AOL Cancellations
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darbascovic Note: This story contains material from three stories originally published on the GripeLog: âItâs Hard to Say Goodbye to AOLâ from May 13th, 2005, âReader Voices: AOL Cancellationsâ from August 18th, and âFifty Ways to Leave AOL" from August 26th. Also added for historical perspective was "Hotel AOL: Where Customers Check In But they Don't Check Out" from Boardwatch magazine, 2000. Feel free to cut, add, re-arrange, and edit content in this story in order to make it a better and more up-to-date reference piece of this topic.
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Hard to Say Goodbye
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."
I have been trying to cancel my AOL account for approximately 6 months and I am still being charged on my debit card each and every month. I called AOL and went through the whole automated thing as another person wrote in their experience and then finally after 32 minutes of this #$%^&* got a live person who could barely speak English and he gave me his uninterrupted schpeel that lasted for approx 15 minutes and then offered me free service for a month. I told him that I was not interested in the service anymore (trying to be polite) and he agreed that he was sorry and that my cancellation would be processed. I went online that night and checked my account and it was still intact and still on schedule to bill me, I tried the next night and same thing. A few days later I received a letter in the mail thanking me for agreeing to stay with AOL and that they appreciated my business, blah, blah. I was so mad and on the back of this letter there was a form to fill out and mail to cancel if their information was incorrect which I did and mailed immediately in the postage paid envelope they sent with the letter. I received this form back in the mail from some Identity Theft Prevention department implying that no sane person would cancel their service and it must have been a mistake that I filled out this entire form and dropped in the mail to them and I have been billed for AOL service that I do not use anymore on a consistent monthly basis. They even raised my monthly rate by $2.00 from $23.90 to $25.90 due to their new and improved service. YEY!
Reader Suggestions
One reader passed on some advice from a friend who works for AOL. "Get the name of the person you are speaking with and their shift code," the reader wrote. "The name will nine times out of ten be made up, but the shift code is the key. When you call back to tell them that, yes, you did indeed cancel it last month, you mention the shift code and that tells them you really did. They will credit the month and then they are forced to offer you free months access. You must decline this. When you think, well, maybe a couple more months is okay, they dump you back into the system and you will have to go through it all again. Of course, you may get a newbie at their call center who actually cancels your order and processes it; the standard is to cancel the order but not finish the processing. That way it is in the system if you call back, but if you do not follow up, they rely on the majority of people who do not look at the itemized bills and just make their credit card payments. AOL's business model is based on one thing -- people use their credit cards a lot -- and people are generally lazy. They have automatic bill payment set up for their credit card(s) and rarely look at the charges. Now, I know YOU look at every line item you get, but you are sadly in the very small minority of people in this nation."
Of course, one good piece of advice is to never accept an AOL "free trial" offer in the first place, since those can be hard to drop before the monthly charges begin. "Just be aware that when you call to cancel the free trial, there will be no record of your call," wrote another reader. "In June, I signed up for their free trial period, which was 60 days or 1,100 hours of free service," a reader wrote. "I called about two weeks later to cancel the service, expecting not to be charged. Well, the next month they had debited my bank account for the $23.90 monthly charge. I called AOL the next to day to dispute the charge, saying that I had already called and canceled, but they gave me the 'we have no record of you canceling that account' line. So, I talked with customer service to cancel again and get reimbursed for the money they had taken from me illegally. The women I was talking to said she couldn't help me and told me she would transfer me to their supervisor. The supervisor told me the same thing because there was no record of me canceling the account in their system. So now I'm disputing the charges through my bank."
Trying to get your credit card company to reverse the charges doesn't always, though. "I was unable to cancel AOL via mail-phone-email, and after three months of trying, I called my credit card company to see if I could stop the charge and get credit for the unwanted service," wrote one reader. "Nope, said Visa, they have been unable to recover from AOL, and thus won't allow me to stop or challenge the charges. So I reported the card as compromised -- it was -- and I was issued a new number. AOL attempted to bill me, ignoring my replies. I ignored them, and they eventually went away. Never again, AOL. Never again."
Another tactic some readers reported success with is threatening to bring in the lawyers. "AOL has been sued over this issue before," wrote one reader. "I made certain that the rep I spoke to when I canceled knew that I knew that fact. I also implied that he might find himself answering subpoenas and giving depositions should any more AOL charges show up on my statement. No problem - that was the last I heard from AOL."
Phantom Accounts
What I found particularly interesting were the stories from readers who had to try to cancel accounts they had never opened. "I received a couple of letters from AOL dunning me for an account that I had never had," wrote one reader. "The letters informed me that my account would be closed and possible collection activity pursued if I did not update the credit card information they had on file. I operate my own servers and pay a huge monthly amount for business class service through Cox cable, and I have for years. When I called AOL, I was informed that I could close the account, and no amount of arguing that I did not have, want, or need an AOL account seemed to sink in. He said I would need to contact the AOL fraud department, and, no, he couldn't transfer my call. So, when I called the fraud department, I informed the rep that since AOL deemed it necessary to record my call, I would also be recording the call. I was told AOL would not continue to help me if I insisted on recording the call, even though here in Texas I have the right to record the call even without even informing him. The end result was I received a cancellation confirmation number, and have yet to receive any more collection letters. What I found most interesting was AOL's insistence that they could record me but I wasn't free to make my own recording."
Not all attempts to cancel accounts the user didn't initiate end that well. "More than two years ago my house was broken into and my checkbook was stolen," wrote another reader. "At that time, one of the thieves or their cronies signed up for AOL through my checking account. I went through a variety of things, including changing my checking account number, and nothing has worked. AOL will not cancel the account without my screen name information. It states that it cannot find my checking account number or confirm the account in any way. However, after my last conversation with them, they sent me a letter stating that I have continued my account. This is insane. They have my name and address, and can send me a letter but cannot cancel my account. At this point, all my bank says is that I should close ALL my accounts and open them up under new numbers. So I need to get another bank, and I am afraid AOL will put something on my until-now excellent credit report. I don't know what to do."
Not surprisingly, AOL's high-handed behavior leaves unintentional customers wondering just what recourse they have. A reader who does have an AOL dial-up account recently discovered that for the last three years AOL has also been debiting his bank for a non-existent broadband account. "I contacted AOL and verified that they had been debiting my checking account for both services," the reader wrote. "My calculations add up to almost $1,500 in services that I never received, and to add further headache they continued to deduct for both services for three additional months until I worked something out with my bank. My complaints to AOL fell on deaf ears, and adding further to my frustrations was the inability to talk to anyone that would give me any satisfaction or would offer a compromise. AOL won't communicate with me directly, but I did receive a copy of a letter they sent to the Better Business Bureau after I filed a complaint claiming they had credited my account $90 'in good faith.' I decided to try and take legal action but have been dead-ended by not being to obtain my account records from AOL - they said they had been purged. Yeah, right. I considered small claims court but because of venue and jurisdiction from state to state and the complexities of Internet law it is way too overwhelming and complex for this mere dial-up user. I filed a complaint with the FTC and they said I had a valid complaint, but what they will do with it is anyone's guess. I am still searching for some legal entity that will listen because from my research I know AOL is shafting their customers globally and are somehow being allowed to do it."
Spitzer Scores Over AOL
I canât resist the temptation to comment on the http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2005/aug/aug24a_05.html 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, itâs obvious we missed one pretty effective tactic. Namely, have your state attorney general force them to let you go.
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. Spitzerâs office had received some 300 complaints from New York residents that were obviously quite similar to those weâve been hearing on the GripeLog.
Spitzerâs people had found some particularly interesting facts about why AOL customers would meet with such resistance when they wanted to cancel the service. âThe investigation revealed that the company had an elaborate system for rewarding employees who purported to retain or âsaveâ subscribers who had called to cancel their Internet service,â the announcement read. âIn many instances, such retention was done against subscribersâ 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 âsaveâ half of the people who called to cancel service. For several years, AOL had instituted minimum retention or âsaveâ percentages, which consumer representatives were expected to meet. These bonuses, and the minimum âsaveâ 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.â
Itâs 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 wonât take no for an answer. It certainly makes you wonder just how bad AOLâs business really is when they have to resort to such tactics just to keep up the appearance of retaining customers.
So, OK, itâs nice weâve got one more way to say goodbye to AOL. But doesnât mean that weâve 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.
Hotel AOL: Where Customers Check In, But They Donât Check Out
One angry subscriber suggested AOL should simply re-write its slogan. âYouâre so easy to use, itâs no wonder weâre number one.â
Is AOL retaining members against their will? Though AOL users love to chat sometimes, when they call to cancel their accounts, AOL wonât even answer the phone. And many users have reported that even after theyâve cancelled the accounts, AOL keeps taking their money....
Former AOL user Rhonda Kuhnle described a completely different procedure when she called in November of 1999 to cancel an AOL account her 11-year-old son set up by mistake. A recorded message told her there were no operators to take her call; then it hung up. Her further efforts to cancel the account met with nothing but dead ends. Making matters worse, her credit card statement ultimately revealed her son had set up two accounts, both of which she was charged for. When she finally did reach the ISP, she agreed to pay the bill â as the price of finally being free from AOL.
Two months later Boardwatch discovered the same thing. Though there were times when Boardwatch got through, in a test call performed in January, an outgoing message announced no operators were available to accept the cancellation; then it hung up. AOLâs responsiveness hadnât improved by March, according to an article in the Boston Herald. âCalling several times during working hours, we got only a recording asking to call again later,â reporter Robin Washington observed. Washington said that after his story ran, âIâve had literally dozens of responses from consumers saying they experienced similar problems"....
Thereâs also a bigger problem. Dozens of other subscribers complain that AOL simply continues billing them after they have cancelled their accounts.
And thatâs apparently been going on for years, too. A 1996 article in NetGuide prompted reader letters complaining about billing problems as far back as 1994. And in January of 1997, the San Francisco Chronicle cited yet another two customers who continued to be billed after canceling. âWeâre about ready to shoot AOL,â a representative at one credit card company complained to the paper, reporting a flood of complaints from customers whoâd tried unsuccessfully to cancel their accounts.
One former user said in June 1998, âWe call AOL every time this happens and they claim they will close the account and stop billing us but then the telemarketers start calling every day asking us to re-join ... Notwithstanding our consistent refusals, the account is reactivated and the charges reappear on our credit card bill.â
In August 1998, one former user said, âThey accessed my account after I tried to cancel four times ... My credit union charged me $20 for an overdraft fee.â In September of 1998, another former user said, âIâm three months and counting now and still have not managed to be fully cancelled ... Actually I started trying about five months ago ... someone either canât do it, forgets to do it or the latest problem ... they forget to take off the extra charges on my credit card while those charges rack up more debt in finance charges.â
The attorneys general agreement â put in place in June 1998 â tried to address this by specifying that cancellations âshall be processed promptly and be deemed effective upon receipt.â
But the horror stories continue right up to the present. One former user said, âI have been trying to stop them from debiting my account since June of last year ... I asked for the address of their legal department and they said no.â
Some users also talk of checks bounced because of AOLâs withdrawals. Others resorted to canceling their credit cards to avoid AOLâs unending fees.
A few unfortunate souls who didnât watch their credit cards carefully even complained that they discovered charges for AOLâs service years after theyâd cancelled their accounts. One said the billing continued unnoticed for three years while he served in Kuwait. âAfter I returned I tried everything to recover my money to no avail: AOL hierarchy, Better Business Bureau, Federal Trade Commission, Comptroller of the Currency ... nothing helped. They still have $600 of my money.â
Another user had a similar story; heâd cancelled after two weeks, and âthree years later I found out they had been taking money from my bank account without my knowing.â One subscriber even complained that AOL had been billing him for four years â âand is giving me a runaround about giving it back.â
A few AOL users complain they were mistakenly switched to the one-year-pay-in-advance plan, and are out over $239. Others say that not only were they over-billed, they were switched to AOLâs long-distance phone plan.
Kemberly Brooks, a former subscriber in Alaska, had an even stranger problem with AOL. âThey sent us a digital camera in the mail just out of the blue,â she said. âThey automatically took the money out of our checking account.â Brooks returned the camera, but nearly a year later, she said, âThey still say we owe them the money, with some added fees for not paying the original amount"....
the wait on hold was lasting as long as an hour, the Contra Costa Times reported in November 1995. (And users were still being billed after theyâd cancelled their accounts.) AOLâs spokeswoman told the paper that âWe are aware of these problems,â adding â âWe do recognize the need to continue to ramp up our customer service organization.â
The problems continued, but instead of fixing them, AOL tinkered with the cancellation process to its own advantage. In January 1997, AOLâs vice president of member services told The Wall Street Journal that AOL established an area where customers could cancel their accounts online in February 1996.
By June 1996, the company discontinued it, because âWe found that our cancellation rate was going up considerably,â the vice president said. One particularly damning statistic from the Washington Post shows that in one three-month period in 1996, 1.7 million AOL subscribers cancelled their accounts. At the time, AOL had only 6 million subscribers.
Now AOL urges users to talk to a live operator. âIn many cases, 20 percent of the people decide not to cancel after talking to us,â Steve Case commented in a 1996 press conference. But itâs partly because AOL pays the operator taking the call a bounty if she talks the subscriber into staying.
Several reps have said AOL even had a high quota for the percentage of canceling subscribers they were required to dissuade. One rep even forwarded a memo he said was distributed acknowledging the financial incentive to mis-state the customerâs intention. ââGamingâ might slip by undiscovered temporarily,â it conceded, âor it might be discovered on the first occurrence. Why take the risk?â
We'd be GLAD to help you!
In early May of this 2006 year, I received my Prepaid Mastercard. Before I even had a chance to put any money on my card, AOL got ahold of my card number and charged $19.95 to it. I called Mastrcard and they said it was up to AOL to take the charge off because they couldn't do it from their end. So then I called AOL. After I was on hold for 15 mintues, I talked to a young man who had no idea how fix a false charge. I was on the line with him for 30 mintues, then he transferred me to an older gentleman who repeatedly, for 40 minutes, told me "We can offer you a discount if you like" when all I wanted was for the fraudulent charge to be taken off my card. The sole purpose for me to get that prepaid card was so I could rebuild my credit so I could get into my own apartment and raise my expected baby in my own home. But still, the only answer I got from this man was "I can offer you a discount." I eventually got him to give me the Fraud Department number, only he refused to transfer me. I had a doctor's appointment to go to in an hour from when he gave me the fruad department number, so I decided to call before I had to leave. But I was on hold for 45 mintues. No one even bothered to pick up. It's like AOL's Fraud Department is strictly there so AOL appears to be doing the right thing for their customers. I managed to get a voicemail box, so I left a message saying "I've been on the phone with AOL reps for over an hour and a half, and all I want is for an unauthorized charge to be taken off my prepaid credit card because I didn't even have any money on there to begin with." I left my name and my number, and I waited for a few days to see if anyone would call. But no one did. Now every time I try to call AOL Fraud Department, I remain on hold for over 30 minutes. But I can't afford to stay on hold all day long, waiting for someone to answer. I have things to do, schoolwork to complete, appointments to go to and other important calls to make.
I have seen AOL from my friend's houses years ago, and from what I saw, it was no differen't than Yahoo! or MSN. But you know what? Yahoo! and MSN don't charge anything for an e-mail acount. And they have certainly at least responded with an e-mail, not just ignoring their customers.
AOL is all about fraudulent charges. If you ever decide to use them, you won't be able to get out if you change your mind. The money they charged to my card was a Trial account even, and they still refuse to take back the charge. AOL IS ALL ABOUT RIPPING PEOPLE OFF!!! DO NOT USE AOL OR YOU WILL BE FOREVER IN DEBT!!! BLOW ME AOL!!
[Read the rest...] http://www.aolwatch.org/hotelaol.htm
[More info...] http://www.aolwatch.org/list/0091.html
[Recorded AOL Conversation...] http://media.putfile.com/AOL-Cancellation
