OT Just need to vent about AOL

Dee

I think I cancelled my AOL account around 4 years ago or even more.

I just got a letter from some company telling me I owed $287 to AOL and if I didn't respond in 30 days they were going to turn the amount over to collections.

Unfortunately I misplaced the letter! (Bad, I know. Handle bad stuff immediately instead of procrastinating).

I spent a half hour and 4 calls to the 1-800 number for AOL. The person answering the phone (after a 2 minute message to get a new AOL service) and going thru 1 minute of a voice answering system that couldn't understand me I finally got a person. The first person was very rude when I asked her to speak a little slower. She gave me a phone number to call the collection agency. Then she said she'd transfer me to another department so I could get more information about my account. At least she acknowledged that I had cancelled the account in 2005, but I'm almost positive it was 2003 or earlier.

So I wait for the transfer, and the line goes dead.

I call back and this time I ask for the number up front, and when transferred the line goes dead.

So I dial the number, and it's technical support. They transfer me and the line goes dead.

I call again and try to get a phone number, I get transferred and the line goes dead yet again.

Finally I go through the whole phone tag one more time and get a number for more information about my account.

When I dial that number, I'm told to dial 101515 800 -- whatever that number is! I'm not about to dial that until I check it first.

Call daughter to vent! We check web -- bad news -- or good news, however you view it. I'm not the only one.

I'm calling my state consumers affair number.

This has me so upset. I can't afford to pay money like this for service I haven't received.

I was a charter member and prepaid my AOL service 2 or 3 years in advance to save money. When I got notified that my charge card wasn't valid (probably an old expiration date) I called to cancel.

How much service at $287 did they supposedly give me without getting paid? Wouldn't any normal company cancel the account if they couldn't get paid?

Grrrrrrr! Anyone have any advice?

antrieb

Does it smell like a scam?

Andy

Bummer, Dee

http://insignificantthoughts.com/2006/06/13/cancelling-aol/

and a zillion more stories like it, just google for:

cancel aol

Dee wrote:

Grrrrrrr! Anyone have any advice?

There's probably a class-action of some kind you can join, go a-googling and see.

SloYerRoll

Hey Dee,

I can't offer much advise on this case. This may help you in the future though when trying to navigate the automated phone lines. I think we all know how frustrating that is.

http://gethuman.com/us/
This site gives you numbers and instructions on how to dial through the automated service to get to a human as fast as humanly (pun intended) possible.
In this case to get to an AOL CSR:
<table><tbody><tr class="white"><td nowrap="nowrap">America Online </td> <td nowrap="nowarp">800‑827‑6364 </td> <td>Press 0 at each prompt, ignoring messages.</td></tr></tbody></table>

Good luck getting this taken care of.

Dee

Thank you for the tip!

SloYerRoll wrote:

Hey Dee,

I can't offer much advise on this case. This may help you in the future though when trying to navigate the automated phone lines. I think we all know how frustrating that is.

http://gethuman.com/us/
This site gives you numbers and instructions on how to dial through the automated service to get to a human as fast as humanly (pun intended) possible.
In this case to get to an AOL CSR:
<table><tbody><tr class="white"><td nowrap="nowrap">America Online </td> <td nowrap="nowarp">800?827?6364 </td> <td>Press 0 at each prompt, ignoring messages.</td></tr></tbody></table>

Good luck getting this taken care of.

Listening to all this "come buy more stuff from AOL" when AOL is trying to extract money from a former customer is enough to drive one to tears of frustration.

I spoke with family members and they all agree it's got to be over 4 years and more like 6 to 8 years since I cancelled my AOL account.

Nikolai

Dee,
Trully sorry about that.:cry
AOL is bad. Bad with a capital "B". B*A*D.
Their slogan should be " Our service it the worst possible ever in every sense of the word - and if you find any worse we'd charge you double"
Go to BBB.

Dee

In the beginning

Nikolai wrote:

Trully sorry about that.:cry
AOL is bad. Bad with a capital "B". B*A*D.
Their slogan should be " Our service it the worst possible ever in every sense of the word - and if you find any worse we'd charge you double"
Go to BBB.

And this is really the beginning, the service was pretty good considering the alternatives. Plop in the floppy disk (yes, it was that long ago) find a number that worked (that was no fun, I must admit) but then you had it! Oh no, I'm remembering all the busy signals now, it's all coming back...

But seriously AOL made it easy and when other companies made it easy and my user interface made sense, I was ready to move on and did. Or at least I thought I moved on! :-(

Nikolai

Well

Dee wrote:

And this is really the beginning, the service was pretty good considering the alternatives. Plop in the floppy disk (yes, it was that long ago) find a number that worked (that was no fun, I must admit) but then you had it! Oh no, I'm remembering all the busy signals now, it's all coming back...

But seriously AOL made it easy and when other companies made it easy and my user interface made sense, I was ready to move on and did. Or at least I thought I moved on! :-(

In the beginning... I was happy to have an access for 30 minutes per day to a no-name IBM PC clone with 640Kb of RAM, 9" CGA CRT, 5" floppy and 10Gb HDD which I shared with dozens of other "users".
This time has passed. I moved on. We're about to have quad-core CPUs, RAM is measured in Gbs, and HDD space in Tbs. But AOL remains the same.
AOL belongs to the 80s and should change - or follow the path of the dinosaurs.
Many others think the same way: www.aolsucks.org

Angelo

check out the AOL post here:

http://www.crmlowdown.com/2006/11/the_10_best_and.html

Nikolai

Good find, Angelino!

Angelo wrote:

check out the AOL post here:
http://www.crmlowdown.com/2006/11/the_10_best_and.html

I knew they're bad, and this one proves it..