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AOL Fined for Making it Hard to Cancel Service
andy1307 writes "CNET is carrying an article about a settlement between AOL and New York State that includes AOL paying a $1.25 million fine and agreeing to reform its customer service procedures. The agreement stems from consumers' complaints that AOL customer service representatives would either ignore requests, or make it unduly difficult, to cancel their service, according to a statement from Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. The policy probaby had something to do with rapidly declining customer numbers at AOL as more Americans switch to broadband."
why anyone would want to cancel AOL.
Now, if they could just do something about those CDs...
All I had to do was move to a different state, change my name and get a new social security number. After that, no more bills.
The software that AOL runs on keeps throwing a divide-by-zero exception, just as the following:
try {
int i = iRevenue / iNumExistingCustomers;
} catch (...) {}
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
RIP, Doug Adams
The policy probaby had something to do with rapidly declining customer numbers at AOL as more Americans switch to broadband.
I imagine it had more to do with the hundreds of thousands of obnoxious free ipod chasers signing up for accounts and then cancelling them.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Or will AOL figure they are making more money than loosing?
It's "losing". LOSING. You know, as in the word "lose". As in "to not win". What's wrong with everyone? Is this word so hard to spell?
Grrrrr.
--- witty signature
Actually, I would hate for AOL to stop giving/sending/forcing out their CDs... I mean, they are pretty much the #1 source of ammo for my home made spinfusor. I might as well have unlimited ammo hacks...
Sounds like a fair deal to me.
I had to cancel 3 AOL accounts while trying to get (and succeeding at!) getting a free 40gig iPod a while back (1 acct for AOL service, 1 for music service and 1 for my wife who was trying the same thing). The second and third time I did the same thing as you mentioned above. Last time I told them we were in a bad financial situation and had to pawn all of our expensive electronics...the rep said "well, you may want to use our service at a friends house?" HAH! My friends would shoot me for putting AOL on their computers.... :)
It must be something to do with Unicode, and international keyboards. Possibly keyboard rates. Maybe the letter "o" shows a greater disposition towards repetition (maybe their browser interpets "o" as "0" and decides "oh, zero's are cheap, let's send two, that'll make them happy") On second thoughts, no, I think most people are too damn stupid.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
I understand that Europe is a little odd, but to say that moving there is a "terminal condition" is a bit harsh...
How will we know who is going to destroy the internet now? Now where have the hordes of clueless AOL users gone? Is it possible to make sure they always have "former AOL user" attached to all the user names, just so people know? Maybe some RFID technology, or something? We need a plan to track these people before it's too late! Shouldn't a RFC be going around for that already?
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Dear Cretins,
I have been an AOL/Time Warner customer since 9th July 2005, when I signed up for your 2-in-1 boardband internet/TV service. During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions.
Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative, and seek to rectify these difficulties -- or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office:
My initial installation was cancelled without warning, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website.... HOW? I alleviated the boredom by playing with my testicles for a few minutes - an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept.
The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools - such as a drill-bit, and his cerebrum. Two weeks later, my ADSL modem had still not arrived. After 15 telephone calls over 4 weeks my modem arrived... six weeks after I had requested it, and begun to pay for it. I estimate your internet servers downtime is roughly 35%... hours between about 6pm-midnight, Mon-Fri, and most of the weekend.
I am still waiting for my TV connection. I have made 9 calls on my mobile to your no-help line, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals, who are it seems also highly skilled bollock jugglers. I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off); that I will be transferred to someone (and then been redirected to an answer machine informing me that your office is closed); that I will be transferred to someone and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman...and several other variations on this theme.
Doubtless you are no-longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of those crucially important testicle-moments to attend to. Frankly I don't care, it's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print than to shout them at your unending hold music. Forgive me, therefore, if I continue.
I thought Comcast were shit, that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god-awful customer relations, that no one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose AOL, and because, well, there isn't anyone else is there? How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bastards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum -- incompetents of the highest order.
Comcast -- wankers though they are -- shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy. Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver -- any such activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief -- quickly be replaced by derision, and even perhaps bemused rage.
I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cats litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you and your pointless company. I since
I'm on AOL dial-up right now, and it's totally easy to cancel service. You can even do it online! Even as I type this, in my other browser tab, it's loading the online cancellation form and AOL is doing nothing to prevent me from us#*Z(~U/$@!NO_CARRIER
Those were the good old days.
Now it's the whole internet.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I wonder what would happen if you tried to cancel an account that you don't have. Maybe if you're really, really persistent they'll keep escalating and escalating in the desperate hope of finding your nonexistent account so they can not delete it. By the time you get to the CTO, maybe the whole system will just implode and stop churing out free building materials. That, or you can give the C?O you end up talking with the finger.
The really fun part would be six months later, when you start getting blank bills for the account you don't have.
AOL was fun to one person.
What did you expect in a discussion centering on AOL? The spelling and punctuation associated with AOL in all its forms is inherently terrible. In fact, to even discuss language skills in the presence of an AOL discussion is to create a proverbial "blak holl" of spelling suckage.
Sorry, but you lost (or loosed) this one before it began.
My dad used to tell me that you could turn off a lawnmower by pissing on the sparkplug. Fortuneately I am the skeptical type (probably due to my father's joking nature) which prevented me from trying it out.
But my friend's father didn't share his sense of humor.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
We could have stopped the abuse more easily by simply closing out the account, but she flatly refused to do that, on general principles (she was a very stubborn woman)
;)
That "stubborn" is redundant!
C17H21NO4
Hell, that's awesome. I used their dial-up rate to convince my wife that DSL was a good deal (knowing full well there were several other dial-up providers in my area that were cheaper). Thanks, AOL!
Sounds like you're really bothered by the ethics of what you have to do to earn a livable wage. I was in sales once and had a similar experience. I still feel guilty about selling solar energy equipment to people who live where there wasn't enough sunshine for the systems to ever pay for themselves. But I had to eat. A growing number of Americans are finding themselves in that situation.
But you should know this. After you buy a house, you'll need even more money; insurance, taxes, maintenance, furniture, utilities, etc. I have some energy saving equipment that I think will benefit you enormously. It will save you a great deal of money in energy costs. If you don't want to purchase, there's no obligation. Just send me a letter explaining why you don't wish to take advantage of my offer. Make the letter on a 3x5 index card in handwritten block letters in blue ink.
One night when I was house sitting my grandma's house, where there was only a dial up connection, I got bored and started drinking. After about 6 beers, I found an AOL disk and decided to install. I screwed around with it for a few hours and went to sleep.
I obviously didn't want the account, so I called a few days later to cancel it. They completely refused to close it. They basically told me that I had to wait the remainder of my free month to cancel the account. Not wanting to do this, I straight up told them that I signed up for the account when I was drunk and bored, and I never planned on using it. The AOL guy told me (dead seriously) that what I did was "extremely dangerous" and I could get myself in "a lot of trouble" doing things like that. He said that if I ever did that again, there could be "serious consequences."
Needless to say, I took extra care to watch my credit card at the end of the month to make sure they didn't charge anything.