I can't resist the temptation to comment on the news that AOL has settled with the state of New York in a suit over its cancellation practices. Having written only a few days earlier about the suggestions readers had for how to cancel AOL serious, it's obvious we missed one pretty effective tactic. Namely, have your state attorney general force them to let you go.
Just last week I'd published a Reader Voices compilation of comments from readers who were in turned responding to my It's Hard to Say Goodbye to AOL piece from a few months back. Then this week New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer announced AOL has agreed to a settlement in which it would remove obstacles for customers who wish to cancel. Spitzer's office had received some 300 complaints from New York residents that were obviously quite similar to those we've been hearing on the GripeLog.
Spitzer's people had found some particularly interesting facts about why AOL customers would meet with such resistance when they wanted to cancel the service. "The investigation revealed that the company had an elaborate system for rewarding employees who purported to retain or 'save' subscribers who had called to cancel their Internet service," the announcement read. "In many instances, such retention was done against subscribers' wishes, or without their consent. Under the system, consumer service personnel received bonuses worth tens of thousands of dollars if they could successfully dissuade or 'save' half of the people who called to cancel service. For several years, AOL had instituted minimum retention or 'save' percentages, which consumer representatives were expected to meet. These bonuses, and the minimum 'save' rates accompanying them, had the effect of employees not honoring cancellations, or otherwise making cancellation unduly difficult for consumers. Many consumers complained that AOL personnel ignored their demands to cancel service and stop billing."
It's small wonder then that so many readers have reported that their first attempts to cancel would fail. If the AOL reps have a bonus and maybe even their jobs at stake, of course they won't take no for an answer. It certainly makes you wonder just how bad AOL's business really is when they have to resort to such tactics just to keep up the appearance of retaining customers.
So, OK, it's nice we've got one more way to say goodbye to AOL. But doesn't mean that we've got 49 more to go? After all, if Eliot Spitzer can do this for AOL customers in New York, it seems like the other state attorneys general should be doing the same for their constituents.
The timing of this has got me thinking about another way we might use the Gripe Wiki. Counting this piece, I've done three stories in a matter of a few months on what is essentially one topic, and we now have far more information and many different perspectives on it than we did when we started. Can we take that material and turn it into one cogent, updated, and hopefully concise piece? If you'd like to help try, find the AOL Cancellations story in the Gripe Wiki under AOL in the "Vendors" category, click on the "edit" tab, and dig in.
Read and post comments about this story here.
6:02:06 PM 
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