It's been true for lo these many years, and to judge by what I hear from readers, it remains ever so. AOL loves its customers so much it just can't bear to be parted from them ... or, at least, not from their money.
"We are going through some interesting times trying to cancel AOL service," one reader wrote recently. "Last spring my wife decided she needed a separate account for some reason and signed up with AOL. Around about July she realized that it was not being used when I got after her about the $9.95 a month, so she called AOL to cancel. They talked for 20 minutes and eventually refused to cancel the service but gave her two months 'free.' I called the next month and clearly told them we did not want the service and to cancel it, and then I wrote them a letter. They again refused to outright cancel it, but I figured I was OK, with the letter on file. Around October they started sending dunning notices for $29.95 a month. After several phone calls I finally was told that after we told them to cancel the account someone ran up over 2,000 hours in a month using her screen name! I told them in no uncertain terms that we had cancelled their service and that this charge was not our responsibility. After they sent another dunning notice, I sent them a registered letter and asked the State Attorney General to investigate."
Sometimes it seems the only way to cancel your AOL account is to cancel the credit card they're billing. "I'd heard all the stories about how AOL keeps billing you, so I was very careful to follow all the correct notification procedures for terminating the account," wrote another reader. "Didn't matter. A couple of months later, the AOL charge was still showing up on my credit card statement. I called to complain, and AOL told me that they had no record of my canceling the account. What's worse, my bank wouldn't reverse the charges. When the charge showed up on the next month's bill again, that was it. Now I've got a new ISP, and a new bank!"
Just saying goodbye to AOL after a tech support call can be hard because of all the promotional offers AOL support techs try to sell customers. "AOL tech support seems to revolve around upselling and cross-marketing," one reader posted recently. "They can't fix it, or even tell you what's wrong, but they'll sell you something that does it or replaces it. New modem? Modem config software? DSL? AOL shopping? Sure!"
In fact, the best way to get AOL to be short with you may be to try to get them to deal with a real problem user. "Several days ago I received an offensive and vaguely threatening e-mail from another AOL member," wrote a reader. "I do not have any idea who this person is or why they would e-mail me. I called AOL and was told to forward the e-mail to the 'TOS General' address, since it's a violation of AOL's Terms of Service for a member to harass other members. A few days later I received a form letter from AOL telling me what a TOS violation is. I believe that is why I wrote to them in the first place? I already what a TOS violation is. I then proceeded to call AOL and tell them I was upset, only to be met with outright hostility by tech support. One AOL rep yelled at me and another hung up on me. Another could not speak English. All of them were rude, condescending, and insulting. I have no idea whether they are going to do anything about the actual offender, because they won't talk to me."
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