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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...
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...
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
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.