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."

Comments

I never REALLY wanted to cancel...

[TheOtherAgentM]

When I used AOL for a dialup ISP during the summers, I never really wanted to cancel. I just said I wanted to cancel, saying the features aren't everything I was looking for in an ISP. Then I waited for the free offer of another three months. It was a great way to get an ISP for the summer.

Got off today

[NovaX]

I just got my mother off AOL today. I read about how people would call, be harassed for 30 minutes and then told AOL wouldn't allow them to cancel. However, I read one post where they guy claimed he told them he sold his computer and was moving to Europe, and it took him 3 minutes flat.

So I told her to say she was going into hospice. She saw it as a game, so she even timed it. It took 1:30 min with the operator, who talked about how sorry she was for her.

That's how you do it. AOL only lets you go if you have a terminal condition.

Re:Nothing but problems with AOL

[John Seminal]

Another issue I have with AOL is that AOL digs roots very deeply into your computer. I don't know if this is still true since I haven't seen anyone using the service in a while, but it used to do stuff like replace your built-in dial-up networking functionality with its own, and even replacing various parts of the TCP/IP software and system files with its own. Uninstall? Useless.

I am not an AOL fan, but to be fair to them, I will say that when I cancled my cousins AOL and he got a cable modem, the AOL software was uninstalled without a problem. There was no problem with the cable modem working.

AOL != Real Media and their deceptive practices.

It is one thing to lie to people, and another thing to be unresponsive. AOL's problems are not that they lie so much as they drag their feet. It is a customer service problem, not a software problem.

Now if they could only get something better than 5k/sec on their dial-up, I don't think people would be running away like crazy. And with AOL charging $20+ a month, and Verizon just announced they are offering DSL for $15 a month, it does not take a genius to figure out what the better deal is.

Even back when AOL was the biggest ISP, many people I knew picked companies like Juno because they charged half as much and ran just as quick.

I never could figure out why AOL became such a large company. They charged more than anyone else. They were not the best or the fastest. All they did was package in an IM. But anyone can download Yahoo IM or something else. Did AOL become so huge because they were the only company that handed out free CD's at every computer store?

Finally

[Floydius]

I work at a credit union (the largest in the world), and we get people calling in *all the time* complaining about AOL/TW ignoring or being hostile about cancellation. I'll admit, i'm not going to assume much about the intelligence of AOL users, but still, if everyone is having the same problem, there's got to be something to it. It is absolutely the #1 problem company for cancellations, even above magazine subscriptions and people calling who tried to cancel their internet pornography.

Tesla Coil Re:CDs

[turtleAJ]

I was once on a physics discussion board, and they where using the AOL CDs as capacitors... They would solder a small cable to one of the sides (top side, obviously), then stack them 50/100/250 high. I don't remember numbers, but some guys said it worked excellent. I think one of the guys was using a five-pack of these AOL CDs to fire up a Tesla Coil... I don't recall it's use... but I've always found very amusing a "Tesla Coil anti-pissing-dog application" ::: You hook-up your Tesla Coil to a metallic trash can (has to be of the above-ground type)... then, when your most-hated man's-best-friend comes along and takes his typicall piss, you fire up the coil... You can imagine what would happen when 375,000 volts shoot straight up the dog's winnie. I haven't done this, and I suggest against it... but for some idiotic reason, I crack my self up laughing every time I think about it. -AJ [There... my 1st /. post =) Now if I can nail down how they make the italics and bold letters... and those nifty hyperlinked text phrases...]

Re:I found it VERY easy to cancel service

[Nurseman]

I once signed up for AOL all inclusive phone service. I got dial up Internet, and local and long distance for one price. After regaining my sanity, I canceled it. About six months later, they began billing me again. I called customer service, and had the charge reversed. This went on for 4 months, bill me, credit me, until I called the FCC and reported them for "slamming" (switching my service without my permission) and fraud (for billing for a service they were not providing).

About 2 weeks after my complaint, I got a very frantic, angry phone call from someone who said he was a lawyer representing AOL and I had caused them much grief with my "false" complaints. Bottom line, I never got another bill from them, and got two follow-up letters from the FCC asking me if AOL resolved my complaints. Sometimes the FCC works !

Re:This should come as no surprise

[Elminst]

OMFG yes.
I worked at a fairly sizable local ISP (40000 dialup customers at the time) when 5.0 came out.
We served a lot of rural areas- upstate NY; adirondacks. So a lot of people would dial into our service so they could run AOL over the top.

Installing 5.0 completely hosed EVERY other dialup connection on the computer. And a good portion of the time, it would hose LAN connections too!!!

Christ, I will never forget how the phones were lit up for the next 3 weeks.

There was supposed to be a class action lawsuit over that version, but i never heard what happened to it.

I actually didn't have too many issues cancelling

[SeaFox]

I called them and after waiting on hold in the retention queue for about 10 minutes got someone.

They asked me why I wanted to cancel and I said their web browser was bloated and slow, and I preferred Firefox. They said I could minimize the AOL app and run IE if I wanted (I pointed out this didn't change the fact I was running a bloated CPU hogging program on my machine) then I said I also couldn't use my own mail program (this is before they allowed the IMAP access, so I couldn't send outgoing mail from my other email accounts since there was no outgoing SMTP server).

"So you want to use Outlook Express for your email?"

"No, actually I use Mozilla Thunderbird."

"What?"

"Mozilla Thunderbird," I said more slowly.

"Okay" the rep said "I have no idea what you're talking about." [little giggle]

"Perhaps we should skip this little interview then?" I answered coldly.

Bing. Got it cancelled immediately.

Now removing AOL, that was the hard part. I wanted to do it immediately, because they have that great EULA clause that if you sign on to AOL anytime after you cancel (which isn't hard when AOL makes itself the default everything in Windows), you're consenting to the reactivation of your service.

I had both versions 7 and 9 installed (for some reason the v9 "updater" just installed a second copy). My hard drive must have cranked away for over 45 minutes while the uninstaller ran. But it was still in the registry somewhere. For months after that, besides the IE 6 "provided by AOL" I would see my old screenname pop up in the most unlikely places when doing filling out web forms or on AOL/Netscape pages.

Re:The Tragic History of "me too!!!!"

[HD Webdev]

Yes, I remember the fateful day that AOL first got USENET accesss...Spring, 1994. The first problem was their USENET server duplicating every post several times.

It was a rather dark day, but then again, we had a lot of fun in alt.aol-sucks and other groups telling AOLers (like those you mentioned, not the mature people) that we knew where they lived.

All we had to do was mention the city (by looking at the post headers) and threaten to give out their address and phone number. It scared the crap out of those 'I'm calling AOL because you're violating the AOL Terms Of Service!' types. We'd often get panicked 'IM SRY PLEZE DONT' post/email replies.

And, back to the 'AOL Fine' subject, even back then AOL was making it extremely difficult to stop the billing. Many people were getting screwed because direct withdrawals & CC charges would not stop.

It took 11 years until something was finally done about it. Even back then, it often took a lot to cancel charges and we'd post information similar to what's below (from the FAQ) in reply to people who couldn't get AOL to cancel their accounts:

http://anti-aol.org/faqs/aas/faq1.html

" America Online
8619 Westwood Center Drive
Vienna, VA 22182-2285
Send a certified letter with a return receipt. This will protect you in the event that AOL decides to continue billing you, as you'll have proof of when you canceled and proof that your letter was received by AOL.

E-mail: AOL used to offer the "cancel online" function at Keyword: Cancel, but supposedly hasn't for some time now. And even when they did offer this service, it didn't always work. The moral: don't count on e-mail to close an account.

Get TOSsed: Be enough of a jerk on AOL and they'll cancel you!