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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."
From TFA: "Previously, AOL would distribute bonuses in the "tens of thousands of dollars" if representatives were able to retain half the customers who called to cancel their service, according to the attorney general." This just further goes to prove Scott Adams, the Dilbert comic creator, correct when he said that all management incentives lead to weasel behavior. Of course, it helps when they receive weasel directives in the first place. Also, is it too late to clone Eliot Spitzer? We need at least one of him per state, preferably more.
Are there any ethics in buisness, or is it just about the money?
I tried to cancel my cousins service over a year ago. I was on hold for over half an hour. I hung up and called back, but this time selected "new customer" and I had a person on the phone right away.
Why should a new customer get a person on the phone right away, and someone who wants to cancel service must wait a long time?
Maybe one good first law is to say "the time wait for an existing customer must be less than the time wait for a new customer". That would gaurentee that customers can cancel without having to wait and wait and wait for someone to anwser their call.
A good second law should be that a customer can dispute any service and does not have to pay for that month. If a customer disputes too many months, the service provider can drop them. But that might stop the bad service. If AOL has an outage, or dial numbers are busy, then the person should have the ability to dispute that days charge and not pay. This should be very easy to do, and not require more than 1 minutes time of the consumer.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Because he's the only public servant I know who actually IS a PUBLIC servant- as opposed to a bribed-and-bought puppet of the corporations.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
And who gets the fine? Not likely the consumers that had the problems to start with.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I actually worked at AOL about 1996-ish. It was right when they did that infamous switch from version 2-3 and they switched from charging hourly to unlimited monthly. I happen to knopw for a fact they did not upgrade ONE SINGLE MODEM, contrary to what they told the press.
One day they sent a crew through the office to randomly pick people from tech-support and move them into what they call the "Cancel/Save Queue" because so many people were calling to cancel because they couldn't get through. I refused and was "forced to resign".
The point of this is the "Cancel/Save Queue" part. The only people that have authority to actually cancel someones account are those people, and their sole job is to talk you out of it. It *is* hard. They are told they have authority to do whatever it takes to keep you from canceling free months extra whatever else, webcam deal going on? How about a webcam then? Anything they can do to keep you even if your service is broken they will do, and they are told to not take no for an answer.
The whole reason I "resigned" (read: fired without unemployment benefits) was because I couldn't stand them and couldn't stomach the idea of kissing peoples ass when AOL was clearly at fault.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
If they would put Firefox, OpenOffice, and other nifty open source software in the extra space on those CDs, people would keep them around instead of throwing them in the trash.
1) Why would AOL distribute apps that they don't control or support?
2) Those CDs would quickly become dated as new versions are released. Geeks wouldn't keep them around because they can generally download what they need.
3) Not to stereotype, but do you think the typical user who is interested in AOL dial-up service is also going to be interested in trying new/different open source apps?
4) Would this typical AOL user be remotely interested in the philospohical arguments behind F/OSS or even care that those arguments exist?
Oddly enough, there are situations where F/OSS is not the answer. People that try to push F/OSS where it doesn't belong are at best wasting their (and others') time; at worst they are being counterproductive and hindering F/OSS adoption with their zealotry.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I work in "retention" (meaning I take cancellation calls) at an AOL call center. I'm ashamed of what I do here but the money is so damn good that I'm doing it anyway, bad karma be damned.
The "saves rate" expected of us is 65%. Incredibly, we have to get two thirds of the people calling to cancel their AOL off the phone without canceling them. This pressure to hit these numbers causes retention agents to due some pretty unscrupulous things.
In training we are told a bunch of bullshit about the "value" of AOL. But that's not how it works when you get out onto the floor. Here's how it really works: You be a very good listener, repeat back to the member the cancellation reason as though you agree with them to give the member the feeling that you are to cancel their account. You be extremely nice to them and show empathy. This is to get them to let their guard down. Then you ask them to get a piece of paper and write down your email address and you start talking about keyword this and keyword that to confuse and distract them. Then you read the "full disclosure" which is a statement that basically says your account is not canceled. If they are not listening closely they will get off the phone with the feeling that you have cancelled the account even though you didn't.
Once you practice and polish the technique it works amazingly well especially on people who don't speak real good english, older folks, inner city types who have little experience dealing with good salespeople, hillbillies in Alabama and people who are just plain stupid. And since they are stupid they typically don't look at their checking or credit card statements and many months may go by before they notice that AOL is hitting them for $23.90 a month in automatic withdrawals. Do the math. It's a lot of money for AOL.
I am ashamed of myself. But my last job was tech support and I made $9.75 and hour. Here I make about $28 an hour. As soon as I save enough for a down payment for a house I'm getting out of here.
I think the original poster was pretty clear on why he didn't want to help the queue: he didn't believe that talking people out of cancelling their subscription, when he believed AOL to be at fault, was the right thing to do. This is not the same as "password resets" or troubleshooting other issues.