Mike Clark's Blog - AOL and Hell

Monday, July 03, 2006

AOL and Hell

It has been something like ten years since I had an AOL account. It was in my dialup days, and I found AOL marginally useful, that is, until they discontinued a couple of services I found interesting (the ONLY features I found useful) because not enough people used them. I kept the account even after this because I thought the occasional surf might be of value. It was then that one of my sons discovered AOL on my computer (I think he was around 13), and in one month managed to rack up over $175 in connection charges (my previous record had been $20 or so). Of course, I went ballistic, and decided that AOL was no longer of any value to me, wahtsoever. So, I attempted cancel it. Oh, my word!

I kid you not, when I called up the "customer service" rep on the other end of the line told me that accounts could only be cancelled within a few days before their "monthiversaries". This event in my case was not to take place for another couple of weeks, so I would have to call back in two weeks, I was told. I was a little incredulous, but I let myself be persuaded to go along with this. Naturally, I forgot all about it until the next time AOL charged my account. When this happened, I did a Homer Simpson "doh!" and resolved to call them up at the proper time in a few more weeks. Hah. It took me about four months before I finally followed through, and during this time I did at least uninstall the AOL software and never used it again. When I managed to call up at the "right" time to request cancellation I got a very big song and dance, but it only took about twenty or thirty minutes to exhaust the "customer service" rep's repertoire of delays and stick vs carrot routines before he finally agreed to cancel the account. I thought everything would be OK after this, but of course the comedy didn't end there: the next month there was an AOL charge again. I called them up and had to go through all kinds of gyrations to get them to recognize that my account was supposedly cancelled, and to make it take effect this time. Of course, I was still charged the next month. To make a long story short, the only way I managed to finally get them off my back was to have my credit card issuer issue me a new card with a new number, and then their attempts to charge me failed. Long story still not short enough: they continued to accrue the charges for my account for about three months, sending me dunning letters threatening my credit rating before I finally wrote them a letter telling them that I had no intention of paying them a single cent ever, in my entire future life, and that if they sent me one more dunning notice or attempted in any way to affect my credit rating they would be hearing from my lawyer. That finally silenced them. But I swore in my wrath that I would never, ever, have anything at all to do with AOL. And I haven't. And no, I didn't then, and I still don't have a lawyer; but I bet I could find one, if I needed one.

This was over ten years ago, and if I thought AOL had changed its ways since then, that thought has gone out the door after hearing the audio on the following link. Enjoy!

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

7/3/2006 6:20:09 AM UTC

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