOL. You'll be back."

:scared:

It felt like I was dealing with big brother. I will never use them again.

[Richardo]

16. Had this exact same conversation except for the "you'll be back"

That call confirmation line must be scripted - my billing went on for 6 months after cancellation before I woke up and disputed it. Was like pulling teeth, but I did get it all reversed.

[LuLu550]

12. I think you are....

I am making a formal complaint to my state's attorney general of fraudulent practices by AOL when users try to cancel.
I will print out this thread, deleting references to DU and users names.
Thanks for any help you can give me.
LuLu

[plurality]

4. well

When I tried to cancell my service I had to sit and wait around on the phone while the 'customer service' representative banged buttons on her keyboard. After about half an hour she told me that there was a 'computer problem' and that they wouldn't be able to cancel my account at the time, and asked why I was cancelling. Told her because AOL was bullshit and I refused to pay for a ISP that feels my only purpose on the net is to look at pop-ups and spam. Once again she said she couldn't cancel my account but could give me two months free. I told her I didn't care if the computer was down or not, I had better not see another AOL charge on my card and hung up. Not a horror story, but not the easiest either.

[DagmarK]

5. I have one...it isn't hair-raising.......but it's my story

I got the 45 days free service in December.

I called 2 days before the end of the free term to CANCEL. (That was after I had a devil of a time looking for a way to CANCEL online. I went through webpage after webpage of support and account HELP INFO and FAQs......and NOTHING about how to cancel (by phone or web). Eventually, I did find the number......I don't even recall how I did).

So I call.

Got routed, of course, to India.

The service person was a woman.

I told herL hey, I need to cancel my service as of X day.

She would not let me cancel! She insisted that she had to know exactly WHY I was canceling "in order to process my request."

I basically said...b/c I hate aol and I did not feel it was necessary for me to explain my reasoning...and to please just cancel it.

She dicked around with me quite a bit more...and finally I just told her: "You know, what I abhor about AOL is that for YEARS.....your company has been mailing out CDs to anyone and everyone and many, many times throughout the year and that they are filling our landfills. And that any company that can be that reckless with the environment is not friend of mine. Not to mention to environmentally unconscienable packaging. And all the fossil fuels necessary to transport ALL THOSE CDs across the country and the time involved for our postal service to sort and deliver them."

Her RESPONSE was long and drawn out (more like a rant) claiming that AOL was making internet service available to people who would otherwise never get connected. It was a PUBLIC SERVICE, she said.

My REPLY: So.....people who aren't on the internet receive your free CD and offer to try the internet would never have the opportunity to get online if not for this aggressive mail campaign? So, you are telling me that these people are sitting at home with a computer that has a MODEM on it. And they have never used that modem, right? And without the AOL CD, they would never even attempt to get online????

She didn't say anything about that and processed my order.

But before she would give me the cancellation number (in case they charged me for the next month, I'd need that to prove I had cancelled), she started in on me with MARKETING questions.

I just had to get rude and tell her to bug off and give me my friggin cancellation number. She did.

***What concerned me was that she had requested early on that I confirm my credit card number to confirm that she could make sure that the next month's payment wasn't charged to it. Sorry.....but I don't want to give someone an ocean away my credit card number......

*****So, that's not a terrible story and I used too many words to explain it. But it was an unpleasant experience. I felt like a trapped consumer and horribly pressured and almost brow-beat about canceling ..... It was apparent that her job was to say anything and everything to get me to stay with AOL. And once she had been defeated, she was to find a way to get my money some other way (via target marketing questions.)

Is this what you are looking for?

[LuLu550]

11. YES!

Thanks...I want this kind of anecdotal record for a formal complaint I am making to NY attorney general Elliot Spitzer.
LuLu

[OneTwentyoNine]

6. The old cancel scam back in 97 or so...

Back then you would cancel and gee...they'd manage to charge you for one more month on your CC--you know,clerical error,comp error or whatever BS story they were using that day.

I'm thinking somewhere along the line they got nailed for doing that. They sure as hell did it to me,I was only on AOL for a short period,seemed childish and idiotic to me. Did I mention slow,couldn't connect etc?? How they keep all their millions of customers is way beyond me.


David

[pstokely]

7. try getting TOSed 3 times

don't they dump your account after 3 TOS violations

[Walt Starr]

8. To get TOSed on AOL these days

Don't you have to be a pedophile murderer who gets caught killing a 6 year old you met in an AOL chat room?

And that's only the first TOS.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

21. AOL automatically TOSed me 3 days ago just for emailing 20 of my friends

bumped me off line and when i called ...I got a women whom I could barely understand from India and I had to request to "please, speak more slowly" she proceeded to accuse me of "spamming"...I explained that I have never spammed anyone and wouldn't even have the foggest idea howb do it. I had simply hit the "reply to all" button in the AOL e-mail service. She said, "you just send email to 61 people and AOL considers that SPAM"...I told her No, I had not and that I only 25 people in my AOL address book and all of them are AOL members and that we have been corresponding via email for over 4 1/2 years on AOL.(btw I suspect that the reason for my TOS - because all of my corresponences are of the left persaussion naturally due to being Democratic disscussion group). She then continued to accuse me of sending spam and informed me that in the future I can only send email to 5 or less people at a time and must wait at least 5 minutes between each mailing or else my AOL account will be terminated. The decent thing for AOL should have done was inform its customers of this change instead of finding out like this! AOL has successfully shut down communications with my small circle of friends....and I am LIVID!

[ElsewheresDaughter]

27. couldn't edit due too "time" so had to re-post ...sorry

AOL automatically TOSed me 3 days ago for emailing 20 of my friends! I was bumped off line (terminated) and when i called ...I got a women whom I could barely understand from India. I had to ask her to "please, speak slowly" she proceeded to accuse me of sending "spam." I tried too explained that I have never spammed anyone and wouldn't even have the foggest idea how to go about it. I explained that I had simply hit the "reply to all" button in the AOL e-mail. She then went on as if she didn't understand me either saying, "you just send email to 61 people and AOL considers that to be SPAM." I said, No, I had not and that I onlyhave 25 people in my AOL address book and all of them are AOL members and that we have been corresponding via email for over 4 1/2 years and that we were all friends. I explained that I thought that the deffinition of "spam" was UNSOLICITED emails. (btw I suspect that the reason for my TOS - because all of my corresponences are of the left persaussion naturally being a Democratic disscussion group). She then continued to accuse me of sending spam and informed me that in the future I can only send email to 5 or less people at a time and must wait at least 5 minutes between each mailing or else my AOL account will be terminated. The decent thing that AOL should have done was inform its customers of this change instead of making them go thru this humilationg attack from someone on the otherside of the world. Thus went my expeirence. AOL successfully shut down communications with my small circle of friends....so much for FREEDOM of speach and I am LIVID!

[Catshrink]

10. Getting TOS'd may be the most efficient way, time wise.

It's a good thought.

I had to jump through hoops to get my mom's AOL cancelled. I talked to one person who took info, then had to transfer me to someone else. She was a smooth talker, tried to get me to stay. Said they'd give me 2 free months blah blah blah. I kept saying no, please cancel. No, please cancel. Finally, she agreed.

It shouldn't be that difficult.

[Le Taz Hot]

I had a whole long list

of dates and times they TOSsed me, got sent nastigrams by AOL saying, "One more and . . ." Hell, they never did anything. And those TOS violations are VERY subjective, depending upon who the "host" is. One of those TOS violations was for using the word "tampon" in a chatroom. Don't even ask. :eyes:

[DiverDave]

9. I didn't read the

fine print and started at the end of the month.
I used a few days of the next month, and got charged.
No problem , well some, but my mistake.
I had used a CC that was double charged, 3 weeks apart, for dinner we had.
I cancelled my CC and AOL tried to charge to that card, do they call me?? Nope, they run it again...
bottom line I was charged for a months service and 2 attempts to charge to a cancelled card.
I lost out, but everytime they would call and try "and get me to come back"
I told them I wanted my $42 back first.
I didn't get it.

[yellowcanine]

13. First mistake is accepting the "free" service

Note that to get the "free"service one has to provide a credit card number - that is the first clue right there that it is not a free service. Why is the cc number needed if it is free? So my take on these guys is that if it is really free I will accept it but you don't get a cc number. Obviously they never go for that deal.

[El Mariachi]

14. ko

actually after you get tos'd and cancelled you still pay from what i heard unless you tell them to stop charging

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

17. Don't know if this counts, but --

my husband was overjoyed that he was recently able to cancel his AOL access. He had kept it only because a couple of clients used it, but they had finally canceled theirs.

When he called to cancel it, the salesperson was REALLY, REALLY aggressive about trying to talk him out of it. He had obviously been trained to be that way. My husband is a good sport and always nice to people, however, he is also very good at being firm with salespeople and not letting them waste his time.

This guy kept him on the phone for about 20 minutes giving him a big rigamarole sales pitch, saying stuff like, "C'mon Tom, you're breaking my heart here. How can you leave us? blah blah blah......" and dragging out the process. At first Tom joked back with him, but by the end of the conversation he had to yell at the guy, "I don't want it! Cancel it! I want it cancelled!" It was unbelievable.

And of course, they didn't make it easy to even find out where to call to have it canceled, so he estimates it took about 40 minutes to get the thing done, when you should be able to get it canceled with a 10 minute phone call at the most.

On addition: Good luck with this! I still have bad memories of dealing with their customer service and I haven't dealt with them personally for about six years. They are so manipulative, it felt like you were trying to petition the Great Oz for the favor of giving you what you were paying them for.

[indigo32]

18. Grrrr

I hate AOL.
I don't use it myself (I've got DSL)...but offered to supply my friends son with internet service (I got him the computer too), and so we signed up a few years ago.
Well heres two experiences I went through.
1rst:
I chose to use it while on vacation once (on a laptop). They immediately detected 2 people were sharing the account (albiet for a very short period of time) and split it into two billing accounts without notifying me in anyway. Suddenly my debit card has two charges coming each month. NO CONSENT REQUESTED OR GIVEN.

2nd: right now I'm trying to cancel it all together (they now have cable) But I can't seem to jump through all the security hoops to even have them try and talk me out of it. I keep explaining to them.."I'm not asking you to tell me ANYTHING about this account Just look at it yourself...it's my damn checking account, shall I read the card number too you?" Doesn't matter. I doubt a letter would help. I'm going over today to tell my bank they can no longer accept their charges. THAT WILL get their attention.

Sue

[ScreamingMeemie]

19. We are cancelling ours this week...

I'll let you know how it goes...

[anti_shrub]

20. They get bonuses for making "saves"

If they talk you out of cancelling, they get a cash bonus. They (at least used to) get demerits of some sort when someone cancels, that's why they try to move heaven and earth to get you to stay.

[grasswire]

22. maybe this would work...

...change your account's method of payment to something you can cancel. Like a secondary credit card or an unused checking account. Then close that credit card or checking account. Or just change the method of payment to make up phony credit card numbers.

If they can't extract payment from somewhere, they'll drop ya.

[ZenLefty]

23. On hold for two hours, then berated for it

Many years ago, when I was young and ignorant, I actually had AOL installed on my computer. *gasp* When I called to cancel it, and at the time the only way to cancel was to call a human, I called during their non-peak hours to get help right away.

I deftly navigated their phone system labyrinth, pressing the 1's, 2's, and *'s as prompted. I finally got to the option of cancelling service.

And there I held. And held and held. My call was important to them, a crackled recording kept reminding me, and someone would be with me shortly. And I held. And held. And held. I decided to start a movie. The Fugitive, with Harrison Ford. I watched the movie while the crackled voice kept reminding me that I was important.

I got to the part where Harrison Ford finds the house of the 1 armed man (that's a good 90 minutes into the flick), when I finally heard an actual human on the other end of the line. I don't remember much of the conversation, but I remember he was quite rude, and I hung up not quite confident that my account was really canceled.

Anyway, there's my tale. AOL blows ass.

[CoolerKing]

24. how times have changed...

this isn't a horror story, just an interesting perspective on how AOL has changed over the years.

I have been a subscriber twice in my life. Once early on, before the internet craze, way back in 1992 I was a subscriber when I was in college. I had it for about a year and then cancelled. Back then, you could cancel your account online. Simple and easy.

After college, I signed up again for AOL (this was in 1997). I was a subscriber for a couple of years. Once I got internet at work I soon realized I didn't use AOL that much anymore, so I "tried" to cancel. I got a very nice phone rep on who said if I didn't quit he could let me pay only $12.95 a month. At the time, it sounded like a good deal so I said OK. Six months later I realized I wasn't using AOL so I called up again to cancel. Immediately upon getting a phone rep (which wasn't easy) I simply said, "I want to cancel my account," and the rep complied without any sales pitches or hassles (which I was expecting). I never noticed any other charges on my credit card. In fact, I got a rebate check from them for the unused portion of the month that I had already paid for.

Honestly, I probably would have cancelled AOL much earlier if I had been able to do it online because calling up is such a pain. They know this which is why you have to call to cancel instead of simply cancelling online.

FYI, I'm currently reading a book called Dot.con which is a history of the whole internet stock craze, and the author points out that one of the reasons AOL became such a huge success is because they were the only online provider NOT to prohibit sex chat rooms (Prodigy had a very strict policy about this and went the way of the dodo). In fact, they encouraged "sex" users to come on board. Oh well, sex sells...

[LuLu550]

25. Thank you thank you!

This is just what I need. I will print out this thread, black out references to DU and usernames, and send it along with my formal complaint to the NY State Attorney General.
This is consumer fraud.
LuLu :bounce:

[Brian Sweat]

26. I had AOL about 10 years ago.

I don't remember having any problem terminating my service.

I had a friend who recently cancelled his DirecTV service and encountered the same kind of treatment you guys are describing. He cancelled because they wanted to charge him to move his dish to his new house. They advertise that they will move it for free, but when he called up they wanted to charge him. They gave him some song and dance about why he didn't qualify for the free move. He got pissed and decided to cancel. They tried everything to keep him from cancelling, including offering to move him for free. This did not help matters. They told him he would have to call back during normal business hours because they could not cancel his account after hours. When he called back, the started in on him again. I think he may have had to call back again, but I am not sure. They eventually offered tomove him for free and to give him a reduced rate on his service.

I have directv and I have no desire to cancel, but I may call up and try to cancel just to see if I can get a better rate.