AOL Fined for Making it Hard to Cancel Service 446
andy1307 writes "CNET is carrying an article about a settlement between AOL and New York State that includes AOL paying a $1.25 million fine and agreeing to reform its customer service procedures. The agreement stems from consumers' complaints that AOL customer service representatives would either ignore requests, or make it unduly difficult, to cancel their service, according to a statement from Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. The policy probaby had something to do with rapidly declining customer numbers at AOL as more Americans switch to broadband."
I can't imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
CDs (Score:4, Funny)
I found it VERY easy to cancel service (Score:5, Funny)
It's not AOL's fault (Score:5, Funny)
try {
int i = iRevenue / iNumExistingCustomers;
} catch (...) {}
I can't believe AOL got fined for this (Score:5, Funny)
RIP, Doug Adams
Re:CDs (Score:5, Funny)
Not quite (Score:4, Funny)
I imagine it had more to do with the hundreds of thousands of obnoxious free ipod chasers signing up for accounts and then cancelling them.
Re:I can't imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AOL analysis (Score:4, Funny)
It's "losing". LOSING. You know, as in the word "lose". As in "to not win". What's wrong with everyone? Is this word so hard to spell?
Grrrrr.
NO! MY AMMO! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I can't believe AOL got fined for this (Score:5, Funny)
Eat their brains, and the like. Maybe even sign them up for AOL, just so they know what I'm going through.
They just keep billing you... (Score:2, Funny)
Sounds like a fair deal to me.
Re:I can't imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I can't imagine... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Got off today (Score:5, Funny)
Re:CDs (Score:2, Funny)
Re:AOL analysis (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Got off today (Score:5, Funny)
What I want to know... (Score:3, Funny)
Dear AOL (Score:1, Funny)
I have been an AOL/Time Warner customer since 9th July 2005, when I signed up for your 2-in-1 boardband internet/TV service. During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions.
Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative, and seek to rectify these difficulties -- or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office:
My initial installation was cancelled without warning, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website.... HOW? I alleviated the boredom by playing with my testicles for a few minutes - an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept.
The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools - such as a drill-bit, and his cerebrum. Two weeks later, my ADSL modem had still not arrived. After 15 telephone calls over 4 weeks my modem arrived... six weeks after I had requested it, and begun to pay for it. I estimate your internet servers downtime is roughly 35%... hours between about 6pm-midnight, Mon-Fri, and most of the weekend.
I am still waiting for my TV connection. I have made 9 calls on my mobile to your no-help line, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals, who are it seems also highly skilled bollock jugglers. I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off); that I will be transferred to someone (and then been redirected to an answer machine informing me that your office is closed); that I will be transferred to someone and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman...and several other variations on this theme.
Doubtless you are no-longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of those crucially important testicle-moments to attend to. Frankly I don't care, it's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print than to shout them at your unending hold music. Forgive me, therefore, if I continue.
I thought Comcast were shit, that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god-awful customer relations, that no one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose AOL, and because, well, there isn't anyone else is there? How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bastards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum -- incompetents of the highest order.
Comcast -- wankers though they are -- shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy. Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver -- any such activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief -- quickly be replaced by derision, and even perhaps bemused rage.
I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cats litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you and your pointless company. I since
Re:CDs (Score:5, Funny)
Cancellation easy online! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The Tragic History of "me too!!!!" (Score:5, Funny)
Now it's the whole internet.
Re:What I want to know... (Score:1, Funny)
Like sex, only without the mess.
Someone needs to cancel an account they don't have (Score:2, Funny)
The really fun part would be six months later, when you start getting blank bills for the account you don't have.
Re:I found it VERY easy to cancel service (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, it always works. It's just that sometimes that's the problem.
Re:CDs (Score:1, Funny)
Re:It's not AOL's fault (Score:3, Funny)
try {
do_something();
}
catch (MyProgrammingIsBadException e){
throw new Exception(e.getMessage());
}
I'm surprised that's even legal.
Re:I can't imagine... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Nothing but problems with AOL (Score:1, Funny)
Its definatly a loosing battle I feer (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry, but you lost (or loosed) this one before it began.
Re:I can't imagine... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Tesla Coil Re:CDs (Score:2, Funny)
But my friend's father didn't share his sense of humor.
Re:HA! (Score:2, Funny)
That "stubborn" is redundant!
Re:I can't imagine... (Score:2, Funny)
Deliberately misspelling asinine? That's just asinine.
Re:Still $24? (Score:3, Funny)
Unaffordable Ethics (Score:3, Funny)
But you should know this. After you buy a house, you'll need even more money; insurance, taxes, maintenance, furniture, utilities, etc. I have some energy saving equipment that I think will benefit you enormously. It will save you a great deal of money in energy costs. If you don't want to purchase, there's no obligation. Just send me a letter explaining why you don't wish to take advantage of my offer. Make the letter on a 3x5 index card in handwritten block letters in blue ink.
funny story (Score:3, Funny)
I obviously didn't want the account, so I called a few days later to cancel it. They completely refused to close it. They basically told me that I had to wait the remainder of my free month to cancel the account. Not wanting to do this, I straight up told them that I signed up for the account when I was drunk and bored, and I never planned on using it. The AOL guy told me (dead seriously) that what I did was "extremely dangerous" and I could get myself in "a lot of trouble" doing things like that. He said that if I ever did that again, there could be "serious consequences."
Needless to say, I took extra care to watch my credit card at the end of the month to make sure they didn't charge anything.
Re:I can't imagine... (Score:2, Funny)