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Disconnecting
At the moment, Earthlink is running scads of TV ads showing the hapless nerd beseiged by guys in business suits who pull the plug on his computer, shower him with junk mail and peper him with tennis balls. At Earthlink, the ad says, they don't tolerate any of those service interruptions or spamming or pop-ups. So I thought it would be easy to cancel its service, which I actually acquired back when my account said Mindspring. But Earthlink's ferocious defense apparently only applies to paying customers, not to departing ones. Most ISPs, unlike more regulated phone companies, don't send monthly bills; they simply bill membership to a credit card. Thus, it's not simple even to find a phone number to call when you want out, and you sure won't find any little cancellation box on the home page.
When I got through at 8:50 a.m., I heard the usual chirpy recorded message urging me onto the site's website, where, the voice assured me, all my questions could be answered. There was, however, no prompt or icon or command on the customer service or tech support page for cancelling membership.
Back to the phones. I got to the menu, which didn't give an option for cancellation, but did give one for sales and service. That had to be the one, right? Wrong. After waiting on hold for 20 minutes, Diane told me there was a special customer service department for cancellations. She switched me to it. Fifteen minutes of bad music. I had that familiar, sinking feeling one gets upon entering the land of customer support, tech style. You can get in anytime, but you can't always get out.
Then a tech support rep came on. Can't imagine why you were switched to this department, he said. But I've been on the phone for half an hour, I said, taking the slightly more pleading voice one uses in the second stage of Phone Menu Hell -- the point before you really lose it, while you still hope some decent soul will ignore company policy and treat you right.
"Tell you what," said Steve the tech, his voice getting a tad chillier. "Why don't I stay on with you while we switch you over?" Great, I said. He vanished and wasn't heard from again. In the world of customer service, lies are the currency, and broken hearts abound.
Twenty-five more minutes, and a customer service rep from the first department popped on. A veteran of too many of these conversations to recount, I asked to speak to a supervisor immediately. One (allegedly) came on. Oh, he said, I was in the wrong department. So I did that thing where you recount your sorry travails in Tech Support Hell while they sometimes pretend to care.
"I've been on the phone for an hour," I said, the fuse having been lit. "It only took me five minutes to sign up. Why not make it possible to cancel electronically?"
Can't do that, he said, for security reasons. We have to verify your identify.
"But you let people sign up online, verifying or not verifying?"
"That's different," he said. It sure is. Cash flows in rather than out. After a few minutes (maybe three) on hold, I was told I needed a special devision of sales that cancelled subscribers. The supervisor switched me over. I expected to end up back in regular customer service, but didn't.
At 10:04 a.m., Cindy came on to ask for my name and PW. I didn't have the latter, as I hadn't used the service for a long time, and the PW had vanished into Password Hell, the bottom of a desk drawer stuffed with the detritus of old accounts, ID codes and issue and support reference numbers from countless tech issues and tech support pleas and brawls.
Cindy said Earthlink had no record of my ever having been a customer -- no name, address or credit card on file. I relayed to Cindy how impressed I was that they hadn't skipped a single month of billing me for the service, even though they didn't seem to know I existed. Yet I did have my credit card bill and assured her I was looking at a monthly charge of $9.95. Eventually it occurred to me that the account might be in my wife's name along with mine. The computer seemed willing to compromise on this point. Cindy said my service would be terminated. Was there anything else she could help me with?
Throughout this ridiculous waste of time, a voice kept popping up saying all calls might be monitored to ensure good service. I hope so. I also hope the people monitoring it have a lot of time and stored memory and a high tolerance for generic pop. I wonder if these people ever think about the irony: they spend all this money claiming to want to make life easier for people, yet they make what should be the simplest things nearly impossible.
The AOL call, initiated at 10:25 a.m. was shorter but weirder. This behemoth spends even more money touting how easy and customer-friendly the service is. That is, after all, the ads say, why they're Number One. But there's no keyword on AOL -- which has a keyword for everything -- for cancelling membership. If you root around in customer support for a while and keep typing in "cancel service" at every prompt -- I'm talking two or three browser moves and about five minutes, just enough to discourage the rushed, confused or distractable -- you eventually reach a page that offers an 888 number for cancellation of membership.
Getting the number of course, doesn't mean getting a human to answer the phone, which required another 20 or more minutes. The world's easiest-to-use and most wholesome online service doesn't fuss much about departing customers, either. At this point, I seriously considered saving the cancellation of AOL for another day. Maybe cancelling two ISPs is just too cumbersome for one workday. But then, there was Hemos and the invoices.
A gruff Brian answered the phone. "Can I help you?" he said, sounding as though his feelings were already hurt and he was spoiling for a fight. I assumed I had to be misreading his tone. I said I wanted to cancel.
"Why?" he asked. "We need to list a reason." Wondering why that was any of his business and eager to finally get off the phone, I mumbled something about having switched to cable. "You can piggyback AOL on cable," Brian interrupted. "That's not really a good reason."
Did I need a really good reason, I wondered? Had I missed something in the fine print when I signed up? What if something personal had happened, like a broken-off love affair? Or maybe I was broke, or been driven mad by pop-up ads and spam?
"Is there any complaint about the service?," he asked abruptly. I hadn't heard this brusque tone from customer service people, usually trained to hold onto a syrupy, we-are-here-to-please-you voice that probably causes them (and you) to later go home and torture their pets.
No, I said, I was happy with the service. I had finally switched to cable and wanted to cancel, that's all. What was the point of dumping on AOL, which I hadn't even been on for months? That would just generate a sugary phone call in a couple of days, pleading for re-consideration.
"You're sending out mixed signals here," Brian insisted, none too warmly. "This isn't really a good reason for cancelling. We can talk about adjusting the pricing, because there are different plans, if that's a problem, and since we can piggyback on cable and you have no complaints, I'm afraid I just don't understand. What am I supposed to write down on the form? You're not making any sense."
Contrary to the atmosphere on Slashdot, I don't particularly enjoy arguing, but Brian flipped my trigger. What would a 70-year-old user say under those circumstances, or a kid, or somebody who didn't speak English very well? Or somebody who just didn't want Brian jeering at him in a voice that vacillated between rude and intimidating?
It was outrageous and I finally lost it. "Look, Brian, I don't have to give you an unmixed signal, a good reason or any reason. I want you to cancel the service right now. Got it?"
"Your service is terminated," he said sharply at 10:50 a.m. AOL hung up on me! Things can't be all that rosy at the world's largest communications company. Brian was feeling -- therefore transmitting -- too much heat. But I was finally disconnected.
The morning did bring sharply into focus that this disconnection business is a horror, along with the way tech businesses often treat their customers, even as they spend fortunes taking out expensive ads claiming otherwise. Nobody should have to spend that much time cancelling two ISP's. It's so discouraging and so unpleasant that hundreds of thousands of people undoubtedly find it easier to pay relatively small monthly fees to avoid it. Which is almost certainly the idea.
So at the least I propose that ISPs be required to send monthly bills, listing numbers to call or websites to visit so that users can cancel on the phone or online. that means, of course, that ISP sites must offer electronic cancellation (if you can get on with a PW and ID, why can't you get off with them?) -- a button to push to cancel membership. It obviously ought to be as easy to cancel as to subscribe. Finally, AOL, of all places, and other sites should not dare be insulting, intimidating or browbeating to customers who want or need to disconnect. (Something Earthlink didn't try, I should point out -- though it took an outrageously long time there and the site didn't make the process simple in any way.)
In a world where it ought to be a universal right to get connected instantly, you ought to be able to get disconnected without calling a lawyer, a hit man or the FTC.
...in all of about five minutes.
Defecation occurs.
Never ever go to the "place" in automated call routing hell for canceling your account. Go to the "place" for past dure bills. I've never had to wait on hold there, and they can cancel your account for you. My business requires that I open and close many ISP accounts and that's always worked.
It's hard to disconnect from those big ISPs? Garsh, that's really bad customer service. I wonder how that make so much money?
Summary: Duh.
You know, the first thing I would do after this is call my credit card company and tell them that you've canceled these accounts and that there should be 1 final payment to them and no more after that.
You complained about having them on auto-bill, but that actually makes it easier to protect yourself.
A Jon Katz article that is both interesting and devoid of pointless political pontification! :D
Thank you, and keep up the good work!
Sometimes it's easier to just refuse the charge on your Credit Card.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I never use any auto-monthly pay option for any services, be it electric bill, ISP bill, cable bill, phone bill, etc.
It might be convinient, but I rather write the check every month than to deal with these kind of BS that might follow.
geek page at KY speaks
for pointing out the obvious to us....well ok I should not be so harsh....you justbrought up nasty memories of when I went through tthe ordeal at earthlink.
5 hours on hold, then I was routed to the wrong person!!!!! arg...it took me a week to finaly get the time to do it.....they did credit me though for the days I had not been using the service.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I explained my trouble with getting through to AOL to my credit card company, who now refuses to honor any charge they submit. I then followed it up with a registered letter explaining to them that I wanted my service terminated.
Time on phone: 20 minutes.
Time mailing letter: 20 minutes.
Stress: Zero.
Why not simply call up your credit card company and tell them to refuse further charges from these two companies?
Worst-case scenario, cancel the credit card they're billing.
"No, we *fixed* the *glitch*, so it'll work itself out naturally."
Just stop paying them.
I mean, what does it take to get the attention of some folks?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Just call your bank & tell then *not* to allow AOL/Earthlink/etc. to charge your credit card and/or checking account. After about 2 months, the service provider will be calling you :).
EVERYONE:
For those of you that want to attempt to cancel your AOL account like Jon Katz, the number is listed on this page.
Interestingly, Earthlink also has the phone numbers to cancel just about any popular Internet service (except for themselves of course) here.
Try closing a LTD company.
Many accountants offer same day companies, try closeing them down, their appalling slow.
A few months ago when my mom switched from netzero (she was paying fot the 'platinum' service) to a real ISP, we found out that you can do anything your account you want to from the netzero website, except canceling your account, so she called, and was forced to answer some survey questions before they would cancel her account. Nowhere near as bad as this though.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
Frequently companies make you call in, in the hopes that when you talk to a customer service rep., he/she will convince you not to cancel. This can either mean changing the rates for that customer (i.e. giving a current customer a promotional rate that was only supposed to be for a new customer), or simply talking to the customer. While it is annoying, it is understandable why they make you call in.. Probably 30% (thats a guess) of the calls they get to cancel, once they talk to a customer rep. will decide not too. Of course, that doesn't include all of the people who just give up before talking to a customer service rep, but hey.. There should be a 'why are you cancelling today?' and then try and address those concerns, but if the customer just wants to cancel, and says that after you ask them the above, then you should just cancel their account heh)...
So while companies should make it easy for you to cancel when talking to a CSR (which most don't), making you call in to do it is perfectly understandable (although annoying for some of us), just make it quick and easy when you call in.
I kept one credit card for billing such services, when I was done I cancelled the card. :)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The quality of tech customer service has been steadily declining over the past five-six years. For certain sectors, ISPs and telcos, the quality is simply atrocious. There are multiple reasons at work here:
1) New technologies (i.e. DSL for the RBOCs, cable internet for CATV carriers) have hastily cobbled together support structures that do a poor job of responding to customer needs. Education of the support techs seems to be as poor as education of the customers, leaving a huge gap in the working knowledge required to troubleshoot and rectify problems.
2) Corporate cost cutting. When Ameritech outsourced their IP support to Convergys (a spin-off of CBIS) a couple of years ago, the marked rise in on-hold times along with the decline in quality of the staff (working knowledge of telephony infrastructure) caused our corporation to switch to another IP provide.
3) Scripting. Support staff railroad you into a narrow set of options and if your particular problem doesn't fit into the right slot, you are relegated to a black hole of call-backs by higher level of support that adds days if not weeks to the resolution of your problem.
These issues have gotten so bad in the past couple of years that it is amazing that we have high-speed IP access at the consumer level at all in the U.S.
Or, you could just call your credit card company and say you will refuse to pay any future bills from those companies.
... from the credit card companies. Ever tried cancelling a credit card? It absolutely blows my mind how close customer reps will come to calling you flat out stupid for wanting to go with a card.
They made me feel like I'd be deported to some backwaters of Zaire if I even dared to survive in the concrete jungle with only one credit card. Fucking jerks, I shouldn't have to work my ass off and argue my ass off to manage my business relationships.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Jon Katz in misery and confusion... Linus must be smiling on us today.. But seriously in Australia Telstra serves as both ISP for a large percentage of users(both cable and dial-up) and as the major telephone company, therefore to save time you can opt to have both bill put together. The trouble with this is that they use a capping system on downloads thus often billing people for downloads above a certain level(300 meg a month for dial-up about 3 gig for cable) and so if you try to complain about the bill they can just cut off your phoneline. For a person running a business from home this can be disasterous, as a result I personally get a bill every three months from another ISP that doesn't suck.
Read Errant Story.
...before realizing that's the absolute best way to "cancel" your service. I will remember that if I ever have a similar experience.
Last post!
Earthlink acquired account "assets" of Netcom, including a *dead* account of mine (I had an "ix.netcom.com" address about four years ago).
A couple of months ago I heard from Earthlink collections that they were planning a full scale assault on my credit because I hadn't paid what I "owe" on "my account".
Failing to do their due diligence, they probably paid for an inflated number of subscribers, including dead/deactivated accounts.
It took two months and a threat to contact the state attorney general to get them to back off.
I haven't used AOL since...oh before you were born. Well in about 3 or 4 years so I don't remember exactly what I went through to terminate service but I do remember waiting on hold with them forever. But that's nothing new, my aunt uses iCan't Internet and I have to help her alot and it seems it's still best to call them at 3am.
Earthlink...I cancelled them recently and it was a mess at all. I had a Mindspring account and tried the old 888MSPRING "You'ld be happier using Mindspring!" number and it worked fine. Wasn't on hold for too long and when I told them I wanted to cancel they offered me 3 months free!
My experiences with Earthlink was always good but when I had my phone turned on with BellSouth and got offered $15.95/month service I had to go with the cheaper route.
I have had some bad phone experiences but Earthlink has always been good to me.
Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit.
AOL, which I've been on for years,
A while back I made a business trip, and when my dialup wouldn't work, I just signed up for a free month of earthlink. After I got back, I hopped on their website, and went the the support page, and then to the "Support by chat" link. This popped up an IM style window where I was able to wait for a rep without being on the phone. When they finally got around to me (10 or so minutes later) I informed the person I wanted to quit, they asked me why, I replied "I don't need it anymore", and that was it, got my account canceled right there on the web.
"I want to cancel my service. You made it hell for me to try to cancel, so I'm making it hell for you to try to get your money. Don't bill me again.
Wait, could you hold for just a sec?."
At this point either put your phone on hold and leave it like that for a few hours, or set it next to the radio, tuned to your local obnoxious contry station. Or just hang up without telling them. I should note that I haven't tried this, but I'd love a chance ;).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Managed to cancel AOL ok, but she did let them talk her into a couple of months of free service, to see if maybe she wanted to keep it around. That's not such a bad thing though. She isn't real worried about them continuing to charge her credit card either, as they have a card that is going to expire...
Maybe it was tough to find something 'important' to talk about this week. Should anybody really be surprised that a company that is in the business of making money isn't nice to people that no longer wants to give them money? Hell, why not give an american a chance at apathy, they'll probably take it!
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
They disconnect me practically every month, until I go pay the bill. It occurs to me, that if I simply stopped paying the bills, they would gradually get the hint I was gone.
Of course, you gave them your credit card number, which makes billing easy for you (and for them) but that puts all the effort on you to get it disconnected. If you pay cash or check, and you simply stop making payments, you'll be disconnected faster with no intervention on your part at all.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I thought AOL was the devil like Microsoft?
Next thing we'll hear is that michael uses windows and refuses to change.
To be honest, Katz having AOL doesn't surprise me in the least (the fact that there isn't a post-columbine/post-9/11 tie-in DOES surprise me, though).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I've had trouble getting disconnected from ISPs too. I've also had trouble getting to the end of the line in the grocery store.
NO ONE CARES. Get a life and a real job you idiot.
I recently cancelled my DSL service with Verizon, and (luckily) didn't have to wade through the mess that AOL and Earthlink gave. While I had to wait on hold for a few minutes, the customer service rep was very nice.
She asked me why I was cancelling my service, and I simply told her I was moving. "Do you want us to set up service at your new location?" No. "Ok, hope you have a nice day."
I don't think I could ask for much more out of a cancellation transaction. I'm glad I didn't chose AOL or Earthlink for my DSL at my new place (I chose Speakeasy, their customer service has been top notch so far) Thanks for the heads-up.
The Computer Wizard (tcw.net) required a written letter to close my account. The fine print claims that this can take up to 8 weeks. Sure enought there were 3 more charges.
Almost as good a scam as "Work from Home"
"John Katz? THE John Katz? Sure I can cancel your service, please hold for one minute"
*click*
Bwahahahahaha!
I had a similar experience when cancelling from Earthlink -- No results after an hour on the phone.
So I took the easy way out -- I called my credit card company and asked them to remove the charges. They even launched an investigation for me and sent me a nice letter to say that Earthlink wouldn't be bothering me again.
Of course, some companies don't like this route -- I did the same with AT&T (for Worldnet), and I wound up getting a nasty phone call threatening to cut off all of my phone service... I still didn't have to pay, but it did take a few more phone calls to straighten it out.
Why not turn the tables and call your CC company and issue a stop payment? That is always my first approach.
--
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
--Kristian Wilson, Nintendo Inc, 1989
A friend of mine got AOL FREE for over 3 months, she started with the one month starter CD then every month she phoned to terminate the account.. Every time they would offer her another month free to try it.. This went on for many months, not costing her a dime except time to make the calles.. She finnaly went to a real ISP..
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
...you're bitching at Earthlink, because you couldn't call them up, say "My name is Joe, cancel my account" and have it cancelled without providing so much as the name on the bill...? Katz, you dumbass, that's called basic identity verification. As a functioning adult with a credit card, you should know that ALL phone transactions are going to require some sort of ID verification. Quit bitching. Buy a filing cabinet. Keep track of things.
So this is why Slashdot needs banner ads - to pay for Katz to have 2 ISP accounts that he doesn't use for "years".
Congrats to Hemos for trimming the fat.
;)
pooptruck
1) Don't Pay. Tell the bank to stop the direct debit, or whatever it is you're paying by. They'll kill your account all right.
2) Spam. In particular, spam everyone on news.admin.net-abuse.email, and all the techies and admins at your ISP that you can find. Oh, and the FTC, too. WARNING - not recommended. You'll be lynched.
Wasn't there something in a Dilbert book once about an ISP Scott Adams had signed up for long ago and no longer used, but was cheap enough that it wasn't worth his time to cancel? :-)
One thing, though...
"Why not make it possible to cancel electronically?"
"Can't do that," he said, "for security reasons. We have to verify your identity."
Makes perfect sense to me. Imagine a script kiddie doing mass spoof unsubscribes... collect a list of AOLers and kill *all* their accounts at once!
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Or maybe he was Parisian.
:wq
I find the Katz article makes sense. I agree with John Katz. I never imagined that I would ever type the preceeding sentance.
shudder
It took me maybe 10 minutes and most of that was on hold. I told them that I never used the service and they cancelled it. So, is it the fiddler or the fddle that caused the above situation?
Try getting an honest answer out of them when someone has opened a fraudulent account in your name.....I was promised calls back by someone at director level and suit level, and they never materialized. As far as I know, ELNK still has a thief working for them. Aren't you glad this kind of person has access to your credit card number?
Actually cancelling various services may be hard, but never underestimate the power of threatening to cancel the service in order to get what you want.
I use AT&T for my cable and internet service. I stopped watching TV as much recently, so I wanted to downgrade my cable service from Extended Basic to Standard Basic. I called the ever helpful (sarcasm) tech support, and the woman told me that they would have to charge a $15 "service fee" to downgrade the service as I requested. She explained that they had to send a technician out to turn off part of my service, and that I had to pay for that. Obviously, this sounded ridiculous, so I asked "If I just cancelled the service entirely, would there still be a fee?"
The next words out of her mouth were "Let me just waive that service fee for you..."
:)
It's actually pretty easy to get AOL to cancel your account. All you have to do is to go into one of their chat rooms and start typing profanity. Works even better if it's a kid's room and you start propositioning them. Your account will last about 5 minutes.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
We now have concrete evidence that Jon Katz IS A MORON!!!
Who the hell stays signed up with two ISPs and does not use them for 3 years? I wish I had that kinda cash to put a match to....
Geesh......
I'd been migrated to Earthlink after one of their small isp buyouts.
After a fairly short email fight over why can't I cancel on the web,
I called and waited also. Finally three months later after 3 more calls I was free from Earthlink.
The easiest thing in the world is just to send them your cancellation in registered mail so you can prove that they received it.
Then contact your bank to stop payments to whatever entity is siphoning from your account.
End of problem, if they don't comply they are on the wrong end of the criminal law.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
I am always sure to get the rep's name, first and last, before I start dealing with them. In many cases it seems to make them a little more hesitant to become fired-up.
This actually benefitted me once... I was trying to have a billing problem taken care of with my ISP, and it got to the point where the rep hung up on me. So I called back, happened to get the same person, and the first words out of my mouth were - May I speak with your manager please. I was friendly, but I guess he recognized my voice, seeing as how we had just spoken 30 seconds ago, and he immediately hung up on me again. On my first try, I got someone different, who not only solved my problem very easily, refered me to their manager who promptly dealt with the arrogant rep while still on the phone with me.
So, every once in a while you get a nice warm fuzzy from customer service, however this does not in any way out-weigh the headaches I usually leave the experience with.
- He is rich enough to afford THREE internet accounts. ... hehehe
- He uses/used AOL.
- therefore he uses windows (but don't we all?)
- He believed "26 million subscribers" couldn't be wrong
- He bills everything to his credit card and is probably too lazy to long over it often (see first point)
- He keeps his passwords in his desk drawer
- He uses AOL keywords
AOL removed online cancelation because it was, well, easy. This was brought up during the lawsuits aginst them over the busy signals a few years ago. Currently you have to call to cancel, and the person you'll speak to receives a paid bonus if they convince you not to cancel. They usually offer another free month or point out that you could just call back on the exact day your bill cycles. That's why Katz got hung up on, the person was upset at loosing pay.
I had similar probs with a well know UK provider of Telecomunications. Their web User web page was not rendering properly in KDE or Mozilla so I could not cancel my account online.
I phoned their helpline, only to be told after about ten minutes I could not cancel my account at this number and had to dial the Accounts line.
The Accounts line told me I had to use the web-page.
I was fed up at this point (about an hour later) and asked could I downgrade to a cheaper package on this line.
Yes, the help-guy said, I could. So I switched from anytime at a monthly charge to a Pay as you go service which I have no intention of using.
Their whole script is designed to make it dificult to cancel, but changeing the terms was easier (preferably change to paying nothing from paying at all).
From my Autobiography - "Lifestyles of the Sad and Desperate"...
I used earthlink and its easy to cancel. FOllow the damn directions tool. Also, you can always block the charge on your credit card, that usually stops scammers dead in their tracks.
And it actually was in the same ball park as my experience with AOL. Those people are trained to keep asking why you don't want the service anymore. And when you say the money (duh) they offer some months of free service, or at least they did to me.
But this is also coming from the kid who in the day had 6 parent's credit cards to use for "free trials." So convincing me to stay on would be as tough as Jon Katz there.
I spent a few minutes on the phone, but it was obvious they weren't going to let me terminate service without hours of pain, so I hung up.
Then I sent a notarized and dated letter to each, telling them I had no further need of their services and that I would tender no further payment after the current month. I enclosed a check for the current month's service.
Then I called my bank and told them to refuse all requests for payment from both services.
Unsuprisingly, *both* services tried to bill me again (Compuserve several times). But, since they'd both cashed my checks, they couldn't say they hadn't received my letters.
Worked like a charm, and all told I spent less than two hours on the deal. Of course, both services let me sign up in less than ten minutes, but that's the reality of Corporate Amerika these days.
My friend Red says the secret to happiness is lowered expectations. In this case he's probably right. At least it doesn't matter if I'm "white" or not, they screw everybody equally!
I've heard similar stories to this one, where it takes an obscene amount of time to get a human to say "okay, we'll terminate your service", but the bills (or charges, in most cases) keep coming! In perhaps one or two cases, these being rather rare, the persons eventually had their banks change their credit card numbers to rid themselves of the monthly charge.
Keep a close eye on your next two bank statements. Make sure they actually stopped taking money beofre you believe youeself safe.
Another story from tech support hell I just had to go through. I got a laptop from one of the largest manufacturers of such things. I, being the silly sort, decided to install Linux on said laptop. Now, I realize that doing so takes me out of the realm of expecting technical support and that's fine. What I did not realize is that this, in effect, voids my warranty.
Here's the deal, I get linux installed but then it starts freaking out. Kernel panics occasionally. Sometimes it loads and then freezes up, sometimes it can't even boot. I see lots of error messages relating to memory so I immediate check into memory problems using memtest86.
After about 5 minutes of running memtest, it sure enough finds a chunk of memory that's bad. Running the tests repeatedly for about 30 minutes reveals the same piece of memory failing every single time. So, time to call Compaq and get the thing fixed.
So I call up tech support, and after a reasonable period holding, I get to talk to a support rep. He asks me what the problem is and I explain to him that it's got bad memory. I tell him that applications were crashing, the system was locking up. I tell them that I used memtest86 on the system and that it revealed it was a physical failure. He sounds convinced I have a problem and then asks me a couple standard diagnostic questions. He then asks, "what operating system are you using?"
So I tell him, honestly, Linux. He says that he cannot help me. I try to explain to him that this is a hardware failure, not a software problem. After unsuccessfully trying to convince him I talked to his manager about it. His manager was equally unyielding. I asked him, "so what you are saying is that, in effect, I cannot get warranty service on my laptop if I don't run XP". And his response is, "yes".
At this point I just want to get a working laptop. Rather than making a federal case out of it I decided to just go ahead and install XP so I could get the problem fixed. So I install it, wondering if the EULA still applies to me if Compaq required me to click the "I Accept" button. Then I clal up technical support again, expecting them to walk me through some diagnostic that came with their installation CD, etc.
So I start talking to the tech support guy and go through the same process. I tell him everything that's wrong, what I did to test. He gets to the magic question, "what operating system are you using?" This time I answer, "XP!". He asks a couple more general symptom questions then tells me a box to return it in is on the way.
So at no point in this operation did I ever actually have to run XP except to answer the one question about what OS I run. As soon as I answered that incorrectly, the wheels of progress ground to a halt even though there's no apparent need for me to have XP on there to diagnose the problem. So now my XP laptop is off to Compaq getting repaired and we'll see what comes of it. I'm guessing they ship it back saying they found nothing wrong with it.
I had to call Earthlink no less than 7 times to cancel DSL service for an apartment I was moving out of. The first 5 times I called their systems were down and they couldn't cancel my account.
After finally getting my account cancelled, my debit card was mysteriously charged ~$150. Their explanation was that it was an early cancelation penalty due to my one year contract. I asked how long ago I signed-up and they replied 20 months! It took another 3 weeks to get my money refunded.
My advice is to escalate the call immediately at the first sign of any resistance, and to record the dates, times, and names from every conversation you have.
This is truly the worst customer service experience I have ever had.
One more thing - ring up the CC people get them to refuse any further charge - just in case!
I always insist on them sending me a bill for my net access, so that when I want to disconnect, all I have to do is withhold payment. As the contract says, if you don't pay, you'll be disconnected.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
A buddy of mine with none so good credit had MSN. For about a year the credit card that he had his account on was over the limit. Not surprisingly MSN turned off his service. When he did get the credit card out of OTL hell he started getting the regular monthly charge for his MSN service. How weird is that?
I think he had a similar experience chatting with the customer service rep about removing the charge and cancelling the service.
--Purple lightning. That's always a good sign.
I moved back in January, and my cable modem was going to take a month to install, so I brought along one of those free 1000 hour AOL CDs with me. I created my account, used it for access only, having other email and things, and after my modem was installed and working, I called the central AOL 800 customer service number. The entire call, from dial to hangup, took 5 minutes. 4 of those were waiting on hold.
They asked why I was cancelling. I said I got a cable modem. They said I could piggy-back AOL on the modem. I responded that I didn't use any AOL features, I was only using the dial-up access, and had no need for AOL anymore. They said, "Ok, thanks, you're all set," and it was done.
Maybe I am not a columnist because I don't have enough of these stereotypical annoying experiences to write about. :)
How could I cancel my slashdot account? Not that I want to of course.
Personally I hope that both AOL and Earthlink get wind of their Customer Service fiascos described here and give some hell to the people in question (that Brian guy in particular-- if AOL has told him to act that way, well, that's just plain sleazy).
Just another reason why it's never good to work with a large corporation.
I had a similar problem trying to cancel my automatically renewing subscription to Audble.com. I tried to call the 800 number and got a cryptic message that it was temporarily unavailable.
So, I emailed customer support. Got the usual automatic repsonse back and waited. 2 weeks. So I emailed again. And again. Never got any reply for my request to cancel my subscription.
They sign you up instantly on their Web site, but require customer support interaction to cancel.
I finally tried the 800 number again and this time got a human being and was done with it in about 10 minutes.
This is funny: she told me that when somebody emails customer support, you *must* reply to the automatic reply email in order for them to reply. So you have to contact them twice for them to even begin to care (not that they ever replied to me, except automatically).
Well, if you really want to know.
All these companies Sell thier phone service to other companies. none of them are in house. >> same with the Servers (Which is well understandable, because of the large sum it would take for maintaining, and watching... But, Arent i paying them for a service? i shouldnt have to say they dont have enough money, because Hell i pay them, I am thier boss.)
if you really want AWESOME service stick with some company that is local. (usually they are cheaper too, and they wont say something like "We have a server in your area that is having problems" because they are most likely in the same building or across the street from the server room. (This is the solution)
raVen
....is that /. paid Katzs' AOL bills (to the tune of some $1500) over three years. now that's enough to have to charge for some ads.
Watch your statement next month. If the pattern holds they will continue to bill your credit card. You will have to go through this PHONE HELL AT LEAST one more time before they go away.
Calling your credit card company doesn't seem to help at all. In my mind it's a fradulent charge after I've cancelled the account, but your favorite credit card company will likely see it differently. Even cancelling a card cannot stop the new charges from appearing if AOL doesn't stop making them!!
There is no innocence in the eyes of an evil man with power. Referring to Judge Roy A. Scoggins 378th District Court
Some websites are similar. I can't find anywhere on the site about unsubscribing from Classmates.com.
This Katz rant relates to one of my biggest personal pet peeves - having to wait for something to turn-off or shut-down.
For instance, I don't mind (within reason) waiting for a computer to boot-up. I don't mind entering my passwords to login. At least you're waiting with purpose, sometimes even with anticipation (video games or DVD's maybe). But it drives me absolutely batty when I have to wait for the computer or other device/program to turn-off, or, even worse, I need to manually perform operations during the shut down procedure. I wish more things could be built like a light switch.
The worst is when you have to turn on you laptop in the airport, then wait for it to shut down - all the while juggling other bags and electronics. I could always just select shut-down and close the case, but being the avid user of a certain finicky OS, the odds are it won't shut down first try and I'll have a dead laptop for the plane.
I feel the same way about cancelling services etc., but technology seems to be the worst offender for the disconnection blues. Anyway, that's my petty little rant -- feel's good to get it off my chest. Of course, as a Computer Engineer I know that I can resort to a technical solution that usually works...I can always just pull the plug/battery...
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
Enough of the rant, I need to check my mail for the 144th time today...
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
You should check your credit card bill in a month to see if they actually stopped charging you. I had a similar experience with Compuserve and when it was all said and done they continued to bill me for two months.
The thing about these services is that they piss off one person at a time. It's like committing suicide slowly. I know of at least three different people who will never use these services because they were screwed over by them. Those three tell a couple of hundred each, and those couple of hundred also tell a bunch of people.
At first this kind of publicity doesn't hurt you but as the number of pissed off ex-customers grow it can have a real affect on the bottom line. Hence AOL probably doesn't get a lot of repeat customers.
Beware the wood elf!!!
Ugh, I give up.
I just hooked into the local cable service, so I also need to cancel Earthlink. I've tried twice, but I never have time to wait on hold.
I used to have AOL back in the day. At that point, there was NO number listed... you just had to fill out a form or something online to cancel. Of course, that never worked, and you ended up having to work your way through their phone system anyway. Meanwhile, they're still billing you. With it being as hard to cancel service, can you imagine how hard it was to get a refund? Months.
My sig sucks.
Just cancel the credit card they are billing. They'll either kill your access, or a human will get ahold of you to correct the "billing problem", at which point you tell them to cancel the account and send you a bill, which you pay by check.
Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
I got the exact same treatment at ATT Worldnet. Heming and hawing until I asked for a supervisor and then the account was terminated. When they have your credit card number they are like the Ferengi. I wanted to go to their offices to strangle the one I talked to after I hung up.
Headline suggestion: Horrible Customer Service Call Centers Complete World Takeover and Finally Invade Computer Industry
WTF?
How is this different from any other large bureaucratic corporation's customer service and why do we care about this personalized story that only has to do with Katz? (This is only relevant to ME if a large percentage of people have that problem and Katz... you didn't provide proof of that.)
That said, my story beats his anyway!
**So begins the real reason for this post. To bitch about my own experiences!**
My favorite is when Verizon Avenue (a wholly owned subsidiary of Verizon that does DSL for Apt. buildings) broke my phone line.
Ver Ave: "We don't fix phone line. Call Verizon"
Me: But you BROKE IT and you ARE Verizon. You call.
VA: Call Verizon
Verizon: "We fix phones, but if we didn't break it, you pay."
Me: "Sounds fine, since you broke it"
Verizon: "Oh no, we weren't there we couldn't break it"
Me: "Well I'm not paying.
Verizon: Well, call your DSL service. Make them fix it or pay
Me: (calls john katz. please bitch about ISP customer service on slashdot so i can bitch and be on topic
Katz: No Prob!
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Is is just me, or is this the best Jon Katz story ever? I know that's not saying much, but this is the first one in 6 months that I have actually read beyond the preview text.
This has been going on for years!!! Major ISP's have always been a painintheass when you try to cancel your service. Especially if you just got done using your free hours, which, IMO is the only reasonable excuse for a tech savvy person to use AOL.
... Making sure that the billing actually stops. Keep checking your credit card bills. And if (when) they DO charge you again, going through your credit card company is a painful, but effective, way of fixing the problem.
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
I had to disconnect our family dialup in the UK several years ago (from Compuserver I think). The ISP's lines were quite painless for the most part but the ultimate result was that we had to mail/fax a written letter to them explaining we wanted to cancel. The upshot of this is that one could copy the same letter to our bank thus terminating the payments they would be getting, in the event that cancellation wasn't working on Compuserve's side
I recently moved and disconected my RCN cable+cable modem.. I had to get transfered to about 4 different people over the course of 20 minutes until I got to the seemingly single person in the corparation who could close an account. The process was pretty quick and easy once I got to the right person, but the customer service drones I spoke to along the way acted as if I was the only person EVER to cancel and they had no idea what it involved. The part that really got me was that a day or two after I canceled I got a call from someone in the 'customer retention department' who wanted to discuss my reasons for cancelling. Give me a break.
Likewise, it took me no time at all.
When I asked them how I ended up on this weird Sprint plan, they told me I must have called them (meaning earthlink) and specifically asked for it! I had never even heard of it before!
So, they (of course) transferred me to Sprint, I was on hold for 45 minutes, and then they claimed to never have heard of me either. Amazingly, 10 minutes of yelling at them and my account mysteriously (already) existed, and then I was able to get it cancelled and no longer be billed for the Earthlink service.
All in all, the most disgusting thing to me about the entire earthlink experience was that, in spite of their commercials saying how no spam gets through earthlink, I had received dozens between the time that I signed up for the account and when I actually checked the mail there for the first time.
Agreed. I have TWICE encountered similar problems in the past with ISP's. In my case, the problems were with billing continuing after I had told them to cancel the service. Each time, contacting the credit card company got the issue resolved quickly and almost painlessly.
Once you contact the credit card company and tell them the charge is unauthorized, the monkey is on the VENDOR's back.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
What did you expect Katz, in this post-Columbine, post-9/11 world?
You should try cancelling a cellphone subscription here in France! In total I spent over 3 hours on the phone (>100$) with their "technicians", received half a dozen threatening letters from their legal service. Received one letter from people coming to seize my furniture, and finally a symbolic check from their accounting dept for the symbolic sum of 1 cent. All this in a meager 2 months!
;)
And what you spent 1 hour on the phone with someone asking you for a good reason to cancel?
Some people just have it easy
how does one change his
Allow me to make the first BOFH reference... ah, someone else do it, it's just too easy. :)
Just wait 'till next month when both AOL and Earthlink bill him again.
I'll bet the on-hold time and frustration is twice as intese next month.
I was told I needed a special devision of sales
WTF?
Considering the 'i' is five keys from the 'e', this is not a typo. It's bad enough that most people type with their fists, but I would hope a purported writer of technology would
a) know how to spell a word mastered by most 5th graders
b) use a spell checker
That's odd - I had no trouble cancelling Earthlink, which I to came to out of the Earthlink Mindspring merger. I called, waited 10 minutes to elevator music and prompts, and 5 minutes later I was off.
If you're so inept that you can't cancel your service verbally, then put a stop payment on your charge card ($10) for all debits from that company, and have any other such charges reversed. That'll get you some quick attention.
But then, why am I not suprised - it's Jon Katz afterall - the purveyor of the obvious.
Now THIS I can deal with from Katz. I don't care about his ideas of globalism, terrorism, Columbine or anything like that. This was truly informative however.
When I got high speed I decided to cancel my dial-up account. I went to the ISP's web site and used the on line form. Funny thing was when you hit the submit button you wouldn't get a response back from the server. It would just hang until your browser timed out after a couple of minutes. At first I though it was just that the database was temporarily down or something but after trying several time over the course of a few days I phoned tech support. Luckily they were very helpful and canceled my account right away.
Asking Google: how do I cancel my Earthlink account" gives me this page with specific instructions: http://help.mindspring.com/modules/00800/00823.htm
Lay off the weed, ok? Makes thinking clearer.
Credit card companies are used to dealing with business who make it hard to cancel recurring charges. They know what to do, and in this case they are your allies. Good Luck!
1. How do the attitudes of the people AOL and Earthlink employees reflect the insecurities of the general populace caused by a post 9-11 world?
2. Is the use of internet services for ISPs a symptom of globalization and furthurmore the lack of internet cancellations an attempt to make it even more difficult for people temporarily outside of the country to cancel their accounts?
3. Is this a symptom of the disorganization and uncertainty caused by the economic instabillity of AOL/TW and Earthlink fighting to survive in an economy in the midst of a recession?
Either way this is definatly one of the best JonKatz articles I've seen. When he sticks to the topic at hand and doesn't try to blow it out of proportion or make any stunning (and often incorrect) revelations he can be a decent writer.
I stole this Sig
I had a good shared T1 service with a company that went bankrupt and was bought out by BroadBand Now! They said they would maintain all of the same level of service at the same prices, etc... It was a big ol' lie. About 3 months later they sent out a letter stating they were cranking the rates from $50/month to $150/month for the same level of service. I tried to cancel. Tried being the operative word.
It gets ugly from there. They cheerfully said my service was canceled but continued to bill me on my credit card. I called my credit card company and they told me in my last renewel statement I gave BroadBand Now! legal write to continue to bill me until they decided not to bill me! (lesson learned: read the fine print). Eventually I filed several complaints with the credit card company, BroadBand Now!, the Better Business Bureau, etc... The only thing that worked was calling up the parent company of my apartment complex and telling them I was unhappy and thinking of moving out because of it. Because they are partners (the service comes with the apartment) they freaked and came down hard on BroadBand Now. I eventually got my money back, but it scared me away from ever using my credit card for automatic payment or using their services again.
This article didn't have any sort of hyperbolic buzzword-dropping extrapolation!
I have to say that by sticking to the primary source account and resisting the urge to excessively editorialize, you made something I found worthwhile to read.
Thank you, and I agree that this aspect of tech support should be put under the spotlight. Telecom companies are the very worst abusers in my opinion. Not only do they make it difficult to disconnect, but then they try to ruin all of your future dinner hours trying to "get you back".
The proper numbers and other methods for cancelling are listed when you do a quick search for "Cancel Account":
u ct / earn_cancel.jsp
http://support.earthlink.net/support/FORMS/prod
I recently had to cancel AOL, because I got cable high-speed internet. It took me about 30 seconds to find the number and about a minute to call and and cancel my service. Perhaps, my experience was the exception to the rule, not sure.
it's called greed and sleaze.
With a fist full of T1s at work the thought of dial up a home had lost it's attraction, but my girl friend needed dial-up for work so she signed us up for Qwest. It was only $13 so no big deal. Their tech support turned out to be good and fast for Win platforms. Well, MSN made them a deal they couldn't refuse. QWest said move to MSN or go dark. In a moment of weekness I hit the button to transfer to MSN. After a month of tech support hell and their unwillingness to support win95/Netscape I pulled the plug. Because they were billing my phone account it took 3 weeks of daily phone calls and a director level person at QWest to terminate my account. I did learn one very usefull technique to use on stonewalling service reps: guilt. Just ask them, "how does working for a company that behaves this way make you feel?" The other is to keep them on hold. When they ask for information tell them you're looking for it and then pop back to the phone every 5 minutes and sweetly say, "I'm still looking." One day I kept MSN on the phone for over an hour that way. I finally found Eskimo.com They are cheep and support linux, but their pop provides seem to go out of business every other month. So their dial up numbers keep changing.
The best part of this for Business is that they get happy, clueless employees that don't mind sub-US minimum wage and can handle extremely rude, self-righteous (and more than likely correct) American callers with a smile on their faces. So next time you want to curse out a company via their customer service learn some nasty words in Hindi to get your point across. Maybe the Indian programmer that took away my last job a few years ago could help us out with a few creative Hindi dirty words.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
This was the first ever story you had published which I read from beginning to end, only stopping in between to laugh uncontrollably..
And this was the most amusing and funny story that I ever read on Slashdot. Kudos to you. You havent yet lost your writing prowess as some here have noted. Theres still hope for you.
Thanks for making my Friday more fun than designing XML Schemas for the Timber Industry.
A quick note to Slashdot editors - I hope it you would make a note of it and make it easy for us to cancel Slashdot subscriptions.
Rapid Nirvana
Feel free to contact me John, I'll work 24/7 until all your accounts are cancelled.
Hey Jon,
How about sharing that hard to find 888 number for AOL with us?
You just reminded me that I have an old AOL account rotting away.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
but I had the same problem canceling my AOL account. I eventually ended up just canceling the credit card AOL was billing.
- Notify them in writing. If you write (a letter, not an e-mail) to the billing address and say you want to cancel the service, then they (and you) have written, legal proof of your request to cancel. So you have the law on your side when it comes to step #2.
- Call your credit card company. Tell them that
you have written the company asking to stop billing you, and instruct your bank to block any future charges from them.
I'm not claiming that this is the easiest thing to do or that it makes for good customer service on the part of ISPs. Many ISPs won't make you jump through these hoops (as a tech with my former employer, we could all cancel accounts, all we had to do was click "Cancel" -- and we didn't ask for a reason). But there is no way they can refute your intent to cancel if you've requested it in writing.Spam a million accounts from your AOL/xenulink account. Problem solved!
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
I've found that pretending you don't have a touch tone phone and holding to "speak to a customer service advisor" is the fastest way of getting through to a human being. It also works with utilities companies. :)
Martin Piper
Owner - ReplicaNet and RNLobby
Found this link in about 2 minutes:
d d= 1&url=/support/FORMS/product/learn_cancel.jsp
http://support.earthlink.net/track?id=1006089&a
the ONLY people that would want to cancel are those that are either dissatisfied with the services that are being provided by the ISP or have found some OTHER medium (usually an increase in speed type) i.e. cable or college campus or w/e, and really don't need aol or earthlink or compuserve or netzero. Since the only worry the ISP ever has to have is for cancellations that are fraudulent (not made by the actual users of the account) in which case the real user might be displeased with the service, and the hassle and trouble that ensues.
otherwise, they dont give a rat's ass! you are cancelling: too bad, what do YOU care about customer service!
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
I cancelled my earthlink account after I moved from minnesota to indiana. I also closed the checking account it was billing too. Well with the combination of how lousy earthlink is and overdraft protection on the checking account. I recieved a bill almost 2 years later from my bank for like $1500 from the billing earthlink continued to bill and all the fees and interest on the overdraft protection. I called earthlink and complained and they said they had no record of me canceling the service. I argued with everyone there to no avail. i was screwed so i cancelled it again. And paid off the $1500 balance luckily before it got put on my credit report. But it pissed me off I had to pay $1500 for nothing. So anyways 3 months go by and i got another bill from that bank for like $200 because earthlink kept billing well this time I called earthlink and had a cancellation confirmation from the previous time. They refunded the $20 a month charges but not the charges from the bank. I also called the bank and told them not to accept any more charges from earthlink. The bank then called like a month later. When earthlink continued to try to bill the account. This time thanks to the bank I had it blocked and the account eventually got closed at earthlink for failure to pay. But earthlink costed me a lot of money and is nothing but a complete rip off organization. I've also used MSN and unlike earthlink they continued to bill the first time I cancelled but when I called after seeing the continued billing they gladly refunded the money with out arguing with me about it and closed the account for good. So if for no other reason than they give good customer service msn is definately the way to go over earthlink. Earthlink will bleed you dry and because they never take enough from you where it's worth you hiring a lawyer they can do this.
If your not cheating your not trying. If your not trying your not winning and if your not winning why play?
I actually canceled my service with AOL (which I got (free 45 day trial period) when @home was threatening to cut off broadband access to Cox et al) very easily. I called their sign up number and spent maybe ten minutes on the line waiting. When I talked to the individual about canceling I just told them that I only got AOL as a back up plan to cable access. I also told them that although the experience with AOL was pleasant, that I did not particularly care for the AOL experience, although my sister was very happy with it. They accepted that and very politely canceled my account.
:-D
HOWEVER, I have had to brutally cut off a monthly CC biller before when they refused (or made it prohibitively difficult) to cancel my account. I did it by contacting my CC company and telling them that I made several attempts to cancel through normal channels and was unsuccessful. They very politely took care of the issue by denying any further billing requests by that company.
Works great.
And if that didnt work I was prepared to "lose" the credit card and request that that account be canceled and have a new one issued.
"you sure won't find any little cancellation box on the home page."
"I heard the usual chirpy recorded message urging me onto the site's website, where, the voice assured me, all my questions could be answered."
Go to support.earthlink.net Log in. Without even scrolling down, look on the left side of your screen, under "Customer Service," right next to the bit that tells you their call center wait times (which you obviously didn't check before calling). What do you see?
The fourth hyperlink down:
How to cancel your Earthlink account.
And, yes, their on-line chat tech support works, and the wait time on that is a heck of a lot shorter than their call-in lines.
"For quality assurance purposes"
.mp3 of the conversations you had with these guys.
I really would love to be able to download an
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
You will still get charged for expenses incurred before the card was canceled. And auto billing is considered to have occurred before cancelation. I went thru that once. Your best hope is to explain that there is no way to contact AOL or whatever and contest the charges. That puts the ball in AOL's court.
I tried to cancel Prodigy once after my pc died and I had no way to get online to cancel. When I finally was able to contact them and explained I hadn't been using it for several month's, they claimed they had no way to verify that and couldn't issue a credit. Really lame.
That's one thing I like about working for a smaller regional ISP. There's no scripted tech support stuff, and for dialup accounts ANYONE in the company (tech support, admins, sales, billing, receptionist) can cancel the account. While we do ask for a reason it's really only to see where our customers are going and why they leave. The only time we really try and talk them out of it is when it's a technical issue. For that we'll escalate it to above the last person to work on it. When I was in tech support, and even recently it wasn't uncommon when we get stumped to conference the OEM in on the call to help out rather then just tell them their SOL, call them yourself. Anyway I digress.
The only time you need a "special department" to cancel is for dedicated (and/or "high speed") accounts and web hosting or co-location. In that case all you need is your assigned sales rep and a letter of cancellation.
While we do not have a way online to cancel an account we can do it via e-mail.
Speaking of AOL issues, we have quite a few customers who piggy-back from us to AOL because they have no local numbers in their area. I love it when they can't get to AOL, and AOL blames us when they can get websites and etc through a normal IE/netscape window, but just can't login to AOL.
Makes tons of sense to me.
I have 1 visa card that I use for only 1 purpose - To cancel services. When I am planning to cancel something, I switch my payment method to this card. When I cancel the service, if I have even the slightest problem with it, I can cancel the card, or have it reissued with a new # / expiration date, and any charges to the old one are rejected. Since I already cancelled the service, they shouldn't be billing me anyway. As soon as they get a payment rejection, they will cancel the account. Problem solved.
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines yet?
I did not even want to cancel my subscription, just to transfer my SBC Pacific Bell DSL to a new address a few miles away.
It proved to be nearly impossible. It took total of 20 phone calls, during a period of over two weeks, most of these to a "manager".
The alleged problem was, that their computer system does not support transfers, but they are done as closing the old account and opening a new one. You cannot open a new account and make an order for a person before the phone line is completely installed, and obviously you need a phone for DSL. The person who closed my old account, needed to write on a piece of paper that she should open a new account some day in the future. The paper got lost, and they did not figure that out until I called them.
That was only the beginning of the hell. After that there seemed to be some kind of hardware problems on the phone line, although they allegedly had come earlier to check that everything was OK.
The deadlines were missed several times, and
I had to take several days off from work in order to let them in; obviously I could not work from home as I had no DSL.
They never returned any calls.
Pac Bell claimed that they have over 30 different systems where customers need to be installed and therefore the installation takes several weeks, but why should I care about that?
They even allegedly filed a problem report to an executive department which handles problems in the customer service, but I never head from them.
At least I have a box that maintains a connection and I don't have to wait several minutes for a free dynamic IP address like I have heard other
people complain.
Considering all the downtime now and then, I would never recommend Pac Bell to anybody else. Unfortunately there are no alternatives.
I hope some day Internet access is considered to be a public utility the same way as phone, gas and electricity. Companies should be sanctioned really hard if they do not really try their best to provide service to customers.
Never Ever Ever Autobill! It's a fool's gambit. Don't do it or you're a fool too. You CAN'T cancel an autobill at the crdit card company end, you have to do it at the biller's end, and most ISP's overcharge on Autobilling.
Have them send you a paper bill, because you can stop paying that at anytime by not paying it. Simple. Also you can always send in a cancel request with your bill.
Again, DON'T AUTOBILL!! They don't do it because it's easier for you, they do it because it's easier for them. Plus you lose certain privacy and other rights with autobilling and electronic billing. Bet you didn't know that, huh?
In other words, Earthlink and AOL both claimed his service was cancelled -- but will they keep billing his credit card anyway? Of course! That's part of the whole cancellation hell; even when you think you've won, the battle has only just begun.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
one (possible) technique is to ask your credit card company to refuse billings from the ISP. When the ISP gets a notice from the card company that you have refused payment, they give you a call and ask whats up. You then say that you attempted to cancel service, but could not find the appropriate numbers to call, cust serv person to talk to, websites to visit, etc.
changing topics....
The Philadelphia Inquirer recently ran a story from a columnist who had problems dealing with Dell Tech Support. Basically, no matter who he talked to, he got no answers. Complete with bitching about what their ads say about support. A few weeks later the guy wrote a follow up column saying he got the usual "yeah, happened to me too" and "what was the problem, maybe I can help" emails. But he also got one that said "I used to work for Dell. Here's why your service was so poor" and detailed what changes Dell has undergone in cust serv the past few years in terms of cheaper reps reading scripts and other related cutbacks, including shrinking of the support staff because of the recession.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
I have billing disputes with both Bell South and Time Warner (RoadRunner). I have documentation to back up my claims.
They both handle the isuues the same way: Lie on the phone ("no problem, it's crrected now"), then don't change the bill.
I am refusing to pay the disputed amounts and attach letters each month to my bill. We will see who blinks first...
My uncle got his new computer, and dropped in the "Free AOL Trial" CD. As per usual, it wanted a credit card number before you could use your "free" trial. So, he entered the details of his card that was going to run out soonest, which happened to be in just over a months time. 3 weeks later, he'd decided AOL wasn't for him, and picked a new ISP. After 5 minutes trying to cancel and deciding it was too hard, he did nothing. AOL customer support then spent the next month trying to coerce his new credit card number out of him. Eventually, 2 weeks after the card had expired, they took his hints that he wanted to cancel, and terminated the account
I subscribed to the BT Anytime service over the summer, so I could use the net as much as I do at college without running up huge bills. After checking the minimum sign-up time and cancelation methods well, I signed up with my credit card. Come the end of the summer, I phoned up to cancel. With a copy of the contract in front of me, I asked if they could cancel the account, or if I should send them a letter, and copy it to my credit card company and ask that no more billing went through. Took 3 minutes to cancel the account :)
My dad changed from one local ISP to another to get ADSL. Apart for getting stung a bit for transfering his domain to the new ISP, it was very pleasant
This post will enter the public domain 70 years after my death, unless Disney buys another extension.
This might work for ELNK and AOL, but a rising number of ISPs are inserting "clean-up fees" for customers who violate their Acceptable Use Policies.
They *might* turn around and bill you a few bucks per spam (which could add up rather quickly) and STILL not "cancel" your account, but simply suspend your ability to log in during their "investigation."
Specialization is for insects. - R.A.H.
AOL sucks! most of us have known this since about 1992.
let me save you some time Jon, SWBell also sucks, as well as Verizon, Microsoft, Geocities, Ford, Firestone, Pepsi, Disney, Earthlink, AT$T, and, of course the United States Federal Government.
All the companies listed above should be avioded at all costs!
Some he did not include were "We could get rid of the ads", "We can beat the price of your new ISP", "Can you connect to your new ISP anywhere in the world?", "Have you considered all the benefits of AOL?" (things you get at ISPs, just the non-geeks don't know), "Your local ISP doesn't have thousands of tech support workers ready to help you. Your ISP's tech support isn't available 24/7", "Your new ISP won't give you all your Internet in an integrated program". "Our connect times are as fast or faster than your other ISP" (like your modem will go faster or something). "Your new ISP will charge you for each email address", "Your new ISP will force you to use different programs for everything on the Internet", and so on.
On top of that, if the customer gives an explicit reason, they select the reason from the list on the form, and their computer comes back -- with arguments against that reason, or it says that AOL will block the ads or whatever the reason was.
Finally, the customer has to state not that they want to cancel, but instruct the representative to cancel. (not a plea, but an order.) Until the customer TOLD HIM to cancel AOL considered it a wishful comment, not an instruction.
The frend left after finishing college -- AOL offers tuition-payment at the call center.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Geez - I would simply have told the first droid to cancel my service and then spoken to Visa (or whoever) and made sure that they didn't keep letting AOL automatically charge your account.
... trivial for me to cancel, didn't ask any password bs questions, just confirmed the phone # and last 4 digits of cc number, very pleasant. Obviously *they* want repeat business, even if AOL and others don't.
After they had lost several emails, I decided to cancel Verio. After reading the fine print about having to cancel in writing, I sent them a cancellation letter. They still charged my card for another two months. When I called they said they never received the letter. So I sent another letter and CC'ed my credit card company. This time it worked. They tried to bill me for one more month, but gave up after a while.
I managed to disconnect from ntl with the utmost of ease. All I had to do was be someone who signed up in 1997 with Mercury Internet Dial, who became Cable and Wireless, who became ntl, who let me find out from a third party that all of us old-timers were being disconnected last October.
Their disconnection service is very thorough and efficient; despite the fact that I phoned half a dozen times and was assured four times that my service would be replaced with ntl@home, I'm still ntl-less after 7 months. Now that they've filed for Chapter 11, I'm confident that my disconnection is rock-solid and thoroughly reliable.
I guess some of us are just lucky, eh?
Chuck Norris: Socialism == a thousand years of darkness.
My family used to use AOL despite vocal protests from me and my brother because it was free. Every month or so, we'd reregister for a new account under a different credit card using one of their free CDs, and the changing usernames weren't a problem because Hotmail hadn't been bought by M$ yet, so it was still morally okay to have an account there.
/. story pointed out a few weeks ago) occasionally billing them for the products anyway - and they really couldn't care less about whether people pay for their service or not.
After a while, my parents tried to move to another ISP, probably because they were sick of hearing our whining. My father's call to AOL went something like this:
Dad: "I'd like to cancel my account."
AOL: "Why?"
Dad: "We want to use another service."
AOL: "What if we give you another month for free?"
Dad: "Okay."
So we were stuck with AOL for another month. At the end of that month, he tried cancelling again only to end up having the same conversation. And this happened yet again another month later. We finally moved to another ISP because, left with no other alternatives, I asked my parents to switch to something better as a "birthday present."
Maybe Jon Katz didn't speak to the same representatives at AOL, or maybe they've changed this policy. I find that hard to believe, though, when all you have to do for 1000 free hours is pick up a CD at 7-11 or wait for one to arrive in the mail. AOL gets their money from aggressive advertising - requiring people to see an ad and click "No Thanks" every time they sign on, for instance, and (as a
So fuck erathlink I hope they rot in the darkest tech-hell
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
I have played this same silly game with various service providers, with the worst by far being Earthlink and MSN.
I have written the Better Business Bureau to express my frustration in both cases, and clearly I'm not the only one. Earthlink has an 'unsatisfactory' record with the BBB.
Note the statistics:
Credit or Billing Issues: 410 Outcome of all complaints - Resolved: 225; Delayed Resolution: 1; Company made every reasonable effort to Resolve: 47; company did not respond: 137
My cancellation process with Earthlink involved a series of steps almost identical to those you've described.
MSN's BBB record might be better, but their service isn't. I recently switched from DSL to cable, and after spending over an hour on the phone (on three different service lines) I finally talked to someone capable of axing my account. Like most, he demanded a reason, but fortunately didn't push the issue.
At this point, he gave me some silly story about needing to wait for his 'system to come up' before he could cancel the account. Blip! On hold. I thought this sounded suspicious, so I recorded the time he put me on hold. Just as I expected, exactly 5 minutes later he was back. It's as if they put their callers through a mandatory delay period just to see if they can get them to hang up in frustration. If only they were so lucky.
So our service representative *finally* kills the account, and gives me a tracking number on top of it. "Great", I think. That's out of the way. But that was not the case. I guess some switch never got flipped because I have continued to be billed for service, 3 months after this call. I've called twice to attempt a resolution, but in both cases (after waiting on the line, of course) they gave some ridiculous excuse about their systems being down. I mean, yes this is Microsoft, but even Windows-based machines can do better than 1% uptime when I call. I guess they are running a fully exposed Windows 3.1 network in their cancellation department.
I have yet to come across a major service provider that gives even the slightest crap what their customers think.
-Derek
(Score:-1, Wrong)
Are we supposed to (a) feel sorry for Katzy boy (b) care? Hey, I had to wait in line for 10, *TEN* minutes for my burger and fries today! Dammit, I'm gonna write a vent letter and get it posted on Slashdot and show the whole world what a schmuck I am!
PS: I wonder how much Katz paid to have this one posted, too.
My understanding is that canceling your account with an ISP doesn't make money leave their organization. It just means that your money stops going in.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
My credit card was cancelled. But they still bug me and try to make me pay. I've been on the phone for way too many attempts and have tried the support chat twice but they claim their database was down so they couldn't cancel me. The phone line that the dsl was connected to hasn't existed for six months when I moved but that's not a big enough hint for them. I'm giving the chat thing another try right now (I'm on the 9th repeat of the automatic "all operators are busy"). I never used the @earthlink e-mail address and so set it up to forward to my real mail in case they had something important to say (scheduled downtime? like they'd really tell me anyway, huh?). So I still get their e-mails begging for money from me. It is not possible to cancel your account by e-mailing them ("security reasons"). Will today be the day my dsl account is finally cancelled?
From friends who used to work for AOL (all is forgiven!) I know that there's a department called "Stop-safe". These people have the target of stopping 50% of callers from cancelling their subscription. Quite a thankless task, I'm sure.
Just get some script kiddy to impersonate your email account, and send you ISP an email cancelling your account. Happened to me twice with PSI/mindspring. Of course, this was on the Friday of a 3 day weekend, so I couldn't get the account restored until Tuesday.
Oddly, when I tried to cancel my account for reals (after getting fed up with the above nonsense), it took several months of calls before I could get them to stop charging me.
MSN is just as bad. I've been trying to cancel my account there for about 5 months.
It all started when I tried to get DSL at my apartment. Qwest and MSN work together (if you call that working, ha ha) to provide DSL service in my area.
After a month of spending lots of time with tech support trying to get the DSL to work, I gave up. Maybe there was something wrong with my phone lines, maybe there was something wrong at the central office, I don't know, but we never got it to connect. It was too much trouble to keep troubleshooting it, plus I had decided that I would move out when my lease was up, anyway. So I cancelled the service. The first rep I talked to assured me that there would be no charges, since the service had never worked. But he could sign me up for MSN dial-up, if I wanted, and the first month would be free! No, thanks, I told him, I already have a dial-up account elsewhere and I don't need another one.
Ever since then, every time I get a phone bill from Qwest, there's that monthly MSN charge. I don't even live there anymore, so now I get the bills at my new place, showing this past-due MSN amount.
Various responses from MSN customer service:
-- When they cancelled the Qwest account, they should have also cancelled the MSN account, but they didn't. I'll fix that for you.
-- I see you signed up for MSN dial-up. Only the first month was free. Oh, you didn't sign up for it? I'll cancel that.
-- It doesn't look like they cancelled your account. I'll cancel that for you.
-- They should have sent a refund to Qwest, since you cancelled the account. I'll take care of that for you.
-- The credit has been posted, but it will take a couple of months to get to Qwest.
I've been just amazed that it's taken five months to cancel an account that I never even used!
Customer service at ISPs is really deplorable. I suspect that the first company to actually offer good customer service will find itself becoming successful as word of mouth spreads and customers switch over.
-- Cara
Cara Hart chart@eNOSPAMfurn.com Systems Administrator eFurn.com, LLC. and ARITEK Systems, Inc.
Things can't be so good at Slashdot if they're having to nickel-and-dime over $9.95 of expenses!
-- the most controversial site on the Web
I just called AT&T's support and within a minute or two, I was talking to a live person(Sales, they ALWAYS are there). After verifying my information they allowed me to disconnect with no penalties, they even refunded the remainder of the month's bill and let me choose the day they turned off service.
The only resistance they gave was an offer to switch my billing to $25 a month for the next 6 months. I would have taken it, had we been moving. DSL was the only option in that area.
These ISP's don't realize that if you close someone's account, that experience is their last impression of that company, If the customer has a crappy experience closing, they're never going to go back. Heck, I have no hostility towards them now, sure their support sometimes sucked, but who's doesn't?
Incorrect. Keyword "cancel" tells you how to cancel your account via phone, fax, or mail (snail mail).
-BK
Chemical Blog
I moved apartments, but Speakeasy kept trying to bill me for DSL service...I didn't know it was going on until a demand notice appeared in the mail from their collections dept.
:-)
I emailed them immediately, explained I hadn't lived in the apartment in quite some time, and somehow my cancellation must have gotten mucked up.
The next morning(!) a friendly rep emailed me back, said he'd look into it and get back to me, but did I have any reference numbers from the cancelation, did I remember who I talked to, etc...I wrote back and said sorry, I didn't...things were pretty hectic around the move due to my prospective landlord deciding at 11:30 the night before move-in that they didn't want to rent to me.
About a day later, I got a follow-up email; he said he couldn't find any record of the cancellation, but it wasn't a problem(I think it was obvious to both sides that service hadn't been in use.) He cancelled the account, along with all the monthly charges that had been racking up..and the account was settled.
I couldn't have been happier with how they handled it...they were a little pricier than some other ISPs, but their techs were really helpful and, well, geeks just like us. The use Big Brother for monitoring their network, so when I was having outage problems and pointed them to a BB page I had set up, they knew exactly how to read it. While on the phone with one of their reps, I was trying to figure out how to take a screen snapshot, and muttered something to my effect; I had earlier mentioned I was using linux. The lady tech on the other end says:
"Damn, I can't remember either. Hey guys...how do you take a screenshot in X windows?"
I mean, how goddamn cool is THAT? Sexy voice, smart as a tack AND she knew Linux. [flutter] Too bad she was probably in a Seattle call center and I was in NY
That's nothing.
When my dsl telco (phoenix) went under, telocity took over and we spent 4 months trying to get service back. It seems their transition day was the same day Northpoint shit the bed, and no one ever did figure out why I couldn't get a line through. I even had highly trained tier 3 support guys from Rhythms (unlike the usual "open-your-control-panel script jockeys") give up.
Finally i blew them off completely (I figured I'd keep the 2 modems they'd sent and see how long it took them to call ME) and they later billed me for 8 months of service! They never did ask for those modems back, but I figure they DID jack up my rate despite my existing contract, so fuck 'em.
Those people Mr. Katz has been talking to probably read /.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
Some years ago I had a hardware problem, my modem burnt out, and in the hope that it would soon be solved I didn't cancelled my ISP subscription right away.
But as it happened, I went without a modem for some months and decided to cancel my ISP. Called them and cancelled it. At least I thought it was cancelled.
Some months latter I received another invoice from it. I called the ISP and was patched through to the OWNER himself. Great, this guy should be able to solve my problem.
He said, "look, you've terminated the service, but our system registered a login from you last month and AUTOMATICALLY re-opened your account." I said that I didn't logged-in and that even if I did the ISP had NO AUTHORITY to automatically sign me in. Then I went on saying that I didn't have any modem available and that he must be mistaken.
This was, it seems, the last drop for him. "We don't make mistakes," he said. "Someone clearly logged-in using your password... if it wasn't you, then you gave it to somebody else."
Since no one had my password, I told him that if that was the case, if someone CLEARLY logged-in with my password, that his system got a security flaw.
He said some ramblings, curses, bad words and all and that his "system is 100% secure. You don't believe it? Take your best shot. If you get in, it's free internet for you for the rest of your life."
Of course I got in, but not before getting what he said in a clear written and signed statement. While I walked into his office after his secretary announced me, I could hear him cursing. I went in and said "Here is your password list, shove it, don't want your crapy service!"
Aaahh, the satisfaction of being disconnected!
Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!
While he acts the part of a normal user who forgets everything including password or that his wife etc might be the card holder, does seem to be somewhat naive. Since he knows that they don't want him to opt out and will make it difficult, why doesn't he prepare for this? Have all the information neccesary and ask immediately to get through to the accounting department. Better yet, why doesn't he just send a registered snail mail asking to be removed from the service? That way, after that date he can legally block all payments to them.
It's funny, when I was using my dial-up ISP as my only connection and missed a payment, the service was disconnected by the next billing cycle.
When I stopped using that ISP, they have continued to keep the account active and bill each month for the past eight months without payment.
Seems like they don't mind extending you credit if you don't use their service as long as your not really using it.
Welcome to Starpower!
I'm not sure if the author was exaggerating, but this tale seem a little incredulous to me.
I have never been subscribed to either Earthlink or AOL, but nevertheless, I went on the hunt for their cancellation numbers, just to see how long it actually takes.
On the AOL site (aol.com) I scrolled to the bottom of the front page, clicked "Help", and then on the next page, clicked "AOL Phone Numbers". In that long list of numbers is one labelled "Cancellation" (presumably this is the correct number). That took all of 10 seconds.
On the Earthlink (earthlink.com) site, clicking "Contact Us" brings up a list of all their numbers. Presumably it's the Customer Service number. In which case, it does state:
"Please be ready to provide the following information:
* Your email address
* The invoice number (if you're referencing a billing question)
* The secret word or PIN number for your account
* The credit card number and expiration date (if you're making a payment)"
So really the author should have had his password ready before phoning, and not having this is his own fault, not Earthlink's. He also seems to think that verifying his identity is time-wasting. I'm pretty sure most account changes require an identity verification of some sort (as is the case with my ISP).
He also makes the mistake of talking to much... "I did that thing where you recount your sorry travails in Tech Support Hell". Wouldn't a simple, "Hi, I'd like to cancel my account" do the trick? No matter how many times he is transferred to other departments, a story is never required, and will only anger the operator on the other end of the line.
All in all, I would of course believe that Customer Service is slow and a real pain at times, but it does sound like a lot of this story is exaggeration.
My lazy friend was with Voicestream and didn't like the phone and service. He switched over to Nextel but never discontinued his Voicestream service. When I was over his apartment for his birthday, I found his phone and found he was making payments on two cell bills a month and called up support to kill Voicestream.
They kept me on hold for a little bit before I spoke with a CSR who I explained my lazy friend's situation. They asked "Are you sure? Would you like to transfer service to someone else?". They couldn't actually terminate the service so I was put on hold again for a few minutes and transferred me to someone else who wanted to give me a few months free service and a new phone. I took ~20 minutes but I finally got my friend's Voicestream phone disconnected.
I like my Voicestream service and Nokia phone.
--- rapper/producer/bachelorette party stripper
I'm an English speaking American and I didn't understand the mumbo-jumbo that an AOL customer service representative spewed at me when I tried to cancel service.
Apparently, I agreed to three months of free service. I have no idea how that happened (oh, they were happy to explain that when I called back four months later wondering about the new charges).
About the "Piggybacking" service that AOL provides. I had a cable modem and signed up for the piggybacking service so I could try out AOL for my mother. I would try to surf AOL but was confronted with timeouts at every turn. Even within AOL (not a partner that was another web site) it timed out all the time! It got so annoying that I would try to use the service and quit after 3 minutes!
10. TERMINATION.
You may terminate your account at any time and for any reason by providing notice of intent to terminate to EarthLink by:
- registered or certified mail, return receipt requested addressed to EarthLink Inc., 1375 Peachtree St. Level A, Atlanta, GA 30309; or
- telephone calls directed to Accounts-Customer Service at (800) 719-4660, option #2.
Email termination of your basic Internet access account will not be accepted. To terminate DSL service, you must call (888) 829-8466. To terminate Web Hosting and/or Business Services, you must call (800) 237-0148. Your termination will only be complete upon your receipt of a cancellation confirmation number from EarthLink. Charges to your account will stop accruing the day EarthLink provides you with a cancellation confirmation number. Based on your billing cycle, charges accrued prior to your termination may apply after you receive a cancellation confirmation. Email cancellation requests will not be accepted. If your account included space on EarthLink's servers, anything stored on this space will be deleted upon termination.Without prior notice, EarthLink may terminate this Agreement, your password, your account, or your use of the Services, for any reason, including, without limitation, if EarthLink, in its sole discretion, believes you have violated this Agreement, our Acceptable Use Policy, or any of the applicable user policies, or if you fail to pay any charges when due. EarthLink may provide termination notice to you by: email addressed to your email account or by US Mail or courier service to the address you provided for the Services. All notices to you shall be deemed effective on the first (1st) calendar day following the date of electronic mailing or on the fourth (4th) calendar day following the date of first-class mailing or deposit with a commercial courier service.
Sections 3, 4, 6, and 11 of this Agreement shall survive termination of this Agreement.
That's really not a problem, although your own CC may not be forthcoming in providing this information unless it's clearly criminal from the beginning. (E.g., the way I "signed up" for some porn sites, for the first time in my life, while literally on a ship at sea without internet access.)
The first letter to your CC is a dispute saying that the account has been cancelled. The second, when they rebill you, is a criminal complaint of fradulent activity. This gives the bank a lot more authority to stop the charges.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I started on the Internet with a local ISP, (who shall remain nameless). Lost connection for over a month when they lost a major hub building to a fire (and didn't send out letters to customers, let alone refunds for lost service.)
They didn't understand why I wanted to cancel.
Moved to BellAtlantic.Net because it was $20 a month for unlimited time. Two months later, they changed their policy to $20 for 150 hours. Since my family has 5 people with totally random schedules, we were regularly clocking in 250+ hours. At 99 cents each additional hour, this was unacceptable.
Moved to Mindspring because they were $20 bucks a month for unlimited service. Still haven't canceled with them. Even after they changed to Earthlink. And after a week of downtime that their Network Engineers told me was a TCP issue on my end (which it wasn't.)
Also joined AOL because of the email accounts, and the 'need' of my younger siblings to chat.
Conversely, I recommended a friend to Earthlink. He's been without service for the better part of 6 months. He had a working connection for three days in December 2001, then it just stopped. Since then, he's been on the phone with their T/S weekly trying to get it resolved. Only in the last few weeks has he mentioned cancelling... And now they call him near-daily at home to give him updates on when his service will be reinstated. It still hasn't been. (He has a business DSL account, and they're neglecting him?)
Several other folks I work with have cancelled ISPs for a variety of reasons, from lack of service to better options or speed offered by a competitor.
Like JonKatz, they all had issues where the service rep couldn't believe someone would actually want to -cancel- their account.
One gent moved from a local ISP to Verizon DSL to @Home Cable, strictly because he lived next door to the cable building (as opposed to 16k feet from his DSL CO). Verizon didn't think that was a good enough reason.
Companies nowadays seem to want to retain customer base so badly, they'll do most anything if you yell loud enough or persistantly enough.
Eventually it occurred to me that the account might be in my wife's name along with mine.
And sure enough Rosy Palms did have an account listed.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Customer service in the computer industry is very poor, especially when it comes to cancelling a service. There is far too much phone switching. Support representatives should not be company lackies, they need to be well trained and empowered to take care of customer problems and complaints.
Microsoft is notoriously BAD in the technical support field. I've called Microsoft a dozen times in the past 13 years and not once have I ever had anything even close to satisfactory service. Imation/Panasonic was another dud.
One surprise (especially given my experience with Microsoft) was IBM's customer service. I've had two good experiences with IBM's customer service. One of the requests was 15 minutes before the support lines were closed and the rep. not only stayed on the line an extra 1/2 hour but actually helped me solve the problem! The other IBM experience was at Comdex (Toronto) in 95 when Microsoft was showcasing Windows 95. An IBM rep. took me through a product that provided the solution I was looking for. (The Microsoft camp all but kicked me out even though I had waited 15 minutes to speak to a rep.)
Usually the people I talk to at most companies are people who either don't have a clue about the technology they are supporting, are extremely rude, are too impatient and think their solution is the correct solution - (often it is not, speaking from a lot of experience), or haven't been empowered/trained to handle customer requests. There is nothing like sitting on a phone for an hour. Oh, that reminds me, Rogers is also notoriously bad for their customer support. I spent an hour and fifteen minutes on the phone waiting to get support from Rogers for my cell phone. I gave up and switched to Fido (who are not as good as they used to be but far better than Rogers).
Big companies please take note: Hire someone who knows a little bit about the technology they are selling and empower them to handle all my problems, not just technical ones... I refuse to play phone tag. Otherwise, I'm going to go to the competition or find a smaller provider who will support me.
Just before the AT&T/@Home fiasco where service was lost by a large number of people, I called my cablemodem company and asked them if there would be any disruption of service. I was told there would be absolutely no problems. A few hours later we lost service for the entire weekend. That's the worse possible time for my wife as she was an editor for an online magazine and the deadline is late Sunday. Because they had flat out lied to me I decided to switch to DSL.
My attempt to cancel with AT&T resulted in me being placed in the on-hold hell they are so famous for. Rather than spend an hour on hold, I hung up and wrote a formal letter canceling my service and told them to contact me to make arrangements for the return of the cablemodem. We kept receiving a bill, and I kept writing "service canceled on {date}" on the bill and attaching a copy of the letter. Eventually, they called me because of an overdue bill. When I said I had cancelled in writing they said you can't do it that way and I had to pay. I said, yes I can cancel in writing and that I would not pay. She tried to insist otherwise, but I stood firm. I got the info to return the cablemodem and haven't been bothered since (other than the occassional junk mail advertising their cablemodem service "now available" in my area).
-- Will program for bandwidth
A: None of your business. I'm not doing your marketing research for you; commission a study if you want that.
Q: What am I supposed to write down on the form?
A: Anything you want. I'm not receiving the form. My next call will be to my credit card company to tell them not to authorize auto-billing from you anymore. At that point, I won't care what's on the form.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
As an old veteren in Customer Tech Support, I can easily tell you why you encountered unhelpful and sometimes nasty people.
With the recent economic downturn and the companies treating employees like trading cards, the kind that everyone has and no one cares about, customer service will suffer.
Resons for this are:
1) Low employee morale. After worrying about layoffs, cutbacks, inflation, and the like, is it really any wonder why analysts and representitives have a hard time keeping cheerful?
2) Ineffective call centers. Combine a high turnover rate with layoffs, and you have the equivilant of a department that was just thrown together for the first time. Training sessions are cut short or do not exist. Simple things like where to send particular calls are probably missed or skipped for more important things like pressure selling.
3) Ineffective policies and procedures. When I worked for an ISP help desk, we won't mention any names (TELUS), we prided ourselves on answering 80% of calls under 20 seconds, and our customers enjoyed that kind of service. Now that companies want to cut their costs wherever they can, they increase the wait times so that customers will try to get help from the web site or e-mail or live chat, much less in cost the the telephone. I'm sure Mr Katz would rather have a live body then spend time looking for a solution on the net which probably isn't there, so would a lot of consumers. So increase the wait time, that increases the frustration and anger, and by the time you get the person you need you tend to hit them with both barrels. Needless to say that wouldn't leave me with the happy-go-lucky feeling if I had to contend with pissed off customers all day.
So try not to blame the analyst, they are only humans trying to keep their jobs, their livlyhood, and their sanity.
Anything else I can help you with? Have a great day! (click) Idiot.
-AlPhAbEt
A bit over two years ago, I canceled my dialup account when I got a cable modem. Everything went fine, until several months later when Earthlink bought out my old ISP. Shortly after that, I got a transition packet (for the account that was no longer active). A month later I got a bill. Luckily, once I got ahold of a human in billing, I managed to explain the issue and they re-canceled me without too much trouble.
It took me six months and threatened legal action to cancel my Earthlink account!
"Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
Here's how it went using the earthlink support chat thing. Enjoy. Earthlink: Please wait for a site operator to respond. While you are waiting, please feel free to begin typing your issue in the box below. Try to be as descriptive as possible. Once an operator responds, click SEND to transmit what you have typed. Earthlink: All operators are currently assisting other customers. Thank you for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly. [this thing repeated 9 times, then...] 'JoselynR': Thank you for contacting Earthlink LiveChat. How may I help you today? me@earthlink.net: I'd like to try for like the 10th time to cancel my DSL account, and in fact, every account with earthlink. I haven't lived at that address since December, the pac bell line was cancelled, but yet my earthlink dsl account remains active (or so it seems). The credit card used for billing that account has been cancelled so you haven't been able to bill me (thank god). But you might as well cancel my account and stop sending me e-mails about it. Thanks! me@earthlink.net: hopefully your database is not "down" again... JoselynR: what is the last4 numbers of the visa JoselynR: card me@earthlink.net: I have no idea. The card was cancelled long ago. JoselynR: what is the password (since they are cancelling me I don't mind giving this to them...) me@earthlink.net: (xxxxxxxx). luckily i remembered! JoselynR: ok did you want dial up or cancel out the whole acct me@earthlink.net: the whole account please JoselynR: ok one moment JoselynR: Ok, I have set the account to close at the end of this billing cycle for you. Was there anything else I could help with today? c4nc3l JoselynR: the acct will close on 05-25-02 me@earthlink.net: Thanks Joselyn! You are the first person who actually could do it! Thanks! BTW, here's a story about another person's problems trying to close their account: it will be read by many people today. http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/ 14/0138249&mode=thread&tid=95
JoselynR: You're welcome and thank you for using EarthLink LiveChat. Should you need further assistance, please feel free to contact us again.
me@earthlink.net: thanks. you (personally) get an A+
JoselynR: hhehhe
JoselynR: thank you
JoselynR: :0)
=============
and thus my relationship with Earthlink has ended...
(Someone, check the basement for pods!)
Now Rogers had *never* answered their phone for me in less than 30 minutes, and this time was no different. What made it excrutiatingly awful was that the on-hold music was some old-time country and western yodelling music (I kid you not).
When a human finally picked up the other end, the first question he asked was why I wanted to cancel my service. Did I give him an earful!
After that he went on auto-pilot. Confirming my name, address, account number, etc. He was so much on auto-pilot, that he ended the phone call with
"Thank you for choosing Rogers!"
I laughed and hung up.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
> So at the least I propose that ISPs be required to send monthly bills, listing numbers to call or websites to visit...
I like it when monthly charges on your credit card bill come with a phone number to call for customer service. My old ISP did this, although I don't remember the name (some Mom and Pop ISP). I thought, "What a great idea! The phone number is exactly where I need it, right next to the charge." I'd like to see more of this.
I dropped AOL service a long time ago (when 28.2Kb modems were state of the art) and had no trouble at all. I did get a slew of letters from Steve Case wondering why I'd cancelled the service but no surly Customer Service person berating my reason for leaving. :-)
Someone should be explaining to Brian what the job market is like nowadays. Might just clear up that attitude problem he's got.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I can say that I feel your pain and hope these bastards get the pain inflicted on al of us beck on them 10 fold. Gato
John Katz knows what a stamp is? or where the nearest postoffice is?
My roommate signed up for AOL for one day because his usual ISP was down and the man needs his online poker.
He knew they were going to ask him why he was leaving and spent his 30 minutes of hold time thinking of a good response. His conversation went something like this:
AOL guy: Why are you cancelling your AOL service?
Roommate: Did you see the movie Memento?
AOL: Yes
R: I have that same memory problem and I woke up this morning with a note pinned to my shirt that said "Cancel AOL".
AOL: Were you having any problems with your service?
R: I really can't remember. But I should probably do what the note says.
AOL: OK. Your account has been canceled.
You don't owe them any explanation. You're a customer and you don't want to pay them anymore.
That should be enough.
-B
Something similar to this happened to me. This is the easy way to cancel all memberships that are directly billed to your credit card. Send an e-mail to their customer service account saying you are cancelling the service. Then you simply inform your credit card that you are not accepting charges from that vendor anymore. This works everytime and takes 10-15 minutes. What's funny is they will try to call you and tell you there is a problem with billing. All you reply back is, "I cancelled your service, there is no problem, sorry if you didn't read my e-mail. BYE!" It's nice to put the onus back on the business once in awhile.
It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
My dad had all kinds of problems with Earthlink when they bought JPS. Double billing, spontaneously discontinued service, you name it. He finally brow-beat them into giving him "for free" the 6 months of service he had already prepaid for under JPS (at double his previous rate, of course). Before the whole thing was over they tried to bill him for it 3 times. Fortunately he keeps every scrap of paper he ever recieves from any company he does business with, immaculately organized, for at least 5 years (sometimes more, when I bought his old truck from him a few years ago he handed me it's file, which had reciepts for oil changes from 1986). He's also run construction crews for 15 years, so he knows a thing or two about being intimidating. The combination is unbeatable in such situations, although I have to give Earthlink props for holding out longer than any company I had previously witnessed him deal with.
Anyway, after the "free" six months was up, Erthlink told him that , not only did he owe them for the last 6 months (which was "free", remember), but that he was obligated to pay for another 6 months, and that he had to give them his credit card number so they could bill him automatically. My dad, having an inherent distrust of corporations, would never have gone for automatic billing anyway, but after all the effort Earthlink had put into trying to screw him, he told them where they could stick their automatic billing and cancelled his account. It took another 3 months for him to get them to stop billing him for service on his canceled account!
The lesson here for you, Katz, is keep a close eye on your credit card bills and make sure they aren't still charging you for your disconnected service. You may even want to take some proactive steps with your credit card company.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Katz forgot a good rule of thumb: if you have *any* flack about cancelling a service, demand a physical address and name for a followup letter and the customer server's rep's name, ID, whatever.
Then write a letter reiterating your cancellation, pointedly noting any information that the customer service rep refused to provide. Then send two copies - one in regular mail with receipt, the second registered with return receipt. You need two because many companies refuse to accept registered mail. If they do, you have the returned letter and the receipt for the unregistered letter with the same contents.
When your CC shows another charge - and many companies that make it that hard to cancel tend to be sloppy about stopping the charges, you *immediately* dispute the charge with copies of the proof that they were notified in writing.
If they do it again, you have the evidence to immediately escalate to a criminal "fradulent activity" complaint. That gives your bank the right to refuse charges, and does tend to get LEA's attention.
The final case is companies that refuse to provide even a mailing address. It's true, a few morons "accidently" hit the telephone hook and think that will make the problem go away. In that case you immediately call your own bank, report the problem properly notifying the company that you're cancelling the service, and ask them to note this in their records. Follow up with a physical letter. Then if you continue to get billed, your bank can present that letter with the notification of a disputed charge and the other company should have more 'splaining to do.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Good luck! I look forward to your next months followup to this, after your credit card bill arrives.
A few years ago, I signed up for AOL for a few months so I could chat with a then-SO who was half the country away. When the relationship ended, I called the customer service number and, when asked for a reason, told the guy that I had "joined so I could chat with someone who is now an ex-girlfriend."
It took him 10 seconds to cancel my membership.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
I still haven't figured out if there is someone I can contact to do it. I suppose I could just let the box fill with the 70 spam messages I get every day. They would probably shut it down after a while.
sine puella vita suget
(Andy)"Ever tried to quit AOL? They just won't let you. It's like the Roach Motel, they check in, but they don't check out. I'm wasting away the final years of my life on hold."
(Jerry) "So who invented hold anyway?!? That's one person who's going to hell. It's a battle of wills, just like the staring game we played when we were kids. After an hour and a half on hold I'm thinking, just a few more minutes, I know he's about ready to cave, there's no way I'm giving up now!"
(Dave) "The call center, I swear I am not making this up, is actually manned by CIA 'Pain Specialists' who are studying the average time a person will stay on hold before giving up. This is going directly into their Pain Threshold Database for future use in IRS audits."
Except Katz takes himself seriously. Oh, and he's not funny.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
http://www.aol.com/nethelp/findinghelponaol.htm
Whats better, earthlink even will help you cancel your AOL account, among others
http://www.earthlink.net/home/benefits/switchin
Now, as far as the 60 minutes on the phone, that does suck. I would advise people to send a letter in writing to their big ISP of choice, and keep a copy. When the charges show up on your credit card, just do a chargeback, and show your letter as proof. Let them call you.
Interestingly enough, doing a site search on earthlink (google search "cancel site:www.earthlink.com") yielded the above site on how to cancel OTHER services, but no information on how to cancel their OWN service. Must be some kind of an oversight. Yeah, that's it, an oversight. And I'm Paul Bunyan, (booming voice) founder of the internet.
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
About three or four years ago I called Earthlink to get a dial up account, but my credit card was rejected. At the time, I was a student and had a joint banking account with my mom - the credit card bills went to her. I found out about three months later that Earthlink had been charging me about $25 a month for dial up services. When I called to complain/cancel they refused to refund my money.
Thanks, Assholes!
-WG
"America, I smoke marijuana every chance I get."
I guess it was Mindspring at the time anyways, it was April of 2000. I was going on vacation and needed a ISP while I was at the other end of the country. I have a local ISP here, so I thought I'd get a free introductory month of service from a national ISP and then cancel my account when I got back.
It worked well, I got the account with a free month, set it up, found the access number I'd use while on vacation and then took off. When I got back, I called Mindspring and cancelled the account. When they asked why I wanted to cancel, I said that their service is wonderful, and I didn't have a problem with it, but I had a local ISP that I prefered to use. 5 minutes on the phone, and a wonderful experience all around with Mindspring.
I refered everyone after that who was looking for an national ISP to use Mindspring.
-Brent
When my wife tried to cancel her cell phone (she had gone to another service), there line of excuses went:
"We can't"
"We can, but it your contract must run the rest of the year"
"Maybe there was no contract, but there's a $50 service charge"
"Maybe there is no service charge, but you'll have to clear it with the Loyalty department"
At this point my wife is mentions how the Loyalty department has tones of "1984". The service representative says he never saw the movie. *sigh*.
The Loyalty department:
"How about another month's contract just in case you really do need it"
"How about a month's free service" (!)
"How about three months' free service" (!!!)
"Why do you want to cancel?"
"Can you give a better reason?" (!)
Finally, they refused to cancel the service for three months. They'd just stop billing us and if we didn't use the service, it would expire...
Now after all that (which makes for great anecdotes at parties, even if it took a while), they did actually keep their word and we saw no more bills.
- Picked up an AOL CD to cover a transition period in ISPs (only two months, so the free month would get half of it for me).
- Signed up for AOL using my debit card at Bank One.
- Used AOL for two months.
- Called up and canceled AOL (and they gave me the runaround Katz described, but didn't hang up on me).
- Moved to a new city.
- Closed Bank One account and withdrew all of my money (I didn't like them much and my new job got me into a credit union that I am happy with).
Sounds like it would do the trick, doesn't it? Well, AOL conveniently 'forgot' about my cancellation and kept billing my Visa card, which didn't exist. Except Bank One reopened the account for me (aren't they nice), didn't pay AOL (there was no money), and started charging me money for being overdrawn. So AOL and Bank One both start sending harrassing letters to my old address, which I do not get for some time. When I did get the letters, I went to the local Bank One branch and tried to straighten it out. They told me I had to go to the branch where I opened the account (don't ask me why). So a few weeks later I get a chance to visit that area and I stop in to Bank One. I told them to "deny payment" on the AOL charges (one was too old, so I had to pay it - @!#@%). I payed Bank One's stupid fees and left. Boy was that a hassle!I had an account with Enteract for four years, and recently switched to AT&T business DSL. The problem here is that Enteract was bought out by another company about 7 months ago and they don't seem to be honoring cancellation requests by "old" enteract users. I have put in 3 telephone calls and left messages (which they said they would promptly return my call on). I have also e-mailed them 2 times. Still no phone call or e-mail reply, and I just got billed for another quarter of service.
This post will be modded down for no particular reason by a sweaty 14 year old who is not allowed out past dark.
Didn't you hear, he comes in six-packs?
InThane
I cancelled my AOL in 10 minutes. Granted the woman tone did villciliate between rude and intimidating.
but it's nice to know that this kind of stuff happens to the /. boys too. Comforting at least. There is a customer service epidemic going on in North America. I remember watching a special once (I think it was on W5) about the customer service crisis. And even went so far as to say that companies use things such as color codes beside your account to indicate if you are a "good" customer, you don't pay now and then, you're wealthy, if they've had problems with you in the past {with a link to the details of that Tuesday when you lost it on them}, or "do not do anything under any circumstances to upset this customer.. they are always right.. they are very important... you will be fired instantly if you make them mad" (gold star). It seems absurd, but it's very possible that a lot of companies are using practices such as this.
With respect to John's experience, a similar thing has happened to me with my local telco company called Telus. (since we're naming names) Adding services to my phone line is VERY easy. Cancelling them is rather difficult. I had a basic line with voice mail, call waiting, call display, and DSL. I added on a few features during the past year, such as call forwarding, call return, and domain hosting on my dsl account (the latter - $15 extra) well, I didn't get enough use of some of the phone extras, and simply hated the domain hosting. (I couldn't even setup an email account.. wtf kind of domain hosting is that)
Over the year, I would occasionaly phone Telus to cancel some of these services I had added. They would cooperate and be pleasant, and on next month's bill, the service would be gone. Good. But wait.. Then I would get the *next* bill. And the services would show up again! (I'm not receiving the services anymore, but I'm suddenly paying for them again 2 months after I cancel them) This happened on 3 different occassions with 3 different services.
This my friend, is a scandal. I don't care if it is a mistake, an internal problem with Telus, or a deliberate way to fuck over customers in the hopes that the bill is so damn confusing that people just pay the bottom line. I don't care right now because I recently moved, and cut off the whole damn line (try to charge me for that). But, I will say that the next time I have a line with Telus, and they start harrassing me to add all their flashy features, I will state plain and simply, "you send me a written and signed promise that if I cancel my fricken voice mail, you will never ever charge me for it again" then I will sign up with your crackpot operation.
Getting rid of services is IMPOSSIBLE!
All I want in a phone line is a little fricken perfect competition (I'd even settle for an oligopoly as long as there is no collusion). Telus, your monopoly ass stinks. We'll see who's crying if local phone line competition ever comes to town.
What am I trying to do here? Give bad plublicity of course, with the hopes that some Albertans are reading this and are aware this has ahppened, and cautious in the future about adding services with Telus. You John, just picked up a megaphone and took Earthlink and AOL down to China Town. That's halarious.
In a world where it ought to be a universal right to get connected instantly, you ought to be able to get disconnected without calling a lawyer, a hit man or the FTC.
I couldn't have said it better. Go yell it on a mountain!(oh, you just did)
You have paid for a total of 0 pages and so far 0 have been used up (0 today).
Let's see...www.earthlink.com. Click on Customer Support. Click on Account Maintenance. Click on "How to cancel your Earthlink account". The following page give several phone numbers. Doesn't seem that tough to me!
This is a very weird coincidence, not 5 minutes went buy that I got off the phone with RCN in NYC and I read this article.
I had called to cancel my cable TV service to move to Directv (HDTV) I was on hold for 20 minutes and got transferred to 2 departments. He asked why I want to cancel, and I said 'lack of HDTV programming'
I even tried last night, and someone, somehow had forwarded me to a completely different state. The representative on the other end gave the ol' "I don't know how you got forwarded here, let me forward you again."
Moral is, this happens everywhere. Best advice is to NOT GIVE UP. no matter how frustrating it is, keep on the phone to cancel their service.
-mlrtime
1)goto aol.com
2)do a search for 'cancel aol'
3)at the very top is a link to phone numbers-click on it and see the cancellation #
Time to perform:1 minute
I used the account on and off as a backup and to talk with some family members here and there. My account was still comped and a bit of investigation showed that I still had access to the Rainman Plus (AOL's programming language at the time) areas. I kicked off another set of emails about the deal, not wanting to later be accused of something or have someone hijack my account.
Nothing came of it. Finally, 18 months after I'd left the gig I received an apologetic email that basically said "hey, we dont' have a record that you're working with an AOL partner, so we're going to cancel your account in a month unless you provide billing info".
Out of curiosity I paid for a month's access and discovered that hey, I STILL had access to the programming areas of AOL. Oops. I cancelled the account after arguing with Customer Disservice for a while. Despite several phone calls it took six weeks for them to actually cancel it and I never got refunded for the extra two months of charges. Not that I really had much to complain about - it was a comped account for two years.
Biggest thing that pisses me off about ISPs these days is slamming. I set up a branch office with [BrandX] DSL, which we'd get comped for because we do work for [BrandX]'s main business. Anyway, I signed up for it and the next thing I know we were SouthWestern Bell DSL customers. Cancelling service I never ordered would result in an outage of 4-6 weeks, I was told. [BrandX] DSL claimed helplessness about the situation and I had more pressing matters to attend to, so we stuck with SouthWestern Bell.
A short time later, I moved and got into an area provided by a Mom & Pop ISP offering DSL with a static IP. Next thing I know, I'm getting sign-up discs from BellSouth and calls from them about setting up my service. BellSouth was slamming me at home. I got it straightened out after 2 days, then got a couple of calls from BellSouth trying to get me to switch. They said rather than waiting 4 weeks for them to do my DSL install for the Mom & Pop, if I signed up with them they'd get it done in 4-5 days. I stuck with the Mom & Pop who run FreeBSD (yay), are more than happy to provide DNS service, don't mind me running my own web servers, and haven't blocked my ports or filtered my access. Huzzah!
I've never used earthlink, so I can't comment on them, however I have a lot of experience with AOL. I work for a telemarketing company as a sys admin/programmer whose largest client is AOL. You can just go to keyword cancel to get the cancellation number, I just did it in one try. In my experience, people who complain about telemarketers, are people who let themselves get taken for a ride. Generally if you take control of the call right away you won't have a problem. Also, you need to remember that a lot of the people you are going to talk to are college kids who have no link to the company you're calling other than an easy paycheck. They have people yelling at them all day long, and just like anyone else get irritable. This is not an excuse, I believe if you are going to do a job (whether it's diiging ditches, or physics) you should do it well. But people being what they are, bad telemarketing calls, and poor phone menus shouldn't be a surprise anymore.
There's a Dial America telemarketing center here that handles incoming AOL cancellation calls. From what I understand from an employee, they get bonuses for convincing customers to change their minds. My guess is, you could get free service just by calling to cancel every month, getting a free month each time.
It took me about 3 months to finally get Earthink to cancel my account, and about 3 YEARS for AOL.
From now on, I only deal with small ISPs that don't want to keep hearing from me because they don't have the staff to keep handing me off.
"All right, how about this. I spend a lot of time writing for a counterculture oriented community based web portal that has a strong dissaproval of AOL and the mindless drones that tend to use their service. Also, AOL doesn't run on Linux, isn't open source, can't be legally hacked, and I can't run it on my heavily modified Sega Dreamcast! It is of no friggin' use to me whatsoever. I would rather dive headfirst into a bucket of cheerios soaking in 3 week old milk that has been sitting in my car growing rancid, and hold my head underwater until I passed out from nausea and/or oxygen deprivation than use this service one day further! Is that a good enough reason for you!"
"Hold on, now. How do you spell counterculture?"
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
Anyway.. it was not difficult. You just don't answer their questions, or give brief answers when they ask why. Keep saying, please cancel my account. It only took me three minutes. Is that a record.
Oh, and by the way, if you go to keyword "Cancel"
You get some info including a fax # and a mailing address. I would be interested to know if anyone has cancelled via fax, and if the were STILL able to find a way to argue with you!!...
For AOL Keyword Cancel:
If you wish to discuss or cancel your membership with one of our Member Services Representatives, please dial 1-888-265-8008. Our representatives are waiting to assist you.
You may also choose to mail your request to us at:
America Online
P.O. Box 1600
Ogden, UT 84402
Or you may fax your request to us at 801-622-7969.
Mentioning Earthlink and Scam in the same sentence reminded me of the story of Reed Slatkin,(until very recently) Scientologist, who was one of the founders of Earthlink and how he has plead guilty to running one of the biggest Ponzi scams in US history.
Note: Ponzi scam = scam where money collected from later investors are used to pay "dividends" to earlier investors.
With great Scientology management from people like Reed, and Sky Dalton, it's no wonder their customer service is so good.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
I also disconnected from an ISP some years ago - I emailed them and asked if I could end the service; they emailed back yes, I cancelled the direct debit and that was that. So I thought. About a year later they wrote to me explaining I owed them about $150. I wrote back: no I don't. They wrote back: yes you do. Cutting to the chase, when they had emailed back yes, there was a clause I didn't expect. I saw the "yes" at the top of the email and stopped reading. The email _actually_ said: yes, please email to confirm. I didn't think I needed to confirm; my original request was not ambiguous. They took it fairly well though although at the next year end we went through it all again.
And there's the time I signed up for a "free" service "we need your CC number for this free service". D'oh! At the end of the month - well, it actually took me about 5 minutes to decide I didn't want it - I informed them I did not want to continue. Guess what - the CC got debited. I think I had to threaten legal action before they refunded it.
"But there's no keyword on AOL -- which has a keyword for everything -- for cancelling membership. If you root around in customer support for a while and keep typing in "cancel service" at every prompt -- I'm talking two or three browser moves and about five minutes, just enough to discourage the rushed, confused or distractable -- you eventually reach a page that offers an 888 number for cancellation of membership."
Really?...I went to www.aol.com, and clicked on "search" at the top of the window. for a search query, I typed "cancel membership". The very first search result is a list of AOL's phone numbers, which clearly lists 1-888-265-8008 as the number for cancellation.
While there's really no excuse for bad customer service these days, it exists, and it's not going anywhere. If Katz actually expected to call a major company like AOL or Earthlink, and NOT get jerked around on the phone, the he's just too niave to be using the Internet.
If all else fails, just don't pay. dispute the charge on your credit card.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
I'm terminally ill; I'll be dead in a week...
That usually stops them.
All you need to do is break their script. Most phone drones will hang up rather than ever try to recover.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
in brasil is ilegal to refuse currency. so if a service or product is advertised or on sale, the vendor is forced by the law to accept cash. paper bill or coins. the vendor can not impose the use of credit cards or things like that.
so everytime I sign to a service with recurring bills (like an ISP or magazine subsciption) I opt for a bill sent to my snail mail so I can pay in the bank.
this gives me the option of ignoring the bills, which'll force them to disconnect me. I did this several times before and it worked.
What ? Me, worry ?
I've had some bad experiences with Time Warner for disconnects.
The first incident had to do with cable. I started receiving past due notices, but I had never received a bill! Even more bizarre is that I NEVER ORDERED CABLE SERVICE. My fiance called about the problem and the service rep insinuated that I had ordered cable with out discussing the matter with my fiance.
I called and they told me there was a service rep in my apartment on a particular date. I was home that day, ALL DAY, since I had just moved in and there was no one there. They said I had signed work orders when that tech was in on that day. I asked for copies and then they magically changed their story. Now, it appears as though I was the victim of the "office only" connection. This means that since cable was already in place at my residence all they had to do was start billing me. That would have been fine, HAD I ORDERED THE SERVICE.
Now I need to cancel my cable internet service with them. I called them and they told me that they don't know how to cancel the service. HOw can they not know how?! They said they didn't know how I should return the cable modem since my account is a "bulk account". My apartment complex pays for my roadrunner as a first year bonus. Luckily my aparment complex has outstanding customer service and told me to give them the equipment and they will take care of it. What a pain!
There\'s no place like ~
>At 10:04 a.m., Cindy came on to ask for my name and PW
That's scandalous. They don't need a password to kill your account, they don't really even need it to verify your identity, and they're opening up a window for social engineering.
The only responsible policy is to say, repeatedly and openly, "Our personnel will never ask for your password/PIN/Permissive Action Link code", and to make it stick by training your people never to ask and by making sure they never need to.
I'd be surprised if someone hasn't called Jon Katz and said "Hi, I'm Kevin Mitnick in Earthlink's cancellation department. I can get you out of our billing system after the current cycle just as soon as we complete security verification. To prove that you're authorized to close the account, please give us the account name and password".
Please tell us how this is any different from calling for technical support or ANY customer service # for that matter?
/.
Oh so because it's written by Jon Katz, it deserves to be published on
Hemos, if you guys are so hard up for articles. I could submit an article about my drive in to work today.
Hey at least you got one more long article out of your ISP's, so I guess you needed them still.
The beauty of AT&T Worldnet is that you can cancel online, without any interaction with a person.
I only know about cancellation because I signed up for a second account for a few weeks for a project and cancelled when finished.
I would not think of cancelling my primary Worldnet account. I've had the service for five years now, through multiple cable modems and time out of the country. (When I switch to their $11/month plan)
The best way to cancel service in situations like this is to call your credit card company and tell them you lost your card. They will cancel your current number and mail you another one in two or three days. You can only do this a few times a year, though.
Now, suddenly you will get email full of helpful phone numbers and links to update your account information. Just contact them via one of these ways and tell them you want to cancel service. Works like a charm and you don't bleed cash while they stumble around.
Another tactic that is fun with pissy people on the phone to to try to get them to quit their job. Pretend you are a sales person, and try to sell them that they can get a better job elsewhere. Say things like "I can tell you are very smart, you can do better." and "Wouldn't you like to make more money?" If they say they love their job, just reply, "I know this is being recorded so you are just saying that." Don't offer a new job or company idea, just tell them they should set their sites higher.
Turn the system on its head!
No surprise.
I'm reminded of when I was a 12 year old stamp collector and got caught up in "approval" buying.
They'd send you a bunch of stamps for $0.01 which would simultaneously get you subscribed to an approval buying service where you had to send things back quickly in order not to buy something.
It was hell to get out of. Granted, a lot of the success of the scheme relates to making it much easier for a customer to buy than for a customer to either notbuy or, worse, antibuy (get a refund.)
The hassles of getting an RMA for a web based order, dialing into a trickle of phone lines, manned 3 hours a day, charged calls that dump you into a voicemail system that either drops you into messages that no one answers, a busy signal, or a dialtone.
Since then, I've noticed that bureaucratic procedures and, yes, incompetence, can be selectively and artfully applied in all kinds of business situations to help profits.
Any business student can tell you that you want to hound your acccounts receivable into a short time scale, while letting your accounts payable drift unpaid as long as possible.
My all time favorite, of course, are health insurance approvals. The footdragging and hassles of dealing with managed health care have absolutely convinced me that bureaucracy and incompetence can be honed into a tool.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I tried using some of their free hours, and foolishly assumed they would warn me before starting to bill me. They never sent me any invoices so it was a few months before I noticed the £10/month going to AOL hidden in my statements. I phoned up and cancelled. My credit card continued to be billed. I did so again, and ditto. After I did this a few times, each time they totally ignored the fact they had told me it was cancelled, so after the final irate phone call I then called my bank and asked them to cancel my current card and send me a new one. Problem solved. Never heard from AOL again. Good riddance, though they screwed me out of about 6 months of charges for something I never used.
Phillip.
PS pssst JonKatz, try getting Verisign to do something simple...
Property for sale in Nice, France
is to start at your new account and complain to the old ISP's that the user-id (your old user-id) is sending you spam.
As that activity violates most user agreements, most ISP's will act fairly rappidly.
-Rusty
You never know...
My husband and I have worked for several ISPs. I won't claim to know much about the disconnection department, because we've only ever done tech support, but perhaps I can offer a little insight into why it's harder to disconnect than to connect.
Many ISPs don't release email addresses when a person cancels. Back when the popular-internet stuff started and there were fewer ISPs, companies assumed that once you had their service, you had their service and wouldn't need to shop around. Most didn't build in the functionality to release or reassign email addresses.
So, you make the phone call or go online to connect through the WOL (World OnLine) dialup provider. During that transaction, you're giving them your name, method of payment, and usually address and phone number too. That's a lot of information that can potentially be used to verify that you are who you say you are.
You're saying that you want a button to disconnect on the website, or something to that effect. Well, what if you were at the library and the computer didn't log you out properly? What if you were at home and walked away from the computer for a minute, and your toddler/cat/iguana decided the mouse was their new favorite toy?
No big deal, right? You just call up WOL and tell them you/your pet disconnected accidentally.
And they say, "Too bad, so sad." The email address you got when WOL first started, the very original and much sought after bob@wol.com, is gone. If you want service, you're going to have to pick a new one, something more along the lines of bob249002578@wol.com. I'm sure you're itching to.
Now, I hear you saying that doesn't bother you. It really wouldn't bother me, either. I change email addresses almost as often as I change my clothes. (Not literally, but you understand what I mean.) But to Bob Businessman, who has been using that address for 6 years and has it printed on his business cards and stationery, it matters.
The point is, the repercussions of someone being incorrectly subscribed are few. "Oh, your 12-year-old hormonal daughter got ahold of your credit card and ordered? No problem, here's your $5-10 that we charged you, and that account will be cancelled. Bye!" The repercussions of someone being incorrectly UNsubscribed are a nightmare of, "But, but, I've had that email address for four years! What do you mean I can't have it back?!"
I do agree that if you say, "No, no problems with the service, I just don't need it anymore," that should be it. Assuming you can verify identity, disconnecting should be a breeze. Just wanted to add a different point of view.
Think!
I use an online service to pay bills. I connect, veryify the cert on the ssl site, enter my account and password, then check off the vendors I want to pay, plug in the amount. For the bills that are the same every month (Car, House, Insurance, and so on) I schedule a payment automatically. When/if I don't want to pay them, it's a simple click.
I would never allow any business to bill me automatically for services (aside from the bank I'm using, no way out of that!). It's in their interest to bill me no matter what. It's in my interest to pay my bills when the service meets my expectations.
Moral of this story: Never leave your wallet where someone else can reach in. It never works out in your interest.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
My hell is that I got an account for my father paid on my credit card which was going to be transferred over to him in a few months (it was a gift... to get them off AOL). So the account name is not one I chose, the password is not one I chose. My father, in the switch from the AOL way was confused how to do stuff and didn't want to ask me (& I live in another part of the state) so he basically forgot that username/password and created a new account for himself a couple months later. Mind you, I didn't find out about this until about 4 or 5 months later (& the only paper record of the account was at my parents' house which must have been eaten by a toad or something).
Try cancelling if all you have is the credit card number under which the account is being billed. They cannot find it. They cannot terminate it. They are real annoying pricks about it and are only available during the hours I am at work and can't spend on the phone waiting for them. Their only "solution" was to cancel my credit card or get a different bank account (my credit card is actually a debit card).
The bank can't decline a payment for a monthly charge unless the charge is always on a consistant day. Earthlink gets around the possiblity of someone doing that by changing the day randomly each month.
Sadly, I pay $19.95 a month so I can keep my checking account and my debit card because I don't physically go to the bank and rely on my ATM card. If I cancel that card/account, I will have at least a month where I will not be able to do -any- electronic banking and will have to physically go to the bank (not in a convenient location for one, such as me with no car) to even get money to buy groceries.
I just needed to rant.
Saw a billboard in Tucson a month back advertising for customer retention specialists for AOL. Claimed you could make better than $50,000 a year. That sort of claim usually means they're paying by commission - so whenever you get through to such a specialist and you aren't retained, it's straight out of the specialist's pocket. No wonder the guy thought you were being nasty to him.
___
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
If you can't cancel your account within a few minutes with any service or they give you a hard time about doing it, simply notify your credit card company - or the bank you have your ATM or check card through - that you have requested that they cancel your service and that to be sure it is done, you wish to no longer authorize payments/withdrawels by those companies.
If those companies then want to take you to court over non-payment, simply notify them that you have documentation (preferably a quickly dashed-off letter, email or a recorded phone call) showing your intent and attempt to cancel the service and that you'd be willing to present them to any judge at any time.
Oh man. Why does Katz write a story for a website targetted at the knowledgeable computer elite about how he ran into all sorts of trouble trying to cancel AOL?
Not to mention that in the process he talks about his drawer full of old passwords and notes from his enormous history of tech support calls.
And the line about how he's going to torture the tech-support people's pets just doesn't make any sense...
Typical Katz fare. Time to reformat my brain.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
...from my isp broadband provider, they sent me a warning email at 8.30am to an account that I could only access over their service and at 10am they had disconnected me, at 11am I tried to dial in.
45 minutes of listening to the same crapy music over and over and I finally got through to find out the card I was paying with was one that had recently been canceled.
[..] but I never got around to disconnecting from Earthlink or from AOL, which I've been on for years [...]
Jon Katz is an AOL-user??! Wow! That somehow seems so evident that I suddenly can't believe I didn't figure it out myself long ago...
I had a similar AOL experience over 5 years ago. When I was prompted for my reason for cancellation, I said, "Because I haven't used AOL in two years. I do all my 'net stuff through a local provider." Same response - did the service suck? "No, I just haven't used it." 'Oh, well, if you have another provider, you can access AOL through it and decrease your monthly rate.' "How about we just cancel it because I haven't used it IN TWO YEARS?"
She finally gave in and the account was cancelled. But that didn't stop the phone calls, one of which wasn't even about membership - it was about buying a guide to using AOL because, even though I was a computer professional (I offered that forth as a reason why I wouldn't need it), AOL has a lot of features that I might not be aware of. Of course, not having the service was my other reason for not buying it, but that just gave them the opportunity to ask if I would like to be signed back up.
You know, it's funny... All I have to do to be kicked off my cable account is to set up a pr0n server. Maybe that's the key to getting your ISP accounts cancelled - violate the TOS in a huge way (but, preferably, one that won't get you nailed for DMCA or copyright violations). You'll have fun in the meantime and they'll do all the work of shutting down your account.
Katz gets trashed a lot for his more pedantic stuff, but this is a great article. Well done.
um.
since when do phone morons who verbally berate you deserve any reasons? its none of their damn business. you were way too nice. I would have had fun with that one, if i were you. I mean, after that guy even got a little pissy, you should just have let his ass have it. heh.
I often wonder how many people just give up and let the company keep extracting the money from their credit card for years? At least until the expiration date changes on the credit card. I wouldn't be surprised if AOL had millions of "customers" who hadn't logged on in monthes if not years.
My Weblog
I've had both earthlink and aol (couldn't pass up the free hours)and didn't have any trouble cancelling them. AOL even offered to give me another free month.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
The bills will keep coming.
Who's number one?
Customer service Hell is alive and sucvking the life blood out of all of us.
It is nothing more than one big TIME SINK.
Anyway, the *BEST* way to do this is to report your credit card, LOST or STOLEN.
You get a NEW CARD with NEW NUMBERS, and AOL/Earthlink/whom-ever gets absolutely cut off.
I (being the dummy that I am) have lost cards in the house, and reported it as such to the CC co and they've cancelled the account.
The funniest part of all this is Mr Katz thinks that he will no longer be billed by AOL and/or EarthLink. He got one person at each entity to say on the phone that he is cancelled. He has no other evidence. When the credit card siphoning continues next month, he'll call again. The same thing will happen.
I cancelled my Earthlink account after business hours in a whopping 4 minutes when I got my DSL, although I was sad to go because SBC/PacBell will never give me the same customer service as Earthlink. They even noticed I'd just been billed the day before for the following month and had it refunded.
As a consumer, business-person, whatever your reasons for wanting internet access, consider requests to verify your identity from your ISP before cancelling or making significant changes to your account a good thing- like when the sales clerk asks for ID when you wrote "SEE ID" on the strip on your credit card. People do actually try to cancel other people's internet service for revenge or a host of other reasons. Dial-up may be easy to restore, but if you went through the hell of DSL installation one time- well, when your circuit goes back into the phone company's "pool," you're screwed into it all over again.
I'm sure the customer records Mindspring turned over to Earthlink completely suck. Not to make excuses for the guy who might have been gruff with JonKatz, but in general, I suspect they are trying to make the best of a suspect collection of customer data from Mindspring- and imagine your annoyance if they cancelled your account instead of JonKatz's because the information they have on old Mindspring accounts is in mixed up.
5 hours on hold??
Are you fucking retarded?
My roommate has a sprint cell phone (god am I glad I dumped sprint long ago...) and he recently needed to call customer service for some reason. He was answered by an automated voice recognition system that of course had trouble understanding what he was saying. You're supposed to ask it questions like "I want to change my service" , etc. If it doesn't understand you it asks you to repeat your request. There is no option to push buttons on your phone, you must speak... this is insane!
But here's the kicker... after several failed attempts at understanding you, it asks if you want to speak to a customer service rep for a fee of $3.00!!! You have to pay to talk to customer serice? I guess this is the way sprint works... get a bunch of customers by offering good rate plans etc a few years ago, then when you have enough customers, screw them all because most will just put up with it and still pay.
sudo eat my shorts
I've been trying to cancel Cricket cell phone service for the last two weeks. I mapped out their entire voice menu system, all branches eventually lead to one of two options:
1. Pay a due bill
2. Sign up for new service
No option ever takes you to a real person, and if you stay on the line the voice menu just keeps cycling endlessly. I'm beginning to think the entire company resides on an answering machine in some guy's closet.
Walking into an official Cricket office and asking to have the service cancelled leads nowhere. They say they can't cancel the service from there, you have to call personally. Which leads back to the voice menu dance above. Their website consists of five pages or so (easy to print out and carry around at all times--very handy!), no service related options at all.
I think I will be with Cricket for ever and ever, amen.
before they got out of the ISP business, they started sending me bills for $20/mo. Now I never ordered their service, they just started billing me and had somehow attached the account to my AMEX card. So I changed my amex number, and started trying to get this account cancelled. every mont they'd cancel my account, and send me a bill the next month. this went on for 9 months. finally I discovered that it was my father's account I was being billed for, but he was also being billed and paying his service.
I was very close to hiring a lawyer to deal with them when they announced they were getting out of the ISP business. They sent me a notice that my account was going to be cancelled and I was overjoyed. Eventually they quit billing me, but I kind of miss it. Because, you see whenever they credited my account, the credit would end up om my AMEX card. they were giving me $22/month. I dont know why this happened either, but I just loked at it as payment for the hour on the phone I spent with them every month.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
When my wife and I got married and she moved in she had an AOL account, which she hadn't used anymore, cause I had the house wired and put her on that. She called AOL and ran into the SAME thing, we can piggy back on your cable, you should leave, drink the koolaid. They make it such a big hassle that it isn't worth canceling, almost.
On a wierder note I got a letter from a collections department of Dial-America (some magazine subscription thing), they claimed I had made a commitment for 2 years of Time (a magazine I personally hate, prefer Newsweek) and I hadn't paid. So I called and it turned out that they had made some mistake or someone had done it from an address I didn't live at and a phone I didn't have. So they canceled it, but after that hassle they tried to sell me a magazine subscription. Like I am gonna buy anything from you guys after all that crap. Maybe the article is right, they are hitting up the timid and none native english speakers.
I used their worldwide service for a year or so. I could sign up on-line, using a credit card, and my account became active instantly. Great for when you find yourself in Tokyo with no ISP.
Anyway, I returned home and wanted to cancel my subscription. No problem, I filled out an on-line form, entered my details and password, and the service was terminated when the month I payed for ran out.
That's the sort of service I expect.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Once in, you're in for life.
I'll bet Dollars to Doughnuts that he gets at least one more bill from one or both of them. sort of a going away present.
AOL used to be notorious, and probably still is among people that still listen to AOL sob stories... anyhow, they used to be notorious for billing people's credit cards after they had decided to use their free 50 hours and then cancel. (it's up to 1000 now, or something like that. ridiculous...) To get your free 50 hours, of course, you have to give AOL your credit card number. when your 30 days are up, even if you've cancelled, they would too frequently charge your credit card.
and sometimes continue to do so for months, despite repeat cancellations. i've heard of this happening a lot. fun, huh?
now they're touting the fact that you don't need a credit card to get online any more. wow. i guess now you have to give them access to your checking account for automatic drafts.
*new can opened*
*worms everywhere*
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
I thought he didn't know his password. How do you log in to a service without a password?
While not defending Brian in any way, likely he is required to save the account and has a quota of account cancelations that he must not allow to happen. This seems to be common in the customer service industry. In the telephone service industry it is all too common to require unreasonable demands of the reps in saving sales or making certain qoutas of performance that are driven soley by the consumer. Mr. Katz met, more than likely, a rep who dislikes his position and is paid extremly poorly (AOL has their phone center in Utah, a state known for it's poor pay and a number of telemarketing firms) who is in danger of running afoul of the system at his place of employ. While none of this excuses poor manners on the part of Brian, it may go a way to explaining his attitude.
it is better to light a flame thrower than curse the darkness. -Terry Pratchett Men at Arms
- Go to their primary website and search for advertising or look for an "advertise with us" link.
- Call the toll free number, you will probably not have to wait any time at all.
- Play dumb, "Hello, yes, I was trying to disconnect my service...? The wrong number you say? I'm so sorry, could you please transfer me to the correct people....?"
It works every time.The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
I never thought I'd say this, but Katz has finally written something that I wanted to read and that I enjoyed reading!!
First off, this conversation is so true for almost every tech related company I have ever phoned. I find it disheartening when I call Shaw cable with a problem to be told that my call will be answered in 59 minutes!!!
Finally, what can you do when you suffer such a conversation? I mean, you're dealing with a business that isn't regulated so you can't call a watchdog (or can you?). And as it's a business you'll never be able to speak to anyone that really matters in the company to complain. Sure you can try to complain to someone over the phone, but you're most likely dealing with some bottom of the ladder runt. They're probably as unimportant to the company as you the customer are. I mean in a personal way.
It took me about 5 calls and 3 days to cancel my earthlink acct. Personally, I find it amusing that their "tech" support was 24 hours a day, but their "customer" service was only like 9-5. Further, I found it interesting that two of the tech support people I spoke to couldn't give me the customer support ppl's number. I, too, had to call the general CS number, and be forwarded to their cancellation dept, which apparently had no public number (from what their CSR's would have you believe). I also found it infinitely frustrating that the only people that can cancel your account are the least accessible. I tried emailing all their depts, the online chat thing (which did NOT work for me), and finally, calling every number I could get my hands on.
;)
I don't remember getting any bull about trying to keep me as a customer, but then again, when I'm talking on the phone, I'm like one step removed from pathological liar ("Um, I'm going to Africa for 6 months. . . I'm getting an OC3 installed in my apartment building. . . due to the nature of my employment, I cannot divulge personal information over insecure lines. )
Now that my new apt has a T1 line, I actually *enjoy* telling broadband telemarketer's the truth.
CSR: You do understand that Verison DSL can give you speeds up to 50 times as fast as dial up access, along with great reliability and consolidated billing with your local phone access.
Me: I've got a T1 line in my apt.
CSR: Well, in many areas, DSL service is faster than a Cable modem.
Me: No, I've got a T1. You know how you guys are an ISP, and you provide internet access to other people via your larger network backbone.
CSR: Er, yes...
Me: Well, that's what I've got. I could be you guys and offer customers broadband access from me. You could NEVER offer me access as fast as what I've currently got. *evil cackle*
CSR: Ok, thanks for your time *sniff*
Even if you don't have a T1, even if your still on dialup. I suggest ppl take this route w/ telemarketers. It'll give you an amazing evil/warm fuzzy all over.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
A gruff Brian answered the phone. "Can I help you?" he said, sounding as though his feelings were already hurt and he was spoiling for a fight. Stuck in a cube. Dead end job. Talking to AOL users all day. I'm sure a lot of us would be a little gruff and spoiling for a fight too. Doesn't make his attitude ok, but it's certainly understandable.
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
When I lived in Arizona, I had a friend who worked for AOL. According to the TOS, if you cuss out a support rep 3 times, you're in violation of the TOS and will be terminated. Apparently the way some people cancel is by sending three e-mails to tech support, all full of profanities.
:)
I tried it, and sure enough, it works. Just don't expect to be able to use the same credit card to sign up for AOL again... But then again, why would you want to?
I was having serious problems with my CPU booting wrong (a P2-266 booting as a P1-266 and a P2-133 alternately according to the BIOS), and the rep not only fixed the problem fairly quickly, he also was friendly and cheerful enough that it wasn't in the least painful. He even gave me his personal e-mail address for if I had any further problems.
btw, this was Dell.
... that Katz was trying to expense out two accounts that, by his own admission, he just "never got around to disconnecting?"
Once I got my own apartment after college, I piggybacked on my parent's AOL account for a while. Back then AOL had a long distance phone deal of 8 cents/minute, not bad for the time. So I signed up with a credit card. Use it for about a year, then got a better deal with someone else. Called AOL Phone service, asked to be disconnected, they said ok. Get billed again next month from new company AND AOL. Call up and ask to be canceled, they say ok again. Next month, the same thing. I call the credit card company and dispute the past 3 months, I do the paper work yada yada. They told me that "Yeah, AOL is really bad on this. We get a lot of calls about them." For 3 more months AOL keeps charging me, and I get the charges reversed through the cc company. Then, I got three more months of charges, but the cc company automatically reversed the charges. It was on my monthly bill! A month passes, and then I get a bill due notice from AOL I somehow still owe them $40 bucks. I call them, they give me some bs about processing fees and inter-LATA fees, so I told them to fuck themselves. Somehow next month my long distance and inter-LATA service was totally dropped. Hmmmm?
Bastards.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Flex.com (HI) has the best policy. #1 No call center. #2 If you don't know what your doing, go somewhere else. #3 You are billed monthly by automated e-mail, and you manually pay by web page and card monthly. #4 Don't pay three months, and your account is automatically canceled. (THIS IS THE POSTED PROCEDURE!) I had to switch off because they dropped Broadwing dialup service for someone that doesn't server the backwater where I live (Worldcom, Williams, and Brooks Fiber all have major offices here, so it must be a backwater.) Anyway, all I have to do is ignore three e-mails.
cabg x3 is a life changing event...
I got suckered into a free trial with AOL, and was getting billed for a couple for a couple of months. Afterward I was on the phone for close to 2 hrs before I could cancel it. It took threats to email 'Steve@aol.com' before they gave in. I had an easy time disconnecting from AT&T wireless, just one email.
This also works for cell phones. Last year I called VoiceStream to cancel my cell phone service. The VoiceStream rep insisted on letting me "test" the service for another 2 months... free of charge! After my 2 free months I called back and canceled.
Notify your CC that you cancelled the service & to not accept the charges before this can happen. Problem solved.
Why, your ineptitude is becoming legendary.
Yes, we understand these tags always apply: fud, dupe, typo, slashdotted, topic name
I had Earthlink for 3 months when I was doing an internship. Went to their website, found that special number to call to cancel the service. Was on hold for maybe 10 min and I was off the service in a jiffy. This was 1 yr ago.
Then again, I am a foreigner. I know that customer service reps might have a problem understanding my accent. So I take extra steps to ensure that I following the correct procedure and communicate clearly.
The info is all out there. You should try searching and reading.
You spent a good deal of time looking for the cancellation line for America Online. You spent a fair amount of words saying how exasperating it was. Could you have spared a couple seconds to cut-past the page that offers an 888 number for cancellation of membership as a full blown 888-555-1234. I mean link to that page or anything other than a 1 in 9960000 chance of just stumbling on it. flameoff
John Katz's experience reminds me of being in Las Vegas. The casinos are easy as pie to get into but once inside the exits are hard to find. Some of the casino's have nice speedy moving walkways that whisk you right in with ones leading out that always "happen" to be broken.
His experience also calls to mind a recent trip to Best Buy to buy a PS2. The sales folks were downright agressive. First, the floor sales guy tried to convince me that I the Sony DVD remote was required to play DVDs on the PS2, which I understand to be a downright lie. He also agressively tried to sell expensive games. Then, when I was at the register, checking out, the cashier pushily tried to get me to buy one of those "extended service contracts". He wouldn't give up, asking me multiple times and telling me horror stories about friends spending 100's of dollars getting their PS2s fixed. Then, he too demanded a reason why I wouldn't purchase the contract. I told him "because I think it's a bad deal", but we really shouldn't have to justify ourselves in this manner.
Obviously these companies are training their employees to be so agressive.
The annoying thing about the Best Buy experience is that, in contrast to quiting a ISP, I was in the process of spending money. I was already a paying customer. Best Buy (via their trained "sales associates") was simply trying to squeeze a little more moolah out of me.
What these companies need to understand is that the kind of hyper-agressive salesmanship may get them marginal short-term increases in profits due to increased sales but is going to cost them when people like me get annoyed and stop shopping there.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Katz -- disconnecting?
Drat! You put my hopes up...
This page accidentally left blank
I cancelled an account on a really shitty freelance services (read: website for you to lose business to foreign companies who undercut your price with undermined abilities) asp. It took me three months to figure out how to cancel; there was of course no option to do it online.
When I finally got the guy (via an email to an email from an online email form), I said that I'd already cancelled three months ago and they kept billing me. A lie? Certainly -- but since I hadn't ever used their service and they wouldn't let me leave, they were technically stealing from me. And my mother taught me that theft is worse than falsehood.
They did give me back my $75. Which is more than I can say for my bank (lets call them "El Banquo del Llaves"), which when I quit charge me $290 in overdraft fees because they never turned off my "online bill payment" system. I told the man who called to collect the cash that this was absurd...I had cancelled all the stuff before I cut up my bankbook, just to be sure. "Oh no," he said, "our records show you only cancelled the payees...not the payments. This was all explained in the user agreement you clicked 'yes' too and so you do have to pay the fees. Sucks to be you!" (this last sentance I added for embellishment, because I cannot properly describe his condescending "Read the EULA, idiot" tone. Wait, yes I can. Go to your Pat Burns sysadmin and ask him how to create a shortcut).
Right. Clicked yes. I read all about the legal difference between payees and payments and databases without referential integrity and then consciously made the decision to cancel one and not the other. Sheesh. It's a good thing I'm a highly paid tech worker making the market wage for my skillset(snicker).
Hey freaks: now you're ju
... He was too busy cancelling AOL. BTW, just read through the 3+ comments, and NOBODY made a comment about Jon using AOL.
/. getting weak.
Geez, talk about
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Conspiracy to commit extortion & credit card fraud? Two or more individuals (corporations) conspiring to damage your finances?
fucking-hoo.
Try canceling with Versign.
(goodluck)
Someone mentioned in his/her comment that AOL cancellation reps are paid a bonus every time they convince you not to cancel.
For those who hate AOL and have an account, call up the cancellation number provided elsewhere in the comments every week or so, and let the rep that you talk to convince you to stay on. AOL will experience a jump in bonus payouts, while the support reps get more money, which just might make them less surly.
Sounds like a win-win to me.
I work at a small-ish ISP in Northern California. I handle general dialup support, as well as broadband (DSL, wireless). To be fair, we don't have the phone maze that AOL/Earthlink/etc. have, but the main reason why disconnects are made difficult is because we need to make sure that the person who is calling is who they say they are. That way, it won't come back to bite us later, when the account holder calls asking why his account was terminated. It's not about squeezing out an extra month of service from the customer. It's just a CYA move.
Not a day goes by where I don't think we're selling some sort of crack to people. "WHERE IS MY E-MAIL?!?! I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT MY E-MAIL!!!!" People get rather pissy when they can't connect, even when the cause is something between the keyboard and the chair....then multiply that fine attitude by a thousand or so when they find out their account was terminated (for whatever reason).
just my 2 yen.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
I've had the same experience, so I log on to the account section and change my credit card information to something bogus (an old closed account). Then you have the pleasure of them calling you! Since your not cut off from access you can even do it with them via e-mail when they dun you.
I'll need a new method with cablemodem...
Had many of the same issues when I wanted to cancel AOL - first tried online to a CS representitive and they told me they could not do that.
Figured out that it was either a very bored human or, a bot of some sort that responded to me because I kept them locked in to a circular conversation for many turns "Why can't I cancel here when I joined here?" That doesn't make sense, what additional security it required to cancel an account? Can I speak with a supervisor then? Over and over again...
Finally called the 800 number and had to give a reason why I wanted to cancel - they would not proceed without it (finally told them I didn't like the colors their screens have). Got canceled and was told all I had to do to re-join was log in again. Said I wanted this option removed. Told that could not be done. Again, asked for a supervisor, told none was available. Grrrrr.
Wrote the BBB. Some months later recieved a letter from the BBB and a copy of the form letter they sent AOL. Some weeks later rec'd letter from BBB with copy of a form letter AOL sent them telling them they have investigated and resolved the issue (without ever having talked to me!). Sent response back to BBB saying it was not resolved. Couple months later BBB sends me a letter telling me they have resolved the issue satisfactorily. At this point, I did not bother to respond as I viewed it as a waste of my time. I know I should have but why waste the energy?
Should never have had AOL in the first place but so many people I supported used it that I felt I had to use it to help them. Now I just tell them call AOL support or cancel and get a real ISP and then I will help them.
I simply refuse to do anything with AOL beyond take their free CD's and throw them away.
I had a very similar experience trying to cancel AOL. When I moved into my apartment last year, I signed up for a free month of service while I was moving in. I figured I could easily cancel at the end of the month. To my surprise, when I called to cancel, I spent an hour on the phone arguing with the account retention people. They literally would not LET me cancel my account. The conversation just kept going in circles.
Me: I want to cancel my account.
AOL: Gave me a million reasons why AOL is better than any service in the world.
Me: I'm not interested, please close my account
AOL: We need to know why
Me: I don't need the service/I'm not interested/Etc.
AOL: Would rebut every reason and then give me free months of service. Ok sir, thank and have a nice day (as if I had agreed to stay with AOL)
Me: I'm not interested, please close my account. Am I not allowed to cancel my account?
This went on until I got so pissed I yelled at her and requested to speak with her supervisor. Finally, she gave in and closed the damn thing. So, if anyone has this experience in the future, take a lesson and start off by requesting the supervisor right from the start.
It was absolutely the most frustrating phone conversation I've had in a long time.
http://www.askthevoid.com
Telocity (Now DirectTV DSL) sends me an email telling me our carrier Ricochet is going out of business and they will no longer be able to provide service. In the email they gave a list of exactly what would happen (no more billing, broadband would stop early sept, free dialup access for 1 month, a package would arrive for the DSL modem in October, our account would be closed automagically). There was a phone number to call for questions. I called and confirmed the information in the email. This was mid August last year.
Two weeks later a bill a telocity charge appears on my credit card. I call em up, they credit the card and "fix" the problem. A month later, another charge appears. I call them up again, they tell me, oh a judge ordered Ricochet to stay open during bankrupcy proceedings so we didn't close your account. Aren't you happy? I explain that I switched ISPs two months ago after receiving their notice. They say, oh sorry, and fix the problem. I check my telocity email and verify they never sent me any notice contradicting the original cancellation notice.
They stop billing my credit card. But I'm curious to see how whacked out these people are so I keep checking my telocity email account to see when they actually terminate the account. It happens sometime in December. In January, they send the prepaid package for the dsl modem (they were supposed to do this in October). A week later a notice arrives saying if you don't send back the modem immediately we will charge your credit card $400. The total Account Closing process took about 6 months.
Awesome story. This is one that I will definitely pass on to others. I find it interesting that they asked you for your password though. Customer Support Law dictates that a CS rep "will never ask you for your password".
Man! Can I relate to that!
When I first became aquainted with the internet, I gave AOL a shot with their trial membership. Now you know why they call it a "trial" membership, because they always give you the third degree when you want out. As I was saying, I was put on "trial" by AOL, and I gave them my credit card number. After the "free trial", I decided that AOL was as bad as I had heard. So, I decided to cancel their service. I looked everywhere for an email address, a phone number, SOMETHING! Upon finding nothing specific, I sent a notice of cancellation to every email address relating to AOL, in the hopes that someone would pass it along the chain of command, assuming that they actually had one. Silly me! After a couple of months of waiting for a reply by letter or email, and seeing my credit card statements showing that I was still being charged for the service, it became clear that I was still on "trial" with AOL. There would be no aquittal forthcoming. I was condemmed to AOL HELL for eternity! Then my savior, American Express, came to me. I told them my situation, and they told me that it was a very common problem. Then they shut off the cash flow to AOL on my behalf. It's amazing how quickly an ISP like AOL will respond to you when you "cut them off". Within a week, AOL emailed me and sent me a letter, letting me know how important I was to them, and how much better they were than the other guy, and "We're sorry. We want you back. Will you give us another try? We'll be good. Honest!". I said, "Let me think about it.....ummmm....NO!" Then the gates of heaven opened, I saw a rainbow, and I said to myself, "I'm free! By American Express, Im free at last!" Then an accountant from American Express tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Well, technically...that's not exactly correct." Then he showed me the balance on my monthly statement. Oh well. You lose some and you lose some.
But, seriously, the credit card companies will cut your ISP off if they don't respond to your efforts.
How can you be sure that this is the end of the story? I cancelled my AT&T @Home cable service in the middle of February when I got DSL installed. I used their online customer chat service to cancel the service. They said that I still had to return the cable modem before the billing would stop. I didn't argue. I returned the modem in person to the drop off center 2 days later and got a return receipt.
The next month I notice that AT&T was still charging me for service. When I called them they claimed that I never returned the equipment. When I mentioned that I had the return receipt, they said that I should just fax it to them and they would send me a refund check.
In the end I ended up paying for an extra 2 months of service, then waiting 2 weeks to get a refund check.
The moral of the story is that you shouldn't assume that they've really cancelled your service until you don't see any more charges on your credit card. You should be proactive about it and let your credit card company know that they should refuse charges from the ISP. Have the ISP send you a paper bill for any remaining charges at the time that you cancel your service.
Try using a card where you can generate a one-time number for each vendor. I use Discover Card for each of my recurring bills and on line purchases. Each vendor gets a different number to bill, all tied to a single card. That way you don't need to cancel the card, just the number.
:-)
BTW, I cancelled AOL in 1995 with just an email when I got a real ISP. Of course they were still after their first million customers
Payback's a bitch!
I'm really just mad I read the whole damn thing before I realized it was Katz...
Patience is a virtue, but I don't have the time - TH
I believe you there is a HOW-TO on how to cancel your AOL account at http://www.aolsu cks.org
<p>Gotta love those sucks websites. I always see if there is a sucks website for anything I am having problems with.</p>
My friends, it is so simple. As these ISP's love to get your credit card and "auto-bill" you... Just use that truth to your advantage.
Simple call up your credit card and say it has been lost. And that you'd like a new card rushed right out so you can keep spending money on it.
You'll have a new number, and some of the companies will even overnight you the card.
They want to put the charges on the card so be it!
Either long-distance or SprintPCS, it can take over 6 months to cancel your service.
The long distance is the worst though -- we switched to Working Assets many moons ago (they give you free Ben and Jerry's coupons every month), and we still recieve a bill from Sprint monthly. It's usually for a nickel, or for 50 cents, or some paltry amount that they would most likely be losing money on collecting anyway, even if it weren't for the fact that we'll never pay them another cent.
Usually a brusque "I don't want to get into why I'm cancelling, just cancel me" will work. Sometimes you'll have to say it twice, but it's best to get it out of the way early on in the conversation.
I unsubscribed from AOL, hmm, online, I think... no trouble at all... they asked for a reason, and I said, just bought a cable modem, your service was good but it's no use to me any more.
I was therefore rather irritated to received (a few months later) a nicely crafted letter apologising for 'their mistakes' and offering me a reduced price subscription for coming back. Obviously utter nonsense...
However, there is a happy ending! I called their free customer support number and said, I just got this mail from you, I'm not interested, could you take me off your mailing list, please? And they did.
They were even nice about it...
I guess it just depends on luck, really - and whether the person you end up talking to has had a bad day...
The telemarketing company she worked for had been contracted by a credit card company ( Citibank I think but I'm not sure ) to take calls from people requesting that their credit protection insurance be cancelled. This is the insurance that will pay your monthly minimum balance for a period of time should you get fired or layed off, but not if you quit your job. The credit card companies charge a fee that is often more than the principle payed on your minimum monthly balance to your card so you do not see a big difference on your monthly bill, yet the balance increases even though you've been paying your minimum and not charging anything.
According to her most people who called had been shnookered into signing up by a fast talker when they signed up for the card and didn't even know they'd signed up for the insurance until they examined the bill closely-often years after being signed up.
The telemarkers that take the calls have minimum quotas ( make this or get fired or lose hours ) and incentives ( state lottery tickets and cheesy prizes ) to make 'saves'. A 'save' is a customer they've convinced or confused into keeping the insurance. Often this is done by saying to a customer that's been on the phone a long time and is tired some statements like that 'they would be happy to cancel the service if that is what you want' to get the customer saying yes and then 'We are glad to be of help in answering your questions and would be pleased to confirm that you have chosen to keep this service' the cusomer says 'yup' and then *CLICK* a few seconds later the customer sometimes realizes that they have to call the number again because they've been schnookered or they discover on their next bill that they are still signed up if they bother to look.
Being pissed off at a telemarketer and acting rudely is a good way to get them to say yes to everything you say yet keep you signed up. They can just claim that they hit the wrong key, and the job isn't worth much to them anyway. The telemarketing company doesn't have an interest in keeping this to a minimum as long as they have a scapegoat employee to 'discipline' if anything serious happens, and telemarketers know they can earn $6.50 - $7.00 / hr anywhere. About a third come in to work stoned and most are teenagers.
I'm sure AOL and Earthlink either contract this out or pay their own minions to do this. And since these kinds of tactics keep people signed up.
Eat at Joe's.
Within a few days, that link will mysteriously disappear, or the number will be moved to another location on their site.
My roommate attempted to cancel his cable connection (TV, not internet)last summer. For three weeks he got a busy signal. When he finally got through, he hold them that he'd been trying to cancel for weeks and was not going to pay for an additional month. After a little arm twisting they agreed, credited his account and stopped billing him. But for some reason they can't figure out how to shut off the service. He tried telling them about it several times, but gave up in the end. So for the past 10 months he's been getting free cable :) Talk about being inept.
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Jon Katz is/was an AOLer!
It now all makes sense.
My Dad just recently got DSL [much to my Mom's delight], and wanted to cancel his AOL account that he's had for about 7 years. He cancels his account, and was told that effective May 1st that the account would no longer be active. After the first, I don't know why my Dad did this, but he tried to log on again to AOL. Much to his suprise, he was able to log in. He called AOL, and wanted to know why his account was still active since it was supposed to be terminated on the first. The rep told him that they keep the account active for up to 6 months, in case the user "wants" to come back.....has anyone else ever heard of this? Or is AOL pulling my Dad's leg?
You are not root, go away.
This is back in the day of CompuServe and AOL having hold times measured in hours and days. In January 1995, I setup a CompuServe account using the free X number of hours, gave them info for my checking account to direct debit, etc. After the first logon, they would change the password and snail mail it to you. I never got it and never was able to sign on again.
I spent more than one day on hold ALL-DAY-LONG from the time they opened in the morning until they disconnected calls saying call back in the morning. Because these accounts required you to confirm the checking account information before billing you (again by snail mail), I thought, hey, no problem. They still direct debited my account for 6 months.
What did I do? I put a stop payment on, which cost me money, and then set up a new checking account. Basically, they fraudulently billed me for 7 months, cost me an extra $20 or so. And cost me lots of lost time and productivity.
Then I got snail mail asking me to call the 800 number I couldn't get a live body on to make payment arrangements. What a joke.
It still was easier to deal with unfortunately then suing them in small claims court.
The sad part of all these stories of bad customer service is that the average is much better today than 7 years ago.
If you did not get a cancelation reference number then you are not really disconnected.
I should know, I was a SOD (Supervisor On Duty) at Compuserve in the UK for sometime.
features.slashdot.org?
Is this something I missed?
When asked why you are cancelling, don't tell them the truth, lie.
AOL REP: And why do you want to cancel your account?
ME: I've converted my religion and am no longer allowed to use computers.
AOL REP: That doesn't sound legitimate.
ME: Are you questioning my faith, because if you are, that would be discrimination. My church has lawyers to deal with this kind of thing.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
ha, i'm in danger of getting my account cancelled for me, why? well its not cos i send spam, porn, or launch DOS attacks from my accounts its because BTinternets anytime 24/7/365 service now only allows you on for 12 hours a day, yes they changed the contract, dont you wish you lived where i do, no broadband, (which is now cheaper than my 65K isdn) and local calls arnt free. somtimes i do envy the US
Burt "Out of my mind back in 5 minutes"
My parent's signed up for AOL dialup a few years back (when AOL sent out floppies instead of CDs).
The AOL sign up program dialed a 1-800 number that signed them up and set up a local dial-up number for them to use. Well they never were able to use AOL _once_. Every time that they called the local dial-up it was busy. After a week of this, they decided to cancel.
They called AOL customer service who told them that they had to cancel their service online. Customer service wouldn't budge when my parents told them that they couldn't get online to cancel. My parents called several times, and every time were told that they couldn't cancel by any means other than getting on-line.... And they were never able to get online.
Finally, after trying to cancel their service for three days I had to call for them and literally yell at the AOL person and threaten to place a fraud complaint with their credit card company, and that finally got them canceled.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
You don't use Dvorak much, do you?
I had the same problem when I tried to cancel my cell phone. We have a service here called Cricket which provides local cell phone service and isn't available everywhere. I am moving out of the Cricket area in a month, and wanted my phone shut off. Took me an hour and 15 minutes and switches to many different departments (including getting a person who said "there's no one available in our disconnect department right now" during business hours. They can be sure I won't sign on with them again.
gabriel
"I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." -Isaac Asimov
On August 7, 2001 I moved from my apartment to a new place and new service provider. During this time, my previous provider (CapuNet) had been closing off their residental service and sending its customer base to Earthlink. I had called in late July 2001 and received a cancellation number from CapuNet technical support that my line would be shut down on August 7, 2001 and billing would stop.
On September 13, 2001 I receved a credit card statement from WWW*EARTHLINK.NET posted to my card (that I never directly provided to Earthlink) for $62.27 from 8/29/01. Despite numerous calls every month to contest the charges and assurances from Earthlink billing department that my account had been disabled (every time!) these charges continued until December 11, 2001!
You can read the full story here: Earthlink Billing Practices.
Rob Carlson
This is exactly why (and all you e-commerce/online business companies take note) I refuse to sign up for anything that requires automatic rebilling. Sure it means I miss out on some services, but if we all said "no" then they'd be forced to offer a more reasonable way. I'm only now getting into EverQuest - because they're now offering a prepaid account card that I can buy in the store.
Even before I started hearing the horror stories, I thought that giving somebody permission to keep billing my card was a Really Bad Idea(tm).
What were all you thinking?
It took me about 3 tries to cancel Earthlink. I went through the phone maze about like you described, although I managed to find customer service fairly directly and they were the right people to terminate the account. They did not argue with me and told me that the account was cancelled. The next month, I saw another charge on my bill. I called back and they had no record of my first attempt at cancellation. They entered my cancellation again. Next month, same story. It is finally really cancelled after the third phone call, in which they saw my account "noted" that I wanted to cancel, but it had not been entered into the billing system. I guess they won, since I am unwilling to call again and harangue to try to get some charges reversed on my credit card. I do want to say that I was generally happy with Earthlink which I used as a dial backup to my normally cable-modem-connected linux router for the house. Lets just say that the dotbomb downsizing strongly encouraged me to take severe economy measures like shutting off backup network access services and even shutting down my cluster when I was not actually using it ( $100 per month in electric power for a 4 node cluster ! )
Zoot
enough is too much
In mid-1999 I changed job, from research science to an ISP. I got free, unlimited dial-up as part of my contract. Then in mid-February 2001 I was laid off. Some comments were made about falling revenues and low currencies...
Shortly after this I moved overseas for a while (12 months so far) for a taste of the world. While I got 12 months free access as part of redundancy, dial-up access isn't so much use if it's with a regional ISP (Australia+NZ) located on the other side of the planet (I'm in England).
But I do have contacts on the inside, and my bosses are very reluctant to lose customers. After talking via email to people in Human Resources I got switched to Marketing's weirdest account type, the "Anytime". Quite why we (programming department) let this one slip past is anyone's guess, but what they want, they get. If it's possible and legal.
Get this: nothing a month, nasty expensive connect time of NZ$2.95/hour (IIRC), but it comes with the free 5 email addresses and 10Mb web space. No cost, no need to change my email or web addresses (always a big hassle) and no downside . I mean - it's not like I want international call charges and and connect charges just for 56k - which almost certainly won't happen with some of the line quality and delay issues I've had on some voice calls.....
... and today's pet project has
"But you let people sign up online, verifying or not verifying?"
:-)
"That's different," he said. It sure is. Cash flows in rather than out.
It's not different. Porn sites do it all the time!
About 9 months ago I subscribed to Time, for the first time ever. The first thing I ever got from them, a good two weeks before I got my first issue, was a letter warning me that my subscription was about to run out and I should resubscribe.
Two months after cancelling an AOL Trial account I had for 3 days, citing a desire for broadband as my reason, I got a call from their broadband department. After the usual sales drivel, it went something like this:
Me: I'm not interested, I already have DSL.
Them: I see. Do you have it through BellSouth?
Me: No.
(pause)
Them: hmm... Perhaps you mean you have cable. Do you have service with RoadRunner or Comcast?
Me: No.
(pause)
Them: well, I'm looking at information for your zipcode, and if you don't have service with BellSouth, RoadRunner, or Comcast, you don't have broadband.
Me: Yes, I do.
Them: No, you don't.
Me: Yes, I do.
Them: No, you don't.
Me: Yes, I have service with--
Them: He's making it up. *click*
Yes, AOL hung up on ME this time.
Anyway, I did have DSL service with a local ISP. They may resell BellSouth's service, but they're not BellSouth. I've been with these guys since 9600bps dialup and they've always been great.
.. as an interim Internet connection -- while I was waiting for Cable broadband to be available in my area -- I signed up for Compu$erve 2000. About 6 months after having service, I called to cancel.. after about 30 minutes of waiting on hold, I reached a rep for C$2K
I received the same "Why are you cancelling service?" question.. gave the same answer about getting Cable broadband, and he went off on a rant of how I could keep my C$2K service and still have cable..
No dice.. i was determined to cancel that day.. until he told me that they would gladly extend my service for free for 3 months so i could make sure everyone had my new e-mail address, etc.. after which point it would be cancelled that day..
Wow! Great! 3 free months and I don't have to call back!
Wrong-o.. After those 3 months, I got billed again, full price, for the service. I called to complain.. the only response that I received from the rep was.. "Well, they shouldn't have told you that.. we can only cancel on the day that you call.."
So, after waiting 10 minutes on hold to be transferred to a supervisor, who almost immediately hung up on me, I had to call back..
The rep that I spoke to was exceedingly rude and was no help. This rep wouldn't even transfer me to a supervisor, all but saying that it's my fault for listening to the rep (who should know the policies better then me) and that I would have to eat the cost...
Well, after I got off of the phone with him, I wrote an e-mail and snail mail to the president's office. I got a refund..
But still, all in all, that is about 3 hours of my life that I am never getting back..
About a year ago I tried to help family members of mine get off AOL and have just one ISP.
They had always had their telco's ISP, which is good service, and the kid had got them to add AOL ontop of that. Which was costing them more than double the ISP's unlimited access plan by itself. So eventually they wanted to cut expenses.
I was in the room as moral support for the paterfamilias when he tried to drop AOL.
Yes, you have to be transferred to a phonebank that seems forever delayed taking your call (by contrast I could cancel my dsl, my isp, and even my teleco service altogether online in my telco's support webstite without any harrassment from them)No such online service existed with AOL 12 months ago.
Once talking to the cancellations people, they came up with delaying tactics that embarrassed me , a longtime salesman. In the middle of demanding a reason for cancellation , they started asking if the kid was in the room so they could tell him all the things that he would miss out on, that supposedly only they had. (lies mostly) The father insisted that they deal with him. They kept trying to interrupt the process with lists of crap that made AOL so great etc. When they finally wore through the guy's patience they pulled out this: OK how about we make junior a chatroom staffer? He'll earn discounts! (mind you junior is eleven at the time which believe me they know) The dad rejects this and angrily tries to get them back on the subject.
Here's what they did: the guy says OK I am going to put you down as wanting to cancel, but I'm going to not bill you this month and give you (i can't remember what it was like - maybe 250 hours free). What could he do?
He just wanted to stop the bills and not seem like an ogre to the kid. I on the other hand, wanted them off of AOL because of the security risk it poses (AOL tunnels everything over a single port so firewalling out AOL-borne attacks is impossible) because AOL was turning my nieces and nephews into miniature consumer-zombies who knew nothing about the internet and thought all good things were invented by AOL, and because AOL is a fucking evil corrupting presence on the internet which imperils the free access and exchange of information with their ever encroaching walled-garden and proprietary protocols and formats. I had to stand there mute though while my brother in law wrestled with the beast. The Beast won that battle and probably never feared defeat. My bother in law didn't know what hit him.
Bottomline they wouldn't cancel his subscription as he requested but wore him down, not by saying "we won't do it" but by stubbornly not doing what he asked them to do, making him wait forever to speak the right department, trying to set child against parent, trying to make him seem unreasonable as a customer, and trying to make him seem tyrannical as a father, and making superficial gestures to seem as though he was really finally getting what he wanted which was simply to stop hemorraghing money to AOL. If they could stall him and keep him on the phone for half an hour hitting him with all kinds of challenges and assaulting his authority as the parent, they knew if he was a normal householder/consumer he wouldn't want to go through it all again in just 30 or 60 days when the bills resumed. Which is exactly how it turned out - the family were on AOL for months after that from sheer inertia - til they got Sircam. Shortly after cleaning that up they got broadband and AOL went byebye popping up windows to vote for N'Stynk and the britney fanclub as it spiralled all the way down to Hell.
Don't bother calling them. Just send them a registered letter 30 days before about the cancelation. And then cancel your credit card and get a new one.
I recommend a $500 credit card limit "sacrificial" card. It gets good amount of activity from electronic transactions (from tatteredcover, etc.) and about once every six months you loose it. It is amazing how the card just disappears... I mean my sacrifical card just spontaneously combusts in the drawer where I keep it... Oh well, with just a simple call I get a replacment; one with a new number. Then I call up the services I still have that monthly bill (NY Times, etc.) and tell them about the new card number. In this manner I've been lucky enough not to have my credit card used for purchases that I don't approve. I've been amazed at the calls I get within the next 30 days after canceling... A friend of mine has had his card for 3-4 years, he didn't want to "loose" it since he had memorized the number and didn't want to have to re-learn it; problem is, every vendor (and any cracker that has broken in to the vendors) knows the number too... luckly he has alot of time to sort out all of the invalid billings on his card. I don't have that kind of time, memorizing a new credit card number every few months is a bit easier... I think.
When I signed up for a Verizon phone at Radio Shack, I noticed a blank at the bottom of the form in the sentence describing the early termination fee. I can't stand to see a blank on a form ( especially such an important blank ) so I strongly suggested to the sales clerk that we fill in that blank with $5.00. I think five bucks is a reasonable amount to pay for them to turn of my service.
Sure enough, about 3 months before the end of the year's service obligation, my son lost the phone and we decided to cancel since it was costing him too much anyway (read he used it too freely) and the insurance on the phone had a significant deductable.
I took my copy of the original contract to the local Verizon store ( the telephone customer service people said they could not read the form over the phone, imagine that! ) and they verified that the $5.00 was in the spot where I said it was, and that it was the original MCR form, not me writing it in with a pen on my copy only. Verizon honored the contract and did in fact charge me only $5 to cancel although on my final bill this showed up as a combination of the normal termination fee plus a customer service credit cancelling all but $5.00 of the fee.
Zoot
enough is too much
don't have cable yet still on dialup but my local isp is quite friendly and all that jazz. never have any rpoblems with them and the office where I pay my bill in cash is only ten miles away. if you live in hampton roads, va and have tired of gargantuan ISPs that might I suggest Pinnacle. I'm just a satisfied customer.
-
This is an example of why I refuse to use credit cards for periodic billing. Sure it's easy to just have them credit your card. But what happens when you want them to stop? THEN you get the real service. Called 'shafting the customer'
:).
No thanks, send me a *paper* bill, and I'll send you a *check*. It's a bit more to fool with, but hey, YOU keep the power.
If AOL was sending me bills and I was sending them a check then if you couldn't cancel (or get that BS about 'why are you cancelling?' (That's priceless!) then I would stop payment. I'd send them 1 check for last month's payment, with a note saying "After this, I will send no more checks. I do not want anymore service." I had an old dial-up ISP that I was using, and dropped after our local cable service brought out cable. They kept sending me bills, after I wrote and said I want my service disconnected. After 3 months of no payment, they called. I told them nicely that I wrote to them, 3 months ago, that I wanted my service terminated. "Well we didn't get the message, and you owe us 3 months worth of service." Well a year later, I finally stopped getting bills from them. They never got their 3 months back usage
Nothing works faster than money, folks!
One reason why these companies are getting too much power. Cause we're letting them walk over us.
Shaddock Delaforge
shado719@icqmail.com
...can be found via a basic google search. (It's not like there aren't any other companies who want your business, Jon.)
They are:
Regular Accounts (only)
1-800-890-6353
DSL
1-888-829-8499
Web Hosting & Business
1-888-237-0148
My "karma's" wedged at 50, so no I'm not whoring.
I once signed up for Earthlink's DSL. They said that I was in an eligble area, and took my credit card number, etc.
2 weeks later, a Covad guy came out, and said that because of some hills and creeks, I was actually too far away, and couldn't get the service. Earthlink sent me an e-mail the next day saying that my service had been cancelled. There was an offer for dial-up service, which I declined. My business with them was done.
6 months later there was a $50 bill from Earthlink on my credit card statement! I called them up, and after holding, I reached a human. Of course, I didn't have my username and password. They didn't have my name. I gave them my credit card number, and that showed up on the rep's screen. But he said the number wasn't associated with an account!
He sent a $50 credit to my credit card number, which solved the money problem. Of course, I wanted to know why they still had my number. I asked them to delete the number from their records. He said he couldn't do that, because he could only cancel accounts, and I didn't have an account! What the hell?
Luckily I was changing banks that month, and dumping that credit card. So if they still have that number, it's no longer valid.
Two hours? HOURS? Try days or weeks. I had one ISP a few years ago send me to a collections agency when I cancelled my credit card in desperate response to nine months of unauthorized charges. (They lost my check and asked for a credit card number to hold and use in case the second check didn't arrive. They found the first check, cashed it, cashed the second check, then billed my credit card periodically for nine months...)
.au sites, causing me to become disoriented and vomit. Now my CueCat's all plugged up.
...and the number one reason you should disconnect my SDSL line:
My experience cancelling service with Speakeasy was much easier, but still not easy. I was particularly infuriated with the notion that I had to justify why I was cancelling, or they wouldn't stop billing me. (Notice the terminology: they consider it a "cancellation request" while I consider it a "cancellation order" -- just whose wallet is it?)
So for your amusement, I present the letter I sent to them (I don't have a place to host the original PDF):
----------begin----------
Speakeasy Networks
2222 Second Ave
Seattle, WA 98121
attn: Billing (xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) [hardcopy sent by registered mail]
8 February 2002
ref: Incident xxxxxx-xxxxxx, Incident xxxxxx-xxxxxx
Dear Speakeasy Minions:
After filing two cancellation orders and following up with three messages, you're evidently refusing to disconnect SDSL service to my house unless I provide you with some sort of explanation for canceling the service. The simple answer is "because I don't want it anymore." But apparently that's not good enough for you to act. So, here's...
The Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Disconnect My SDSL
10. Every time you reboot the Redback, locusts shoot out of the unused ports on my router and the activity lights bleed.
9. I think you're a front for Al-Queda opium e-distribution networks, and President Dubba says that breaking my addictifications is a patriotic act against the Axle of Evil.
8. I got busted by the Amish Gelassenheit Squad, and they smashed the server running www.bonnetandbuggiewhip.com I'd hidden inside the butter churn.
7. The firewall melted when I tested it with a torch. What kind of crappy firewall is that?
6. SDSL uses an expensive dedicated line; unnecessary expense = pork; pork = unclean.
5. I'm going to work for a secret government agency and won't be home for a while.
4. With access to all that pr0n, I got masturbatory abrasion injuries and carpal tunnel syndrome, so what's the use of a fast line when I can only type with two splinted fingers?
3. The big round Speakeasy logo swirls the other way when I visit
2. Using an 802.11 card, a Shannon Compensator, a homemade yagi, and a 60,000-watt amplifier, I'm getting Terabit service from a place on 2nd & Pine, right through your skulls.
1. I'm the customer, and I told you to.
Please note that an unwillingness or procedural inability to act on your part does not compel me to purchase or pay for unwanted service from you. I gave reasonable advance notice about wanting the line disconnected, and provided an additional cancellation notice (two, actually) through your support system on the day you requested I do so. At that time you did not notify me that you would want some sort of justification, verbal defense, heartfelt apology, explanatory Dear-John letter, or separation therapy sessions before you would act on my cancellation order. My notice of cancellation was sent before the paid-up period ended on 2002.02.02, so your delay in processing the cancellation only increases your non-recoverable costs from Covad. I'm done using the line, I'm done paying, and I'm done talking about it.
Just turn it off.
Sincerely,
Jon Espenschied
(if you wish to email me, please use my new address: xxxoffensivexxx@xxxdomainxxx.com)
----------end----------
Yah, that did the trick.
-Jon
firstname.lastname - acm.org
I think not...(*poof*)
Sometimes the best way to get attention is a nicely worded written letter. Attaching it to the severed head of a dead goat will help get thier attention. Lacking a goat, attaching it to a brick and flinging it through a window works too.
My real account keeps getting labeled as a troll...
I have an old ISP account (since 1995) that was from a small regional ISP that traded hands a few times until it ended up part of Global Crossing. GC probably has no idea why they're billing me (on paper, even) $22/month.
I hate getting monthly bills for this, so I just sent them a year's payment and get a happy statement every month showing my credit going down bit by bit. I'm totally happy with this arrangement.
About three weeks ago, I received a copy of a court motion stating that I have until date X to respond to some procedural bit of GC's bankruptcy proceedings. Since I have a (slowly evaporating) credit balance, I'm aparrently a creditor of theirs, and am now getting lots of court spam. This one in particular was unnerving because it mentioned the "unsecure creditors" needing to hire counsel at a rat of $200k/month.
So by sending my ISP payment in advance, I'm potentially responsible for paying for part of a $200k/month legal bill. Great. I hope that I'm one of thousands of creditors and am as small a fish as I think I am...
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
The trick is to make them call you ... ... ...
Call your credit card company and stop all payment to them
Now, you can put them on hold for hours
Actually, thats one of the big benefits of using a local ISP, rather than the AOL/Earthlink/Compuserve variety.. (Disclaimer - I *do* work for just such a local ISP)
You dont *have* to have a credit card or checking account to open an account (we accept cash at our offices, or you can mail us a check/MO), although we do accept Ccards, and we can auto-bill you if thats what you prefer. Its just not manadatory.
(Aside, thats another big scam on AOL's part. As long as I can remember, you've had to give them your CC# or checking account info to open an account. Some of the more recent CD carpetbombs have said "NEW! NO CREDIT CARD REQUIRED!" and in the fine print it mentions how you have to have either a CC or a checking account. Eg - nothings new, they are just trying to get more morons to sign up)
If you call us, you can almost always get directly to a person. While we do ask why people close their account(s) when they do, simply as a way to know if we've screwed up or could improve our service somehow, they certainly arent required to tell us.
About the only disadvantage is for people that travel a lot - local ISP's dont tend to have nationwide access numbers.
Dialing 0 used to work everywhere. Nowadays, of course, companies are wise to it, and more often than not you'll get an "invalid option" response. Plus, once you dial 0, they know you've got a touch tone phone-- so there's no way you're getting out of voice jail.
The best thing is just to hold the line and pretend that you just don't understand the whole button-pressing thing. And as tempting as it is, never fall for that "Press 1 to continue in English" line. Do you really think they're gonna force you to continue in Spanish?
When you want to talk to someone, always press 0 or hold on, never choose one of the prompts. For many CS departments, the phone prompt is just a way to gather statistical/marketing info about why people are calling. You often end up talking to the same people no what prompt you choose and anyone can setup/cancel accounts
"My break dancing days are over, but there's always the Funky Chicken" --The Full Monty
Didn't work that way for me. You must have gotten someone with a brain.
5 69 &cid=3538888
http://features.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=32
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Makes Brian unhappy, so he hurts your feelings
For those of you that want to attempt to cancel your AOL account like Jon Katz,
So if I call that number, I can be guaranteed a similar experience? Hoo-ah!
The coolest voice ever.
although they tried the same "can i ask you why?" crap, pretty much as soon as i told them I'd only signed up to avoid paying any telephone bills whilst visiting my mum at christmas and was now back where i already had a real internet connection with freephone access they lost interest. :)
to be honest it felt nice to be the little person exploiting the big company over as opposed to the other way round
For a year or so at one point I had an AOL account because I was beta testing some stuff. I managed to have no trouble canceling my account at all, since one day I woke up, tried to log on, and found it simply didn't exist anymore. I still have no idea what happened, but I was simply forgotten
Certainly made the choice of staying on or not much easier
I cancelled my Bell Atlantic ISP service over two years ago. Billing stopped immediately, but I can still use the email address through webmail. It is, of course, plagued by spam, but comes in handy if I need an address to use to sign up for various web services (travelocity, etc.).
My only fear is that I will someday get a bill for years of service even though I haven't used it as a dial-up account.
'nuff said...
caneling any service I had. Maybe I am the exception, and not the rule. I recently moved. I CANCELED, not transfered (I needed to have the service under a different name), the following services. AT&T Broadband Internet and AT&T Cable Television. Both gave me no hassles, just 10 or so minuets on the phone.
For some reason each monthly bill would include a new "service fee" - either a system access fee, a 911 fee, a call display fee - all things that had been previously included in my monthly charge. All in all my $20/month plan was costing me more like $45/month.
So I decided I would cancel my plan and get a Pay-As-You-Go phone where you recharge your minutes as you use them. To my surprise the phone company was quite miffed with me for wanting to cancel my service. I can understand wanting to put down a reason (so maybe they would eventually clue in that they were gouging thier customers) so I said the service was simply too expensive. Well.
That wasn't good enough for my customer support representative. She wanted to know what company I was switching to, how much ther were charging me each month. Did I realize I woudn't be able to use my old phone. Blah, blah, blah. She seemed truly insulted that I would forsake her cellphone company for another. I think she was mad at me.
The funny thing is I still get an "Online Invoice" emailed to me every month for a phone I don't even have anymore.
Thats just my little story :)
, I was told I needed a special devision of sales that cancelled subscribers. Good use of the spell check Jon. Glad to see that while you have enough time to write crap like this article, you don't have enough time to press the spell check button.
You are a moron. If you had read his article you would've noticed a few things:
- The AOL account was for work (that is why Hemos was bugging him about invoices)
- He used AOL originally to stay in touch with anything going on in it (you can't reach everything in AOL from the web)
- You have to use keywords to move around quickly in it
- He knew he had the account, he just never used it much
- 3 dial-in accounts is about $30/month, less than a DSL or cable TV. Not exactly a sign of wealth.
I especially like the predictable jab against using Windows. Sure the Comic Book guy on the Simpsons isn't based on you?
You must have more money than I do (either that, or less sense ...)
I would have said something like this:
Sir, are you sure that with the post-9/11 era, the era of the globalistic information superhighway, you can afford to not be connected to the internet? It is a place of free-thinking, an exchange of ideas between the "haves" and the "have nots", where one minute you can be ordering books from your favorite author (such as yourself) and the next you can be instantaneously connected to and annoying thousands of netizens. I don't know about you, sir, but I think this is an incredible time we live in, the age of the internet. Are you sure you would like to cancel your service? I don't know, maybe I can do that, maybe I can't. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
This is only kinda on-topic to the thread, as it relates to ISP connection woes...
Anyhow, recently I moved from a house I was renting to a house I am buying (ie, "renting" from the bank). Anyhow, I have cox.net broadband, and called customer service to have my service transferred. "No problem" they cheerfully informed me, and told me it should be transferred, and I could simply carry my equipment over, plug in, and go.
I have both broadband and digital cable. The house I moved to, I found out, had major bad install of cable throughout the house, so I had to do a rewire. I bought the cables, splitter, etc - and hooked it all up. What came next was (and still is, to an extent) a nightmare.
First off, only one of my cable boxes worked. It turned out that when they had switched my service, they somehow reset everything so that I only had one cable box - my other box was inactivated!
I eventually got the other box going, but I didn't know if my broadband was working. So, I decided to plug my cable modem in, and see if the lights lit up...
Nope.
The online light was dead, the others cycling (MSB4100). I called Cox up, and I was soon talking to someone to "reprovision" my modem to the network. After a few minutes, he had it done, the light was on, and I thought I would be happy.
I still had to unpack and set up my computers and network, and I had a lot of stuff to do, so I put it off for a week. At the beginning of this week, I finally found the time, and hooked my machines up. I have a linux firewall/router in between my setup, so I had to get that hooked up first. I booted it, and it seemed to recognise everything fine, getting the DHCP connection to cox, etc - I thought I was set.
I hooked up my main linux box, fired it up (it had been down for about 2-3 weeks), and it booted fine (I guess my day could have been worse), so I tried pinging my router/firewall - good, then google, good - I fired up Netscape at that point, and tried to check my mail: "account is inactive" was the response - WTF?
I tried the browser - could browse everywhere, but no matter what I tried, I couldn't access my mail.
I eventually called Cox, and found that when the switch was done, somehow my primary account didn't get transferred or switched properly (something tells me they are blowing smoke), and after a ton of back-and-forth calls, here I am still without email, and waiting for them to delete the primary account and re-add it back it (oh, and I will lose all of my email sitting on the server - they did tell me to retrieve and back it up - but if I could do that, why would I be calling them?).
Gah - it is crazy...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I hate you jon katz, I hate you so very much. I hate you more than cheaters in cs. I hate you more than moby, even though he dated natalie portman. I even hate you more than that jerkoff clay who is dating one of the girls I hang out with.
You must have a LOT of time on your hands to get a letter notarized (plus $), go to the post office (plus $), have the court notice served (plus more $), file and show up in small claims court (plus even more $) just over cancelling a $10/month account. Then there is the matter of the time you'd have to take, usually during working hours, to do all of this. Even then you'd only get a few bucks for your trouble whenever they got around to paying the court decision.
The entire experience was a comedy of errors. First I called to cancel and it took an hour of waiting on hold. They said they cancelled it. The next month, the credit card in question was billed again. Here's where I should mention that the credit card in question was actually my by-now-estanged husband's, and the continued charges were not helping the already-strained relations. I called back, and this time they said I couldn't cancel it without proving my identity (didn't mention that last time). Of course, I didn't have the credit card bill, nor the credit card. So I ended up having to fax them a copy of my driver's license in order to prove that I was really me. After THAT whole rigamorole, I thought I was done with those turkeys, but no. A few months later, I find out the card is still getting charged. I call up completely irate, and get it cancelled AGAIN, and they say they will credit the card for the past 2 months' charges. No, instead they charge the card ONE MORE TIME, at which point my estranged-husband calls them up and successfully cancels the account. Interesting when they say they won't cancel the account without proving your identity, and the only way mine got cancelled was by someone else. The whole experience soured me on *anything* that automatically bills a credit card. With all the technology we have in place, surely there has GOT to be a better way... -LauraCleo
Has anyone switched from AOL to AT&T?
Finally they issued me credit.
Their whole argument was that there was nothing on the record that I cancelled service in Feb. My point was: look at your logfiles. I haven't logged in since then. Interestingly, when I called last week to inquire about my service, I got disconnected (was calling from my cell phone) and their service rep cancelled my service (as if to perhaps get them off the hook? "Oh, you called in to cancel your service only last week!")
"I never got around to disconnecting from Earthlink or from AOL, which I've been on for years, clinging to the hope that with more than 25 million subscribers, something would eventually happen there that would be interesting enough to write about."
This seems familiar somehow. I feel that I've been clinging on to Katz articles for years, feeling that something would eventually happen and Katz would write something interesting.
As someone in tech support I can say that you lost the guy at that point, from this point on he did not want to help you. NEVER ask for a supervisor unless you have no other option. Plus the "supervisor" you talked to was just the guy in the next cube over.
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
AOL was billing me for even though I had never used them. Each month, I'd call them and they claimed to have no record of my CC number (a Wells Fargo ATM/check card BTW). So I'd call Wells Fargo, have them reverse the charges and ask them to block any further charges from AOL, with them guaranteeing that it will never happen again.
Eight months later, it took a letter to the Better Business Bureau and threatening to close my account to gets Wells Fargo to figure out how to stop these charges. Funny what a letter to BBB will do. The Wells Fargo reps were calling me, instead of me calling them, apologizing for the problem and were on the ball in correcting it. That's what should have happened after the first call. >:|
Just wait 'till next month's credit card bills.
I bet you ten-to-one you're still getting billed by both.
And the month after, too...
You're not out of their nets, yet. [pun intended]
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Perhaps the person at the end of the ISP's cancellation phone-line is actually paid the equivalent of a sales-commission for each person they manage to 'persuade' not to cancel?
When my father died, I spent the next couple of days cleaning up his affairs. He had an AOL account, and when I went to cancel it, I had a similar horror story. First off, it took me an hour to find a phone number where I could call to cancel. I was then on hold for 20+ minutes, only to have the customer service agent tell me that I wasn't authorized to cancel the account - only my dead father could do that. When I protested, he said I'd have to send a certified copy of his death certificate, to which I blew a fuse. I really let him have it, and he relented - "OK, it's cancelled." What this shows is that there aren't hard and fast rules governing what they can and can't do. Instead, AOL has designed the process and coached the people to make it as difficult as possible for someone to cancel. Oh, BTW, this happened almost five years ago. This isn't a new phenomenon.
One email, no hassle, to quit my ISP when I switched to ADSL.
I can't speak for AOL, but I had no problem at all signing off of Earthlink. Took me about 5 minutes, including digging up contact info on their web site.
Our company offers service on a subscription service and we have had to face this issue as well. Though our history goes back to the days when CompuServe was the big banana and GEnie was #2 (and no one really had heard of the Internet thing), we ultimately ended up providing our service through the web.
When we made this transition, we eventually discovered (quite by accident) that when our online cancelation system malfunctioned our numbers improved noticeably. This lead us to look around and see what others were doing. Sure enough, many others were discovering that their business models worked better the harder they made it to cancel.
And its not a small thing either. You would be amazed by what a difference it makes.
I will admit here and now that we specifically ripped out all our online cancelation in order to improve our business. To cancel, you had to email us or call us. And we didn't make this procedure very obvious either. On purpose.
And it made a big difference to the bottom line.
But there is more to this story than just a confession....
Not long ago we did a complete overhaul of our web presence. During the planning and right up through implementation and release we wrestled with this issue. We knew that having cancelation online was the right thing to do for the customer (present and future). But we knew we had a business to run and lots of competitive pressures barking at the door.
In the end I just decided we needed to do the right thing. There is a way to cancel online, one that is as automatic and painless as we could make it. It's right there under our "my account" area in plain sight. Along with multiple links both textual and iconic on how to email us and call us. And when you call, the person who answers the phone is the person who cancels your account on request.
Like AOL we do ask for a reason, but not to engage in an argument. But rather to collect information and see if there is something we can improve. AOL CS people are paid a bonus for "saving" a customer which is why there was that bizarre exchange reported here. Sure we like to save a customer, but we don't push our CS people (or reward them) in that way.
Are these practices the optimum business strategy? No. I know for a fact they are not. But they are the right thing to do. At the end of the day we all have to do our part to make the online world a better place.
(Feel free to check out our site and browse the 'my account' section to see if we've done right as an online citizen. You don't need an account to go to that page.)
David Whatley
You know, the first thing I would do after this is call my credit card company and tell them that you've canceled these accounts and that there should be 1 final payment to them and no more after that.
This doesn't work with AOL. Unless you cancel with them, they'll keep billing you and the card company (or, at least, my card company) will keep passing on the charges and expect you to pay. I even canceled the card itself and got a replacement. AOL got put on the new card! Talking with my card company, they told me that my agreement with AOL allows them to continue billing me even on the replacement card. I threatened to cancel entirely and not get a new card, and was told that the charges would continue and be referred to a collection agency. According to the card company (Wells Fargo, in case you're interested), my only solution was to cancel via AOL or they'd be billing me until the end of time.
I finally went through the amazing hassle of canceling with AOL. I also ran my old credit card through a shredder and mailed it to those Wells Fargo jackasses. Pissed off does not begin to describe my animosity toward those scum.
I don't even know why anyone would sign up with these jerks in the first place. Every time I asked for tech support with Earthlink, I had to threaten attrition to get something done. Was usually something like the DNS resolution would spontaneously fail. Then I signed on with Mindspring, and tried to go DSL on an OS/2 box after the buyout. They said OS/2, let alone Linux, doesn't support TCP/IP. (Bullshit.) Sorry, but people are probably best staying away from them. But that's just my thought.
My name is Edward and I work for earthlink customer service, I won't try and defend earthlink as for the transfering around to different departments (although if you can provide me with the names of the reps you spoke with I will be more then willing to 'look into this for you') but, as with any phone tree for ISP's, there are usually only 3 options to select.
1)Technical Support (handles technical issues *obviously*)
2) Customer Service (handles billing and account maintenance - cancelling would be account maintenance)
3) Sales (obviously handles the setup of new accounts)
Each of our 3 divisions has access to different databases (to streamline the 'customer experience' by letting reps focus on specifics).
As for the hold time - I have a LCD display that allows me to see how long someone has been on hold. For the past month now our hold time hasn't been over 10 minutes in customer service (if you call during peak hours *8am-5pm PST respectively). If you call after of before peak hours our hold time is next to nothing (if we even have a hold time at that) Our Tech support line hasn't had a hold time for at least 3 months now.
As for account verification - we accept the last 4 digits of your credit card, calling the account holder back at the phone number listed on the account, a secret word (which the user sets up at time of initial signup), or the last 2 characters of the password (after which the user would be required to setup a secret word).
I can't speak for AOL on these matters (for obvious reasons)
I don't think there are any good ones left.
I cancelled my slip.net account, but apparently slip.net refused to let me go. They cut off my service for non-payment, but continued to bill me. They insisted that they couldn't cancel my account unless it was paid in full, meanwhile billing me, but rendering no service. Now I have a huge FirstWorld bill on my credit report, but I refuse to pay for service that was never rendered.
Then there was when Earthlink cancelled my DSL for me. That's what PacBell told me, anyway. This was interesting, because I had SBC DSL, and never had any dealings with EarthLink, who became PacBell's ISP sometime after I had signed up. After a few months, and many hours of customer service hell, I got my DSL back, but they never missed a billing period. I'd dispute it, but I know that I would be punished for interacting with them, and probably by losing my DSL again.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
I have never used AOL as I have a dislike for non-standard quirky software, but I have many less computer literate friends who were taken in by the advertising (that shimmery dress _is_ nice :) and the freebies. After some time they usually decide to change ISP, most are computer gamers and I have been told that AOL is not the best connection for that.
One of my friends had some problems convincing AOL that he really wanted to cancel his account. Three months later (only 1 of which he was charged for) he asked me to phone them on his behalf and cancel his account. Five minutes later it was cancelled. Word got round and I have since performed this service for three others.
There is obviously a demand for this service, perhaps I should go into business as an 'AOL disconnection consultant'. For those of you who are interested in following a similar career path my secret is:
1. explain that you want disconnected.
2. explain again that you want disconnected.
3. explain once more that you want disconnected.
4. if asked any questions respond with meaningless techno-drivel, eg. 'I am finding that the RF emitted by my modem is interfering with my warp plasma conduits'
5. you are now disconnected.
At all timed be polite, curteous and stubborn as a mule.
I called and canceled them long time ago and found that they were actually taking money from me. I was not happy.
... committed a crime against me, sending my account to collections after it was closed and not overdue. Fortunately I got my foot up their collection service's ass before they got to my credit record, but Earthlink, if someone has a lump of shit delivered to your Pasadena office, it came from the guy in Florida who almost sued you a couple months ago. I think you'll know who, if you think long enough.
-Chris
I've worked with a local ISP in tech support, and I can assure you, if you can find a decent local ISP you will be much happier. We don't have the ammount of people that aol or earthlink does, but we have more then our share. MOST local ISPs will actually offer tech support if you have a problem and when you want to cancel, you actually get to talk to someone failrlly quicklly. Where I was working, if you did not get in touch with someone immediatlly, you were prompted to leave a voice message with your name and phone number and we would return your call as soon as possible because we were currentlly experiencing an unnormally high ammount of calls. Yeh, I know, everyone has heard that crap before, but the customers quicklly learn after they first time they actually leave a message, they DO get a call back as soon as possible. Everyone that works at the ISP has the ability to cancel or sign up any account. We do ask for a reason, but they also accept NO REASON. Cancelations take about 2 mins with NO time on hold.
Teach someone to use the net and they won't bother you for weeks; show them Slashdot and you may never see them again.
1. Don't pay your bill if it's not on a credit card.
2. Violate the Terms of Service
3. Call your credit card company and report the debit from your account as FRAUDULENT.
4. Write 'em a bad check
5. Pretend to be a member of Al Qaeda
or....
6. l33t h4x0r their equipment!
I also had a similar problem with Earthlink. It took several faxes, a certified letter and finally getting the credit card to refuse any charges from them to get my service stopped. Earthlink even sent a debit collector to get fees from me, at least I kept good records. When I showed the faxes to the collector they stopped trying to collect. Over a year latter, the credit reports are clean.
I would never recommend AOL/Earthlink after my experiance. I went with the local telco for my DSL.
The funny thing is - part of me was bothered by the thought of somebody else assuming my identity, even if I'd never handed it out as an email address or visited any forum where anyone would see it. AOL was just a relatively convenient way of getting on the 'net to do real work in hotel rooms. That feeling of disturbance lasted about two seconds before I laughed at myself for being an ass.
"So let me get this straight: what you're telling me is that I can't tell you that charges from Company XYZ are not to be accepted and that while I could report my card lost and get a new number issued, you might helpfully forward those recurring charges to my new number since I've done business with that merchant before. So I'll know when I call next month, how long does it take to cancel my card? Also, can I have your name and/or employee number again?"
fencepost
just a little off
wow! a good katz article! kudos
>Once you contact the credit card company and
>tell them the charge is unauthorized, the monkey
>is on the VENDOR's back.
Yeah spammers love this. They sign up for an account, spam from it. We close it down and charge them a spam clean up fee. They dispute both the spam clean up fee and the initial charge for service. The ISP GET *F*CK*D*, 2 charge backs, and cleaning out from asshole spammer who wants to make your penis larger.
Aup doesn't work, Credit Card companies simply won't allow it saying that we don't have a signature. THE ONE TIME I had a signature (on both an AUP and credit reciept) The credit card company dicked around for 9 months, and the spammer had long since cancelled the card. ISP screwed again.
Moral of the story, want to cancel, call your credit card company, they are your friend. They sure as hell aren't the small business guys friend! Unless of course your business is SPAM.
cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
I had a similar experience several years ago cancelling AOL. They were bad even then. However, unlike Katz, I had them draught directly from my chequing account (how stupid of me, but I was much more naive back then). I cancelled, only to get my bank statement the next month, and see that not only are they continuing to draw from my account, but they were now drawing TWICE. Livid, I called customer service and demanded to know what in hell was going on. The customer service drone assured me in a treacly voice that it was a billing error and that it would be rectified immediately. Well, it took six months and a complaint to the BBB to get things taken care of. Make no bones about it, the last thing Steve Case et al. wish to peddle is a pleasant online (or on-phone) experience.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
G'Day
I subscribed to earthlink when I was doing some business in the USA. I knew about only being able to cancel by letter or 1-800. But I wanted to cancel from Sydney.
So I did. I changed my credit card number to a number that did not work, but was valid according to the algorithm. After a few weeks I got an email telling me it did not work.
I replied telling them I wanted to cancel the service, and did not feel like ringing the number. This worked after a few exchanges, and I no longer have an earthlink account.
Darryl
- he thinks paying $60 per month for something is "rich"
- The phrase "AOL keywords" makes him titter
- He's too 3w33t for AOL, but his ident probably reads "25.98.160.206.dsl-weenie.pacbell.net"
- oh, he doesn't have an ident string because he runs windows ("don't we all")
it's fun to hate today.
This is a bit long-winded but I felt the whole storys needed telling to set the stage for the endings...
I have a real ISP and have had one since the beginning. I have 3 young children, though and 'all their friends had AOL' so we signed up under the "bring your own access" plan which means I use my ISP's internet connection rather than AOL's dialup lines to logon to AOL. This was a better deal as they only charged $9.95/month for it instead of the usual $19.95/month. This made the kids happy, which made my wife happy, which kept me happy, other than wasting $9.95/month for a second ISP, but such is life. They simply charged the $9.95/month every month like clockwork, never a problem AT ALL, which was good. As a couple of years went by they started using it less and less and finally not at all. (AIM, MSN Messenger, ICQ, The Palace, Napster, etc became their stomping grounds) Both the kids and the wife said they hadn't been on in months. Finally, in January of this year, my wife endured the hell of the phone thing to cancel their service. Eventually they told her it was cancelled. Fortunately, a few weeks before that I had a tussle with my Visa card provider and ended up telling them to shove it and cancelled that card. I had forgotten that it was the one that AOL was on, but it was a good thing.
Shortly after this we get a bill in the mail from AOL (since the card was cancelled) for $117.00!!! Seems they are claiming that one of my daughters has been calling AOL directly, several time, conveniently JUST prior to the cancellation, and darn the luck, if you have the "bring your own access" plan, but call direct, you get the $2.95 (or some such number) a minute charge for using their lines!!! Wait a sec! I have a home lan, with a Linux box that acts as a gateway/firewall for the internet. None of the Windows boxes even has a modem in it anymore! After talking with the customer service 'person', and I use the term loosely, at least one of the times my child supposedly did this she wasn't even home. She spent the night at my sisters house and she doesn't even have AOL on her computer at all! this problem isn't resolved as of yet so I can't give a happy ending for it...
I also have an Earthlink bad experience, and in some ways I think it is worse. When I originally signed up to a local ISP, they accepted cash, etc, but I still had to provide a credit card "for proof of age only". No problem. As their office was 2 blecks from my work, I walked in and paid them in person each and every month. The few times I forgot to go, they turned my service off, which is EXACTLY the right thing to do, as I never gave them permission to use the credit card (since it was for verification only). Only I think it was the ONLY option anyway because I COMPLETELY forgot I ever even gave them a credit card number at all. Several years go by. They got bought out by Primary Net. Same office, same procedure, same outcome when I forget to go pay in a timely manner. A year later they got bought out by MPower. Again, same office, same procedure, same outcome when I forget to go pay in a timely manner. Several months later, they decide they only want to provide dialups to businesses, but they have so nicely already arranged for all the residential accounts to be transferred to Earthlink. I thought to myself, screw that, When my service here dies, I'll go 2 blocke the other way and sign up with the other local ISP that was on my list anyway, and when I don't pay EL they will dump that account. My service ended up dying on my several months later, so the next day I signed up with another local ISP. Same deal, I pay cash, if I don't pay they cut me off.
In the meantime, all my data from my former ISP has been transferred to Earthlink. Apparently Earthlink doesn't give a rats patoot if your card is "for verification only" because they started charging on it right away. It was only 3 months later when we realized what was going on. After 2 calls totalling almost 2 hours of nothing but muzak time I finally got a person on the other end. I'll have to say that they didn't give me a hard time about it, but the guy insisted he could only give me 2 months charges back and I would have to call my credit card company about the 3rd month. I finally got my money back but the thing that bothered me more than anything was that I guess no matter how they get your credit card number they figure thats all they need to start putting charges on it, regardless if they have your permission or not.
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
You don't know how many times I've heard the same thing about about people freeloading on PrimeNet.
PrimeNet also had cancellation issues when they tried to sell off their non business dial up users to DirtLink. Their billing system was poorly connected to the computer account side. Complete cluster fuck.
You don't have to put up with any of that. Tell the first customer service rep to cancel your acccount, give them your name, and leave the ball in their court. If they continue to bill your credit card charge it back. That is, call your credit card company and tell them that you cancelled and that the charge was not authorized. They should charge it back just based on your say-so (if not you need to switch credit cards). Companies don't like chargebacks- of course a big company like AOL or Earthlink isn't going to get their merchant account terminated over them, as a smaller company might, but they still don't like them.
"I have an old ISP account (since 1995) that was from a small regional ISP that traded hands a few times until it ended up part of Global Crossing. GC probably has no idea why they're billing me (on paper, even) $22/month."
GC doesn't have a clue you exist. The residential accounts were supposed to go to Dirtlink. The billing system and the account system aren't synched so some people didn't get sent over like they should have. Expect hell if you actually try to close the account.
This only works with real credit cards; the fake kind, which are actually debit cards, generally don't work that way.
Banks, such as Wells Fargo, refuse to stop payment on monthly billings to debit cards.
Your only real option is to threaten to close the account; most of the time, they don't care: "go ahead and close it", they say.
I've only had to do this one time, but boy did it piss them off. I filled out "new account" forms, and went to the teller window, and said "I'd like to close my account, and then open a new one with the cachiers check you are about to print out for me".
It's really amazing how much of what they say they "can't do" that they can do when faced with that prospect.
I called the number and waited an insane amount of time on hold. In fact, it took me several days of calling, waiting for an hour or so and then hanging up before I finally got through to someone. When I told them I wanted to cancel, they asked me for a reason, and I told them something along the lines of "I'm spending the next three years as a researcher in Antarctica," and they apparently believed me. They canceled my service without any hassle.
Of course, there was no reason this couldn't have been done automatically, online, but that's capitalism for you.
If they actually stop billing you on the first call, it'll be a miracle.
Autobill almost always creates problems when you terminate an account, it could be an ISP or a health club or anything. Then the media tells us about the digital divide, well what about those who don't have access to a credit card? Oh, I forgot, they can give the multibillion dollar corp direct access to their bank account (debit card) to withdraw what they want. What a system.
Telemarketer: "We want to sell you a subscription for the newspaper!"
Me: "I don't pay my bills."
Tends to get them off the phone pretty quick, although it upsets my wife. I think she thinks that the telemarketers hook up into the credit reporting firms and that I'm going to damage our credit.
-sk
I had the almost exact same experience when I cancelled my aol service. They kept telling me that they would give me another month free for me to think it over.
I cancelled my Earthlink service over the phone in 5 minutes. I don't remember any complicated phone trees, just a friendly human who cheerfully agreed that getting cable modem was a good reason to cancel my service.
As far as AOL is concerned, you can just go to their chat rooms and threaten to rape or kill someone. Then they'll immediately cancel your account.
Try switching an (existing, personel) ATT cell phone to your corporate account (because the only way you'll get reimbursed is to be on the account). No problem, as the account holder, they'll gladly do it, making your corporation liable, not you, in the eyes of ATT for the bill.
...No rep, no switch.
Then, quit your job and call to get billing switched back to you. (After all, you want to keep your number - it isn't used as a corporate standard number, such as some sales reps have and they don't want the # walking becuase clients will use it and they assign it to a new rep)No problem - have your offical corporate rep call and authorize the switch. Point out you work for a hugh firm with offices everywhere - you have no "offical cell phone rep."; and their records show I opened the account and did the first switch. Yes, all that is OK, says ATT, but
My solution - get my old admin assistant to call and be the offical rep (heck, she is probably mor epowerful than our lead partner anyway)- instant switch. All is well, until ATT discovers they overbilled you and credited money to the old account. Call ATT, go through 3 supervisors until one finally realizes the credit can be applied to the existing account and the old account closed out. Can't refund it to credit card, even though they have all the details.
I still get a monthly bill for $0.00 on the corporate account.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I signed up for AOL, way back in the dayl, cancelled my membership the same day.
If you sign up for AOL/Earthlink via the Internet, aren't you signing the contract electronically? And if so, doesn't that "contract" come under the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, 15 U.S.C. Sections 7001-7006 (2000) (also known as E-SIGN)?
E-SIGN requires that, before consent (required in consumer transactions) that the company disclose how to withdraw consent, and provide a mechanism for the consumer to do so. In order for the contract to remain valid, the company has to maintain the ability for the consumer to withdraw consent. Hmmm...
Considering you the customer are under certain obligations to perform (in this instance, monthly payments) they as an ISP should be responsive to your requests as a paying customer. thats all. next.
Just get a hold of one of the sleazoid bulk mailer apps and start spraying email in all direction. I can guarantee your service will be terminated in less than a day with no long phone calls...
:-)
;-)
I did something similar years ago after encountering a similar problem with an old ISP (now no longer in business, guess that just about sums it up). After being repeatedly put on hold then disconnected when attempting to cancel I thought I'd take matters into my own hands...
A few choice newsgroup articles spelling out my experience (massively crossposted to generate complaints), running a bot to post random text to their sales@ and abuse@ addresses for a few hours and the finale - plastering (possibly illegal) pornography all over my personal web space and I was soon disconnected
Obviously not the route to go down if you ever intend using an ISP again, but... well... I didn't
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
A few years ago I moved into a new apartment with a room mate. I payed for phone service and he payed from DSL service. Both from the same company BellSouth. About 6months later I wonted to end my DLS service so I called BellSouth DSL and asked to canncell my service. WEll thay could not do it because the service was not in my name. Oh but the whole point. I would get the bill for the Phone and DSL, Both of which came to me. Actuly on the same bill. WEll about two hours later I had one of the BellSouth DSL people call the BellSouth Telephone people and thay got it fixed. But that realy was not the end of it. About two months later I got a bill from BellSouth for 2 months of DSL. For some reason the computer never stoped billing me. Luckly BellSouth did not charge me after for the two months. But it did take 1 more call the next month to get them to stop billing me.
.10 a min after that. I ended up with a $600 bill. The wost part. Thay charged my Cridt Card $300 for early consolation. For a service that never worked. I never paid the $600. Of couse now Telocity does not exist. I hope I don't have to pay it.
I then switched to Telocity because I saw on their web site thay allowed unlimited DailUp if the service went down. WEll it went down for two mounths so I used the dail up number. Well it was actuly 40hours a month of dail up.
WEll after them I went to EarthLink. Which was prety nice for about 3 months then for some reason I could not download files larger then 60MB. No one could figure out why and thay would not end my service. WEll I got them back. I moved a month after that and had them put service on my new place(thay did not chared me for the time it took to install DSL). It took them 3 months to get the DSL installed at which time my contract was up. And I was alread on cable. For the DSL fokes it takes 3 days for Time Wanner to get Cable Access to you. And I love their tech support. I never wait more then 5min.
I'd been a customer of a local ISP for about five years. During that time, they were bought up by a larger regional ISP, which was then bought up by an even larger one.
:-) Apparently they don't get many calls, since almost everyone deals directly with their more local subsidiaries, even though everyone's billing goes directly to this entity. I got right through, no holding, unlike the hour or so I'd wasted on hold at the smaller subsidiaries. I told the woman who answered that I'd like to cancel my account; she asked my name and address and account name, and then said I was cancelled. She didn't even ask for my password, much less my credit card number for verification. I was floored--and relieved.
:-)
I'd been happy with my service. $9.95 a month, only very rare connection problems or time-outs. But hey--it was finally time for cable! Yum, more pr0n, faster.
So, I called the ISP at the local office I'd signed up at year ago. They wanted to know what my username and password were, and what my bank card number was--I'd had direct billing. So, I gave it all to them--but wait, the bank card number wasn't right. Just a moment, I said; there's a second card since it's a joint account, and I might have signed up with that other number. But no, that number didn't match either. Oops, I remembered--a couple months earlier my bank sent out replacement cards, with instructions to destroy the older ones. Hmmm. I'd signed up with a bank card number I no longer had.
So, they said they couldn't help me cancel "for security purposes" without the card number. But, I have the password? Nope, it doesn't matter because the password could have been shared with a third party. But wait, isn't that against your TOS? Umm, yes, but it doesn't matter I still can't cancel your account.
So, supervisor time. Same song and dance. No disconnection.
That's when I called the company which had bought the old local company, and went through a similar song and dance. No luck.
So, I called the bank, which said they couldn't stop payment on any debit card withdrawals unless I come in and sign some forms. I'd hate to waste more of my day...
So, I finally called the larger ISP which had bought the regional ISP which had bought the local ISP.
Of course, I had a friend who was not so lucky at getting his desired cancellation. He couldn't get it done, no matter what he said--I don't remember what he no longer had that they needed for verification. I do, however, remember how he finally got his desired account cancellation: he e-mailed the sysadmin listed on the ISP's site, and said something like "Your billing department refuses to cancel my account. Well, I'm e-mailing you from the address associated with my account, to tell you that if you don't cancel my service immediately, I will post my dialup username and password and POP server information to several websites and newsgroups frequented by spammers and hackers, so that they can use my account for whatever they want until you cancel it yourself for TOS violations. I apologize, but this is my last recourse. I'm giving my account details to spammers and hackers in two days, unless my account is cancelled by then."
Well, he got his account cancelled that way.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
This isn't terribly surprising. When you press that button to cancel your account, you hit the membership retention group where you're thrown into a pool of sharks specially trained to use any number of tricks to keep you as a customer. It's not just ISPs, it's discount memberships, road-side service programs, damn near any sort of product based on perpetual automatic credit card charges.
You know how cops are trained to trick suspects into confessing and such? These membership retention people have the same training. Your best response is the same as well: don't answer their questions, and instead of repeating "I want a lawyer", just keep saying "I want to cancel my account."
Once they've established who you are and admit that they've got your account up on the screen, do not allow them to engage you in further conversation. If you think the scripts outbound telemarketers use are obnoxious, you should see the flowcharts these people have. They are the special forces of telemarketing, the uber-telemarketer, the inbound telemarker. Sure, you called them, and that's what makes them so aggressive -- not only do they know that you don't want their service, they also know that you can't just hang up on them. They have dozens of methods to stall you and for every question they ask, they've got a response for each and every one of the possible answers you might give. They have nothing to lose.
"I want to cancel my account" is your mantra. Why do you want to leave us? "I want to cancel my account." Is it the price? "I want to cancel my account." Who did you switch your service to? "I want to cancel my account." Did your mother-in-law make you call us? "I want to cancel my account." How about if we give you 3 months free membership as our thanks for being a valued member and let you think it over? "I want to cancel my account."
They're not stupid, and since their time is money, as soon as they realize that you're not going to talk, they'll cancel your account.
I used to work at AOL, unfortunatly, as a tech.
We were taught that if a raging customer threatened to cancel their account, we should comply, and almost 'egg' them on to cancelling.
I don't know how many times I heard..
Customer: "I dont know why AOL wont work, it just keeps saying 'GOODBYE' 'GOODBYE', why don't you guys get it right."
Me: "We'll try to help you best that we can, would you please tell me what error message your getting."
Customer: "What the hell is an error message!?, I just want to cancel my account, jeesh!"
Me: "Okay, we can cancel your account right now, would you like to do that?"
Dumb Customer: "NO! I can't live without AOL, let's fix the problem"
Hmmm
The burden of proof in the credit card dispute system is on the merchant, not the cardholder. In fact, it can often be unfair to the merchant, but that's another story. BOFA really messed this one up and you should cancel your BOFA accounts and let them know why.
I had an account I used to test their browser on some of the sites my company made. When I cancelled, they gave me the same pile of shit. They asked for a reason ... and after refusing to accept the first reason, I told Mary that SHE was the reason. That before the call, I wasn't sure, but now that I'd spoken with her, I was convinced. It was Mary's fault.
Tips 1. Hit 0 on the first menu
:(
Here company like Bell Canada (BCE) throw you out if you press zero before de sub menu level 3....
Seem the companies finally catched on
Everything seem always better in the neighbour garden.
Not certain which finicky OS is giving you trouble here. In Mac OXS, I've observed that it can take a while to shut-down from the GUI. But sudo shutdown -h now works fast every time.
doh!
I'll make it as simple as possible so even a moron like Jon Katz can figure out how to cancel ONLINE. First of all you go http://earthlink.net/ Fairly simple right? The main page of your ISP. Right there in the middle of the page it says Customer Support. Click on that. It then brings you to http://support.earthlink.net/ where it asks you to sign in with your e-mail address and password. Still easy right Jon? After you sign in you are brought to your personal support page. On the left hand side, 4th link down it says(surprise surprise) How to cancel your Earthlink account. Click on that. You are magically brought to a page with phone numbers, phone numbers you call to cancel your account. And best of all, you even have this option,"To speak to an EarthLink Representative about canceling your account, please use our Customer Service by Chat." Wow, look at that, it seems you can cancel your account ONLINE. I tried it myself. You fill out a short form, stating what operating system you are using, what department you wish to speak to, and why you are calling. Then you speak to a friendly customer service rep who says: 'DanH': Thank you for contacting Earthlink LiveChat. How may I help you today? Then you say: you: i was just wondering if it was possible to cancel my account online or if i need to call customer service Then the friendly customer service rep says: DanH: I can help you close your account...let me pull it up Now Jon, how hard was that? You are the type of customer that makes me really love my job. Almost glad you cancelled. Buh bye.
Hey Katz!
You think it's over?
Just wait till next month and check your credit card bills... I think you'll be in for a nice surprise. Just because they SAID they cancelled it, doesn't mean they did.... Your still only at level 1 of 17 as far as the cancellation escallation is concerned. You're going to have to complain to VISA, the SEC and the UN before this is over.
I even got a local ISP to cancel my service, even though I didn't remember my password, or my credit card number, and my credit card number had changed. Isn't it weird how when your credit card number changes, the billing for the ISP keeps on getting through? Amazing.
I *have* had similar experiences, though, and can tell you that documentation is your friend. In fact, any time you call customer service, document everything you can. The time, the date, who you talked to, what transpired on the call -- everything, because you may need to send it all back, be it to a supervisor or in a lawsuit (or threat thereof). It's amazing how much more leverage you have when you can say, "Look, I've documented ten different calls here, and gotten this level of support here, here, and here." When you document, they know you mean business. *heh*
Plus, credit cards are usually your friends here. Credit card companies will do *a lot* of work to ensure that you aren't being fraudulently billed. Good documentation plus a frank phone call with your credit card company if you don't get satisfaction will bring it all together.
One final thought -- people who liked this are sure to enjoy
BOFH Episode 26 -- The Bastard Gets Taste Of Own Medicine. Enjoy!
I went onto their website, and went to "LiveChat". I remembered my username, but not my password - they got by with the last 4 digits of my credit card number, and 2 minutes later it was done.
Tell your Credit card company that you don't know how the charges on your card got there, and you think somebody misused your card.
The card company will kill the service off. One phone call, and no hassle.
I do not understand it. Send them a snail mail cancellation letter stating that you cancel the service, effective a.s.a.p.. As long as they do not deny getting that letter, this will have the desired effect (denying getting the letter wuld be criminal). Sending a copy via email usually speeds things up. If this fails once, send certified mail (possibly with a witness of for the letter content) and if this still fails cancel their bills. From this point on it will get expensive for them. So far I never had to do more then send the letter.
Should not take more than 10 Minutes in all.
I have never had problems with this procedure. But I am in Europe, things might be a little different here....
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted and ignored otherwise.
Call up 1-800-708-4638 if you have pacbell and say that you saw an ad for a 256k-384k/1.5 for 79.99 and that you would like a "service ticket" to be issued for an upload cap increase. IF you call enough times they will do it.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Naturally, I called the number, connected me to a sales agent: "Are you sure you really want to cancel?" She even offered to let me have another month free, and tried to haggle. I threatened to call my credit card company for a chargeback, at which point they agreed to (really) cancel it, and refund the additional bill.
even after cancelling your account, you may often find they "forget" to stop charging you.
in my mind this happens too often to be a coincidence.
be sure to check your statements for at least the next year to make sure they dont decide to sign you up again automatically or to continue your service with information they wont be able to find when you call to dispute the charges.
good luck.
LW-
I work for one. If someone cancels, we ask why and cancel them. If it is due to a problem that we could of fixed our head honcho calls them asking why, and what can he do about it.
We only have 5 tech support people and 5000 users, on dialup service and DSL service. Our primary concern is the customer unlike some other ISP's and in our little area (4 minor & 2 Semi-Major cities in Mid-East TN) that we cover, we are the #1 ISP.
We have been asked by other bigger ISP's to buy us out, but the thing that sets our company apart from the others, is we are in it for the long haul, we don't want to be bought out.
I think I have heard most of these horror stories but they can be prevented. Here are the rules I use to terminate ANY BUSINESS AGREEMENT: 1. Do it in writing! 2. Give them a 30 day notice 3. Require that they respond in 10 business days. 4. Require that they send the last bill by mail AND forbid them from billing ANY account of yours. 5. Send the letter via USPS Certified mail with return receipt (about $4) and make the tracking number a part of the letter. 6. Keep a copy of your letter for yourself and include copies in any future correspondents on the same subject. This one is alway fun with bill collectors, who get theirs Certified Mail too. 7. When you do send the last payment write on the front of the check "Final payment. Services no longer needed" Cashing such a check is considered a business contract.
Lol @ spam the ISP to get booted... Trying that may bring more undesired results... For example, suppose they may charge you upto 10k per e-mail??
At that point the ~$20/mo ISP charge would be the least of your worries...
~BaddBoyChris
Okay, I had Sympatico DSL using Nortel equipment. I was also paying for an ISP I _like_ for dial-up. Don't ask So, my ISP has recently add their own equipment in my CO, so I wanted to move my equipment/service. I signed a Letter of Authorization, and my ISP put in a provisioning request to Bell Canada to run a loop of wire in the CO to their cage.
What that was supposed to give me was POTS Dial Tone, plugged into Sympatico's Nortel Line Card, plugged into MyISP's Alcatel DSLAM, plugged into my pair that comes to my house. The Alcatel DSLAM was supposed to (and did) filter out the frequencies used by the Nortel, rendering that stuff dead.
The day the loop was provisioned, I lost Nortel sync, and my shiny new Alcatel modem got sync. Yeah! My sync rate went from 960kbps down to 1.7Mbit down, 128kbps up to 792kbps up. Yeah!
One week later, I lost sync. Long story short, the Bell tech that ran the loop for MyISP saw the Nortel gear, and escalated a discrepancy report to "upper techs". She was sent back to remove it, because it CAN'T work. Meanwhile, my shiny new static IP, and my high-speed service, and my domain, and my mail server and my web server and my... all went DOWN.
Bell refused to replace the loop to MyISP's cage, because it CAN'T work. So I called Sympatico. This was Feb1st. I was told that yes, I could cancel, but it wouldn't take effect, and I would continue to have service until the date of my monthly renewal; the 28th of the month. (!) Had I cancelled the day before, I would've been shut off within 48 hours.
I offered them extra money to please get their Nortel equipment de-provisioned off my line. I was told that no, I HAD to enjoy the rest of my month.
I escalated to tech support, with a fresh cancellation number. (These guys can put in trouble-tickets to Bell, why not de-provision tickets?) They can't.
I escalated to Bell Provisioning. Their computers didn't show my cancellation (well, duhh, they won't until the 28th!) They wouldn't deal with me because I didn't request the provisioning in the first place. Only Sympatico can request their equipment be pulled.
So who authorized the equipment I asked MyISP to attach be removed?!?
End of story: MyISP's owner knows the Bell tech who first provisioned the loop, and second pulled the loop. She agreed to go back out that afternoon and re-provision the loop, and make up some crazy paperwork later. While she was at that CO, she also pulled the Nortel equipment off my line, knowing that I'd cancelled Sympatico.
So, if you REALLY want things done, know people.
"Oh no... he found the
You can call 888-265-8008, but you may be put on hold, or they can try to talk you out of it.
The simpler way is to write a letter. I've helped quite a few people through this process.
Here's the procedure from the AOL cancellation page.
You need to provide full name, phone, address, primary screen name, and a reason. Just make up some excuse. Signing it is probably a good idea.
You can either pop it in the mail to:
AOL
PO Box 1600
Ogden UT 84402
or fax it to 801-622-7969.
They'll send you a letter in the mail confirming your disconnection.
It won't the instant disconnect that you can get on the phone, but if you've been sitting on the account for three months, a few more days won't hurt.
---
Why are there so many people always asking for whirled peas?
I think the reason he had trouble is because he said he was trying to cancel. He should have said he wanted to close or terminate his account.
:P
I can see how someone may think that he signed up and then decided to cancel his account immediately afterwards, without paying fees. If they could see his info in their computers, they should have seen that he was not in his first billing period and figured out what he really meant.
I guess in any case the are idiots/overworked.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Heck, I sometimes do this at work. For the 30 minutes I'm on the phone, I can get 29 minutes of real work done.
It's also fun when some service droid says "Please take me off speakerphone". I always say: "If I have to be on hold, you get the speakerphone. Too bad."
While I'm on the subject, here's a typical exchange between me and a voice menu system, to keep my sanity:
1) Dial number. "Welcome to FooCoo! Please listen careful--"
2) Press 0: "Thank you for calling! Enter your nine digi--"
3) Press 0: "You've reached the Customer Serv--"
4) Press 0: "That response was not undersood. Please try--"
5) Press 0: (o/~ Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head o/~)
6) Wait.
7) Human answers.
Most places take 3 or 4 zeros. Really huge bureaucracies might take 10 to 15.
Time spent: 4 seconds reciting your account number. Time saved: 13 minutes listening to five different ten-option voice menus.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
It took my father more than two months *after* AOL assured him they would cancel his service for them to stop billing him for it. He had to call back again and argue for more than an hour to be credited...which took them 90days to run through.
"...this is the first one in 6 months that I have actually read beyond the preview text."
/. wiseman?
You bothered to read the preview text?
This does bring up another question though, how did Katz become the
It took me three hours on hold and about 5 different service numbers just to explain why I dont have an account number.
| - | - |
The funny thing is, I've been to a dozen raves, but never liked playing Pac-Man.
--
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
--Kristian Wilson, Nintendo Inc, 1989
| - | - |
1. I would like to speak to your manager (use this if you've been on hold too long for something simple)
2. Something to the effect of: if you do not take care of this promply (i.e. right f'ing now!) I will dispute the charges with my bank/credit company.
3. I will never do business with you again and I will specifically recommend to all my friends, family, coworkers, and business clients not to use your service.
Oh yeah you better bet that's the kind of thing that gets those bastards' attention. They don't care about you, they don't care about anything except money. You are a paying customer, it's your damn money, and if need be you should throw that weight around.
The word is spelled L-O-S-I-N-G.
to loose: to let go of something willingly
to lose: to have no choice in its departure
I encourage you to internalize this.
Aside from that, you misspelled "against" and you should have written "John Katz was hung up on" rather than "John Katz got hung up on."
Additionally, you use the plural "they" when referring to the singular "person" in the clause, "the person you'll speak to receives a paid bonus if they convince you not to cancel." Consider replacing "they" with "he," "she,", "he or she," or simply "the person."
Finally, your last sentence should be divided by a semi-colon rather than a comma since the two clauses are independent.
I find it strange that on your homepage you make fun of the poor spelling on Slashdot.
The Earthlink how to cancel page is located here: https://help.earthlink.net/billing/how2cancel.html
It took me a while to find it.
This is what it says:
"
To cancel your EarthLink service, please call one of our support representatives. Cancellation requests via email or any help forms will not be accepted.
To cancel a standard access plan, please contact Customer Service at 1-800-890-6356
To cancel DSL service, please call 1-888-829-8466.
To cancel Web Hosting and/or Business Services, please call 1-800-237-0148.
Check EarthLink's policies and agreements for more information."
i used to be an AOL subscriber until i left for college. i wasnt using it there, since i was on the university's network. i called AOL to cancel, and they asked more questions than my psychology professors did on their exams. i finally got it through to them that since i was a college student, i had no reason to pay for a service i wasnt using. made sense to me. luckily they only kept me on the phone for half an hour, and it was an 888 number. i wish these companies would let you cancel over the net. it would be more convenient, and save time for the consumer, and for the company.
"Knowledge is from books, Wisdom is from experiences"
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Actually, Earthlink used to have a cancel link on their website and you could cancel online. They took this off a little over a year ago though.
I have talked to a few people online who work for AOL. They have some kind of quota they have to retain a certain number of customers, or risk their job.
It used to be easy to cancel AOL as well, but it seems they have gotten more agressive lately. Basically, you go to keyword: cancel, and they give you a number. Here's what Keyword: Cancel says..
"or help with a technical problem, please go to Keyword: Help. If you would like to review other America Online pricing plans, as low as $4.95 per month for three hours, select the Pricing Plans button below.
If you wish to discuss or cancel your membership with one of our Member Services Representatives, please dial 1-888-265-8008. Our representatives are waiting to assist you.
You may also choose to mail your request to us at:
America Online
P.O. Box 1600
Ogden, UT 84402
Or you may fax your request to us at 801-622-7969.
If you choose to write or fax us, please include the nature of your request and your full name, phone number and address. Additionally, for account security purposes, please provide ONE of the following:
-- the primary Billing Contact's AOL screenname
or
-- the last four digits of the current payment method used for this account (for your security, only the last four digits please)
or
-- the answer to your Privacy Question (if you have already established a Privacy Question and Answer).
Your cancellation request will be effective within 72 hours of receipt. AOL will send you written confirmation. You will not be liable for any additional membership fees after cancellation (although you will be responsible for any other charges you may incur should you access the account prior to account deactivation.) If you cancel near the end of your billing period, you may be inadvertently charged for the next month's fee. In that event, contact AOL Billing at 1-888-265-8003 to have the charges reversed. No other refunds will be provided, and AOL reserves the right to collect fees, surcharges or costs incurred before your cancellation takes effect."
The last time I tried to cancel AOL, I ended up failing on my first call, but succeeded on second. I was only on hold for about 20 seconds though, so they do answer quickly. Basically he asks me why I want to cancel. I tell him, then there's a long pause. Then he tells me how easy AOL is, and asks me if I know what chat is. I'm like yeah. long pause.. then he tells me some other stuff. Then he asks me if I want some more free time on AOL. I say nah thats ok.. He says.. I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm going to extend your free trial period another 30 days... I say 'ok'. THen that was end of call. I didn't realize that after that additional 30 days, I still wouldn't be cancelled... First call.. Failure.. I call again and talk to another guy. He says different things but still tries to keep me on.. After about the 5th time of refusing his offers, he cancels me, and talks to me as if I should feel guilty... Oh well I'm glad I don't pay for that service anymore.
I've had Similar experiences as you with AOL, but smaller ISP's, like sysmatrix.net, even let you cancel via e-mail.. All you need is your last 4 digits of credit card, your name, and password. Another small ISP gave me a number, and within 30 seconds I was canceled, no questions asked.
An easy way to cancel Earthlink or AOL would be to do something that violates their TOS (terms of service). I find that to be easier than calling them.
It has nothing to do with customer service. It has to do with the custome, Jon Katz. Even CS reps hate him.
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
Wow. I used to use Earthlink and while driving from Miami to Niagara Falls(Canadian side) and back, I was NEVER without a local phone number -- even in Canada. The same goes for the time I drove from Denver to Phoenix with one exception that I can recall. But that place didn't have a local ISP. Hell, they didn't even have cellular service.
Earthlink often shares POPs w/ other ISPs, requiring the ELN/ perfix for usernames. This sharing system gives them a huge range.
Regarding the original topic, I cancelled with Earthlink with no hassle at all. They asked for the account info, username, and pw. When I told them my username, the rep was surprized because she didn't it contained an underscore. Since I'd signed up, they had banned the use of underscores. When she asked why I was cancelling after so many years, I told her that I didn't want to, but only BellSouth and Telocity were offering DSL in my area. Earthlink still didn't offer service here for many months after I was hapily using my Telocity account. Too bad. They had great customer service.
t'nera semordnilap
So, any bets that this dude will be giving us an update next month telling everyone that the tech support buffoons didn't actually cancel his account? I've had it happen.
When I tried to cancel my Earthlink account, I got so frustrated that I started thinking of more creative methods.
My favorite idea was to fill your home page with porn, warez, MP3s, DeCSS code, whatever. Spread the URL around. Let the RIAA and MPAA lawyers work for YOU.
It'd probably take awhile for Earthlink to terminate your account, but hey, you admitted to waiting a few years already, so waiting a little longer shouldn't be a big deal, and you can use it a file-swapping area in the meantime.
(I actually finally managed to get through to a customer service person and got my account canceled the regular, boring way before I got to implement my plan, though. Darn.)
Now just you try to contact your government and tell them you want to end your subscription to their service!
-- Faré @ TUNES.org
Reflection & Cybernet
err this is Jon Katz sorry silly question.. Just call VISA, tell them you made a valiant effort to cancel your account but support is not co-operating, PLEASE NO LONGER ACCEPT CHARGES FROM EARTHLINK/AOL....Simple and done is 5 minutes, but then you'd not have anything to whine about you poster child for birth control.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
AOL was my "training wheels" for a while, and my wife (then a teacher) loved all the content related to her profession. But at length, we outgrew it and cancelled. I didn't have any trouble getting ahold of an account rep, and when asked "Why are you leaving?" I simply told them I wanted to use a straightforward ISP instead. He could'nt have been a nicer man; he offered to give me free months, and when I demurred, he told me AOL would hold our screen names in case we reconsidered.
Bear in mind that this was eighteen months ago, before AOLTW came under the severe financial pressure and market scrutiny it's "enjoyed" lately.
Incidentally, I switched to Earthlink, and I've had nothing but positive experiences dealing with customer and technical service there, too. There was one minor glitch where my billing got screwed up, and once we all figured out what was wrong, everything was cool. Everyone I've talked to has been a reasonable, attentive, polite adult.
Sorry to read about your frustrations, Jon.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
...since you have no confirmation IN WRITING of your cancellation I'll bet they'll keep right on billing your credit card every month.
If you think this is bad, try leaving MSN.
I just cancelled my Earthlink/Mindspring account. I called 800-719-4660 and went through 2 levels of voice menu, waited about 20 seconds, and got a live person. After providing my email address, code word, and verifying my address, I asked them to cancel my account. When asked why, I told them it was an issue with tech support (actually there were several such issues but I didn't go into detail). They told me the account was now closed and my credit card removed from it. The call went through smoothly, so we'll see if it actually works.
By comparison, tech support is a mess. The last time I called, the wait time was quoted to be 46 minutes but I was unwilling to wait on the phone that long (maybe I should have, as it was a toll-free line, but I had other things to do). I emailed tech support, and the response I got back over the course of about 4 exchanges suggested the person (different each time) either did not read what I said, or could not read English. That's not an uncommon problem that email tech support has for most companies. Even when talking to people by voice, I after have to go into explanations for them (some actually end up understanding it when I do that). Unfortunately with email support, there is no opportunity to gauge their level of (lack of) understanding, especially because the reply ends up being handled by a different person.
My Earthlink/Mindspring account was not my only account. I have almost a dozen dialup accounts. So it was no big loss (and in fact a savings of $21.95 a month) to drop one. It was my only nationwide dialup account, but I found another company that provides them, so I will probably next try out these guys. They are slightly lower cost, list Linux in their support, and even offer shell accounts. So maybe the move will be worthwhile if these guys are honest.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
After several hours spent requesting cancellation of two ISP accounts, did you still receive charges on your next month's credit card statements?
My wife, before we were married, had an AOL account and it took up to 6 months for them to finally stop charging her credit card.
My recommendation to anybody that pays for their Internet access via auto charges to your credit card, after calling the ISP to cancel, immediately call your credit card bank and have them block any further charges from that ISP. What's the ISP gonna do? Terminate you? Oh yeah! That's the intention!
When I switched from Erols/RCN to Cox Cable, Erols was saintly. I called, immediately got a cust.serv. rep and immediately had my account cancelled. When he asked why I was cancelling, I mentioned my new Cox Cable and he didn't argue that answer.
Either you write about 1000 bills a year, or you have a horrible memory and expect to pay ridiculous late fees. If you pay all your bills by check on time, you might pay about $25 more per year for the stamps and the cost of checks. And since electronic auto-payment usually gets deducted 2-4 weeks before the end of the grace period, you might actually make some of that $25 back in interest you earn by holding on to your money longer.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The propositioning children part.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
My nightmare continues.
I've now received a collection notice from Qwest for past due amounts from this MSN account that I never had.
I've been on the phone now for about a half an hour trying to straighten this out.
They say they'll escalate it and call me back -- three days or so.
Cara Hart chart@eNOSPAMfurn.com Systems Administrator eFurn.com, LLC. and ARITEK Systems, Inc.
-Most ISPs, unlike more regulated phone companies, don't send monthly bills; they simply bill membership to a credit card. Thus, it's not simple even to find a phone number to call when you want out, and you sure won't find any little cancellation box on the home page.
By looking at your credit card statement, Earthlink's customer service phone number is listed by the charge. Also, by logging in to your start page, you could view under account maintenance what the policy is on canceling as well as getting the phone number.
-When I got through at 8:50 a.m., I heard the usual chirpy recorded message urging me onto the site's website, where, the voice assured me, all my questions could be answered. There was, however, no prompt or icon or command on the customer service or tech support page for cancelling membership.
Which is true, if you went to the web sight and logged in to your personal start page, you would have been able to see the toll free phone number to call and connect with customer service to cancel. There is no cancellation option.
-Back to the phones. I got to the menu, which didn't give an option for cancellation, but did give one for sales and service. That had to be the one, right? Wrong. After waiting on hold for 20 minutes, Diane told me there was a special customer service department for cancellations. She switched me to it. Fifteen minutes of bad music. I had that familiar, sinking feeling one gets upon entering the land of customer support, tech style. You can get in anytime, but you can't always get out.
I find it odd you don't clarify if you picked sales or service. Also, upon calling the toll free access number on my credit card statement, I found it easy to navigate a small phone tree, which directed me to customer service. However, if you pick sales you can be lead to technical support.
-Then a tech support rep came on. Can't imagine why you were switched to this department, he said. But I've been on the phone for half an hour, I said, taking the slightly more pleading voice one uses in the second stage of Phone Menu Hell -- the point before you really lose it, while you still hope some decent soul will ignore company policy and treat you right.
"treat you right" as in direct you to customer service?
-"Tell you what," said Steve the tech, his voice getting a tad chillier. "Why don't I stay on with you while we switch you over?" Great, I said. He vanished and wasn't heard from again. In the world of customer service, lies are the currency, and broken hearts abound.
Which would almost be a bad thing, but, how much whining did you have to do before agreeing to even be transferred in the first place?
-Twenty-five more minutes, and a customer service rep from the first department popped on. A veteran of too many of these conversations to recount, I asked to speak to a supervisor immediately. One (allegedly) came on. Oh, he said, I was in the wrong department. So I did that thing where you recount your sorry travails in Tech Support Hell while they sometimes pretend to care.
"allegedly" is a nice word to use. What if someone asked to speak you your supervisor? Would they be passed off to the friend sitting next to you? Is that why you distrust them? I find this an ironic position to take, especially when if I was in the gaming section of a computer store and complained that the computer furniture was not to my high standards, the supervisor of games and gamming could do little except have me speak to someone in that dept.
-"I've been on the phone for an hour," I said, the fuse having been lit. "It only took me five minutes to sign up. Why not make it possible to cancel electronically?"
Cell phones. A simple answer, but, in a day and age when your cell phone can be cloned all too easily, identity theft online is even more simple.
-Can't do that, he said, for security reasons. We have to verify your identify.
Which is true.
-"But you let people sign up online, verifying or not verifying?"
Which is also true.
-"That's different," he said. It sure is. Cash flows in rather than out. After a few minutes (maybe three) on hold, I was told I needed a special devision of sales that cancelled subscribers. The supervisor switched me over. I expected to end up back in regular customer service, but didn't.
Actually, it's "If you were claiming Earthlink has been taking money fraudulently or your identity's been stolen, that's a different"
-At 10:04 a.m., Cindy came on to ask for my name and PW. I didn't have the latter, as I hadn't used the service for a long time, and the PW had vanished into Password Hell, the bottom of a desk drawer stuffed with the detritus of old accounts, ID codes and issue and support reference numbers from countless tech issues and tech support pleas and brawls.
And this is whose fault? Cindy's? And you wonder why they wanted to verify?
-Cindy said Earthlink had no record of my ever having been a customer -- no name, address or credit card on file. I relayed to Cindy how impressed I was that they hadn't skipped a single month of billing me for the service, even though they didn't seem to know I existed. Yet I did have my credit card bill and assured her I was looking at a monthly charge of $9.95. Eventually it occurred to me that the account might be in my wife's name along with mine. The computer seemed willing to compromise on this point. Cindy said my service would be terminated. Was there anything else she could help me with?
Oh, I see, you had an account but it was under your wife's name. I also like how during this all you found your credit card statement and failed to notice the customer service phone number.
-Throughout this ridiculous waste of time, a voice kept popping up saying all calls might be monitored to ensure good service. I hope so. I also hope the people monitoring it have a lot of time and stored memory and a high tolerance for generic pop. I wonder if these people ever think about the irony: they spend all this money claiming to want to make life easier for people, yet they make what should be the simplest things nearly impossible
Let me pose to you a simple question. How much of this may have been your fault? All the times where reps were asking for usernames and email addresses, of which you had none, do you think that and you recanting your story to anyone who would listen may have taken some of this precious wasted time? I am not saying Earthlink was without fault, just that your article should have reflected a little more how much fault you might have been at. Such as reading the terms of service that Earthlink provides, using the start page they provide, looking at your bill for a phone number. These small things would have indicated what you needed to do and how to contact Earthlink to do them. I will not bother picking apart your AOL story only because I do not have service with them and do not know their services like Earthlink. However, I have been a happy and loyal Earthlink customer for 4 years and have never been displeased once.