Quitting AOL isn't easy

[k4kyv]

He wanted to cancel his America Online service. But Vincent Ferrari found it was not easy. Even though the AOL “customer service” agent seems to be a rare native English speaker, he apparently doesn't understand the language any better than the usual offshore agents who take your calls.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xIVZ9b0RgmY

[kc2ifr]

That was very interesting......and funny.
Thanks

[Glenn NY4NC]

WOW!!... That's incredible!...... A-hole-L 

[Ed/KB1HYS]

Do you really thing the AOL Customer Rep got fired? 

I'm thinking that they don't behave that way with out some guidance from above...

Although in todays world a scapegoat is a wonderful thing.

[wa2zdy]

They might have fired him in an attempt to pre-empt a lawsuit but this is nothing new.  AOL has been known for this for many  years.   What I wonder is if Vincent Ferrari has checked his bank statement to be sure it's actually been cancelled.  That was another common AOL stunt; they told you it was cancellled but somehow they never told the billing company.

My wife signed up for another AOL account about a year ago after we'd lived without AOL for years.  She uses it enough so I'm ok with it.  But when it's time to cancel I hope she's ready. 

[WB2CAU]

Actually, I'm not the least bit surprised about AOL.  I cancelled AOL in Oct. 2004.  You can't cancel online, you HAVE to speak to a rep.  And the rep I had was a female who tried VERY hard to convince me to stay on by offering me the next month free, etc., etc.  I had to repeat numerous times (as Vincent Ferrari did) that I wanted to cancel before she finally got the message.  Obviously they are trained to do this.  I'm sure there are enough people who stay on and on and on month after month because of the persistence of AOL to keep the existing customer base.  AOL has been losing members steadily in recent years and they are desparate to stay in business. 

I have to say that the early years on AOL were enjoyable, particularly under the regime of Steve Case.  When he no longer had a hand in the biz, the business model changed and it deteriorated. 

By the way, Steve Case deserves credit for building up AOL in the mid 90s.  He ran Quantum Computer Services in the mid 80s which evolved into AOL later on.  Quantum ran Q-Link (for Commodore commuters), PC-Link (for IBM & clones), and Apple-Link (for McIntosh), Promenade and eWorld.

[W1RKW]

The easiest and hassle free way to cancel is to write and sign a letter to AOL stating they are to cancel the service and you will be notifying your credit card company to no longer accept the charges.  They'll send fairly quickly, a letter stating the account is closed.  No phone calls and harassment ever. That's the way I did it 2 years ago after learning my brother in law had to jump through hoops and over barrels to cancel his.  Of course, now in hind sight, I wish I cancelled by phone just to run them through the ringer a few times. I would have been worth it to bust their BA's.

[John Holotko]

I used AOL briefly back around 1995 or 96. The service  was terrible. If you tried to dial in between 4:00pm to about 12:00am you would get a busy signal regardless of which number you called. Then even when I could dial in the service used to go down very often. Email was terrible, they were forever loosing my mail. Outgoing mail often never reached it's destination and incoming mail often got lost. And the service was pathetically slow.

When I called them to cancel they tried to shortstop me into staying on with them. I told them I am erasing Windows and running Linux and I asked them if they had an AOL version for Linux. When they said no I told them well, then your service is of no use to me. They didn;t give me any further arguments. I switched to a small local ISP and the service was 1000 times better than AOL.

[KE1GF]

Hehe, I canceled Comcast back in February... Received bills for two months after... called them on the phone and they told me that I had positive balance... CS rep told me that the account cancelation was complete and they sent me a refund check... I thought everything was all set after that, but here I am in the beginning of july with another comcast bill...

Gotta love it...

I should of tape recorded back in July of 2001 when I took me 3 weeks of arguing with AT&T about my cable modem being down... The ethernet tranceiver got wacked after a lightning strike. Finally I just exploded to the CS rep to send somebody out, M*R F*R laughed at me... Tech came out and said "yeah with this cable modem this happens all the time after a close strike..."

I'd like to hear more stories! 

-Bill 'GF

[KE1GF]

The easiest and hassle free way to cancel is to write and sign a letter to AOL stating they are to cancel the service and you will be notifying your credit card company to no longer accept the charges.  They'll send fairly quickly, a letter stating the account is closed.  No phone calls and harassment ever. That's the way I did it 2 years ago after learning my brother in law had to jump through hoops and over barrels to cancel his.  Of course, now in hind sight, I wish I cancelled by phone just to run them through the ringer a few times. I would have been worth it to bust their BA's.

Yep to protect myself, I don't use my CC or web-bill-pay for regular monthly bills. It's all done via invoice/ledger... Although you do get good fraud protection with a CC. I do have a small checking account associated with a visa check card for my E-Bay stuff, but in no way is it associated with my regular checking and savings...

-Bill 'GF

[W1RKW]

This just in from CNN.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/06/technology/aol/index.htm?cnn=yes

Looks like AOL will do anything to keep or get subscribers.

[Bill, KD0HG]

AOL's business model is toast. They got huge by giving away 'cheap' dial-up access to internet newbies.
That pumped up their stock price, they got bought out by Time-Warner, then everyone in the know cashed out. Steve Case, all of the original techno-geeks are gone, now they're sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them on a beach somewhere.

AOL doesn't have a high-speed network to the customer premises so they can't even begin to compete with the cable, wireless and phone companies any more and there aren't millions of potential new internet subscribers to milk, either.

Stick a fork in them, they're done.

America Off Line.

[K1JJ]

AOL's business model is toast. They got huge by giving away 'cheap' dial-up access to internet newbies.
That pumped up their stock price, they got bought out by Time-Warner, then everyone in the know cashed out. Steve Case, all of the original techno-geeks are gone, now they're sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them on a beach somewhere.

AOL doesn't have a high-speed network to the customer premises so they can't even begin to compete with the cable, wireless and phone companies any more and there aren't millions of potential new internet subscribers to milk, either.

Stick a fork in them, they're done.

America Off Line.

 

A very astute analysis, Bill.  I couldn't agree more.

T

[KB2WIG]

remember America on hold?    klc