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 never REALLY wanted to cancel... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:CDs (Score:1, Interesting)
If they would put Firefox, OpenOffice, and other nifty open source software in the extra space on those CDs, people would keep them around instead of throwing them in the trash.
AOL would end up getting tons of great press, it would help their reputation, and they'd get more customers just from the CDs that would be in circulation!
Got off today (Score:5, Interesting)
So I told her to say she was going into hospice. She saw it as a game, so she even timed it. It took 1:30 min with the operator, who talked about how sorry she was for her.
That's how you do it. AOL only lets you go if you have a terminal condition.
Re:Nothing but problems with AOL (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not an AOL fan, but to be fair to them, I will say that when I cancled my cousins AOL and he got a cable modem, the AOL software was uninstalled without a problem. There was no problem with the cable modem working.
AOL != Real Media and their deceptive practices.
It is one thing to lie to people, and another thing to be unresponsive. AOL's problems are not that they lie so much as they drag their feet. It is a customer service problem, not a software problem.
Now if they could only get something better than 5k/sec on their dial-up, I don't think people would be running away like crazy. And with AOL charging $20+ a month, and Verizon just announced they are offering DSL for $15 a month, it does not take a genius to figure out what the better deal is.
Even back when AOL was the biggest ISP, many people I knew picked companies like Juno because they charged half as much and ran just as quick.
I never could figure out why AOL became such a large company. They charged more than anyone else. They were not the best or the fastest. All they did was package in an IM. But anyone can download Yahoo IM or something else. Did AOL become so huge because they were the only company that handed out free CD's at every computer store?
Finally (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
If he's not willing to play ball, he would never be elected.
But perhaps making him Attorney General of the US under a different President? That's a possibility, and I would like to see that happen. Then he could continue bringing cases like these on a national scale.
But I suppose all we can do for now is hope.
Re:Got off today (Score:3, Interesting)
Tesla Coil Re:CDs (Score:5, Interesting)
This has been going on for over 10 years (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I found it VERY easy to cancel service (Score:5, Interesting)
About 2 weeks after my complaint, I got a very frantic, angry phone call from someone who said he was a lawyer representing AOL and I had caused them much grief with my "false" complaints. Bottom line, I never got another bill from them, and got two follow-up letters from the FCC asking me if AOL resolved my complaints. Sometimes the FCC works !
Re:I found it VERY easy to cancel service (Score:1, Interesting)
Probably redundant, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, crap. AOL has always been difficult to escape. Years ago they told my company that their service--which could be ordered over the phone--had to be canceled in writing. After we sent them a letter canceling the service, they continued billing the credit card account for several months.
Re:This should come as no surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked at a fairly sizable local ISP (40000 dialup customers at the time) when 5.0 came out.
We served a lot of rural areas- upstate NY; adirondacks. So a lot of people would dial into our service so they could run AOL over the top.
Installing 5.0 completely hosed EVERY other dialup connection on the computer. And a good portion of the time, it would hose LAN connections too!!!
Christ, I will never forget how the phones were lit up for the next 3 weeks.
There was supposed to be a class action lawsuit over that version, but i never heard what happened to it.
And they are rude too... (Score:2, Interesting)
I got broadband a few weeks later, and forgot to cancel rigth away. When I finally called to cancel, they asked why I cancelled. So I told them the truth:
- "It was just a temporary solution until I got cable installed"
- "So you never really intented to keep AOL"
- "Well... no..."
- "So tou're just abusing the offer"
- "What ????"
- "This is intended for people who really wants to try AOL."
I was flabbergasted. And I didn't even complain when then charged one month service because I cancelled 2 days late - even though I hadnt logged in AOL for a month or so before...
Thats just rude...
I found it easy too! (Score:3, Interesting)
And I never had the hassle of canceling the service!
DirecTV Next? (Score:2, Interesting)
Seems like someone did the numbers and figured out what percentage of customers would adamently call to point out the mistake and keep on their case, what percentage would only notice after a few months, and what percentage would do nothing at all. Then if you weigh that against the scenario where they would canel your service on your first request, they probably saw a substantial amount of money that can be made off "screwing" up cancellations. Kinda like that commercial where the guy finds out they can save $1 million dollars by putting one less olive in every jar they sell. Over time the scam makes a ton of money.
Glad to see someone got called on it.
AOL never actually cancels your account (Score:2, Interesting)
My AOL story. (Score:2, Interesting)
What part of cancel don't those people seem to understand? I still years later get calls from them asking for me to come back. I'm thinking of changing my name.
Verizon Wireless (Score:4, Interesting)
Oy, the torture! (Score:3, Interesting)
I found it helped to have the mantra ready beforehand, so it would roll off the tongue with ease. It paid off because I had to say it so many times, if I'd had to think about it, I might have just given in, if only to end the torture.
I was lucky, I think. My AOL account was cancelled, and they stopped billing me. But one thing is for sure--the lengths they went to convince me to reconsider a decision I had already considered at length made me very unlikely to ever, EVER return to AOL. In fact, mark that down as an impossibility.
I actually didn't have too many issues cancelling (Score:5, Interesting)
They asked me why I wanted to cancel and I said their web browser was bloated and slow, and I preferred Firefox. They said I could minimize the AOL app and run IE if I wanted (I pointed out this didn't change the fact I was running a bloated CPU hogging program on my machine) then I said I also couldn't use my own mail program (this is before they allowed the IMAP access, so I couldn't send outgoing mail from my other email accounts since there was no outgoing SMTP server).
"So you want to use Outlook Express for your email?"
"No, actually I use Mozilla Thunderbird."
"What?"
"Mozilla Thunderbird," I said more slowly.
"Okay" the rep said "I have no idea what you're talking about." [little giggle]
"Perhaps we should skip this little interview then?" I answered coldly.
Bing. Got it cancelled immediately.
Now removing AOL, that was the hard part. I wanted to do it immediately, because they have that great EULA clause that if you sign on to AOL anytime after you cancel (which isn't hard when AOL makes itself the default everything in Windows), you're consenting to the reactivation of your service.
I had both versions 7 and 9 installed (for some reason the v9 "updater" just installed a second copy). My hard drive must have cranked away for over 45 minutes while the uninstaller ran. But it was still in the registry somewhere. For months after that, besides the IE 6 "provided by AOL" I would see my old screenname pop up in the most unlikely places when doing filling out web forms or on AOL/Netscape pages.
Re:The Tragic History of "me too!!!!" (Score:5, Interesting)
It was a rather dark day, but then again, we had a lot of fun in alt.aol-sucks and other groups telling AOLers (like those you mentioned, not the mature people) that we knew where they lived.
All we had to do was mention the city (by looking at the post headers) and threaten to give out their address and phone number. It scared the crap out of those 'I'm calling AOL because you're violating the AOL Terms Of Service!' types. We'd often get panicked 'IM SRY PLEZE DONT' post/email replies.
And, back to the 'AOL Fine' subject, even back then AOL was making it extremely difficult to stop the billing. Many people were getting screwed because direct withdrawals & CC charges would not stop.
It took 11 years until something was finally done about it. Even back then, it often took a lot to cancel charges and we'd post information similar to what's below (from the FAQ) in reply to people who couldn't get AOL to cancel their accounts:
http://anti-aol.org/faqs/aas/faq1.html [anti-aol.org]
" America Online
8619 Westwood Center Drive
Vienna, VA 22182-2285
Send a certified letter with a return receipt. This will protect you in the event that AOL decides to continue billing you, as you'll have proof of when you canceled and proof that your letter was received by AOL.
E-mail: AOL used to offer the "cancel online" function at Keyword: Cancel, but supposedly hasn't for some time now. And even when they did offer this service, it didn't always work. The moral: don't count on e-mail to close an account.
Get TOSsed: Be enough of a jerk on AOL and they'll cancel you!
Re:This has been going on for over 10 years (Score:3, Interesting)
A kilobuck isnt enough to warrant a lawyer, and they'll prolly settle just for no bad press.
Re:How to cancel AOL (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't know about AOL specifically, but in general companies can still rack up a bill for you, then just report you for nonpayment. I wouldn't count on this working.
I found the most effective way to cancel AOL, as well as MSN or Xbox Live or any other service where the phone jockeys are paid to try to convince you not to go, is the following line:
You: "I am done talking to you. I am going to remain on the line, silently, until you tell me my account is cancelled."
Their usual response: "You really should reconsider, you could blah blah blah (or something like that)..."
You: ".... (crickets chirping)
Them: "Um...okay. You're account will be cancelled as of the end of this billing period (or whatever)."
Works like a charm. Especially if we're talking about 1-800 numbers (which pretty much all customer service numbers are), and they're footing the bill for you to silently wait for them to not be stupid.
Why AOL got big (Score:2, Interesting)
(Even today, many companies have alternative network dialers for their customers. It's still that tough to get online, and there's still value in making it easy. The future will belong to the company that introduces no-configuration networking boxes that combine the router, managed firewall, and modem.)
The other thing AOL did correctly was put chat rooms and instant messaging into the core of their service. Other online services focused on message boards and treated chats as a secondary service. AOL went whole-hog for scheduled chats with famous people.
The facts are simple. People want to chat with each other in real time. The majority of regular people don't feel confident about their writing. The vast majority are intimidated by message boards frequented by college grads who write well. AOL, by having lousy message boards (they are garbage) and being a lousy place for bookish people, helped create an environment that was perceived as less hostile to their target market of average people.
Also, unlike the current internet, the high cost of AOL actually improved the quality of the users, at least in the chats. I think that was a happy accident for them. The Usenet and internet were great until the mid 90s, then it all went to hell. The exorbitant $25 per month fee and "silence the obnoxious" anti-free-speech policies of AOL served to keep the service a little more civil than the open services on the internet.
These are market forces in action.
Also, for all the disses against AOL software, it does outdo the web in some respects. For one, it has a better caching mechanism, so pages are downloaded only once. This improves overall responsiveness. The bookmarking is a little less confusing, because the authors use better titles. The "few features, big buttons" interface is easy to learn, even when they violate every GUI rule known to interface-dom.
I am not a big AOL user, though I did use it for work, and also played with it for a year or so just to see why it was so popular. It was okay. It's its own thing. Before you get the wrong impression of me, I've been online since the mid 80s, and have written networking software, so, please... I'm not a fool, but just a user trying to look at this dispassionately.
Not just AOL - Tiscalli is a pain as will (Score:3, Interesting)
Loses business (Score:2, Interesting)
Instead, they force people to wait on hold and then argue with some dumb rep. After that, NO ONE would recommend AOL to anyone.
I had a similar experience with Vonage. Their service deteriorated; I wanted to cancel. Maybe I would have recommended that other people try Vonage. But after they forced me to wait on hold to cancel, I tell everyone I know to stay the hell away from Vonage.
Netflix, on the other hand, makes cancellation easy. Do it anytime, on the Internet. Maybe one day I'll just get tired of watching movies. "Netflix is great," I would tell my friends. "I saw so many movies that I just got tired of movies. But I wholeheartedly recommend them." Their easy cancellation policy is one reason I signed up for Netflix.
One tip: get a credit card from MBNA. They have disposable credit card numbers. If you want to cancel a recurring service, just kill off the credit card number.
Re:I can't imagine... (Score:4, Interesting)
The reason I quit was not because I didn't want to help, it was because I wanted to work in technology, this wasn't a "ok we're going to transfer calls from the cancel/save to you for awhile" which did happen on occasion for other queues, that was to be my new permanent posistion.
As for MY vantage point I was tired of getting yelled at. In those days you answered the phone to get screamed at. Customers were LUCKY to have an hour of hold time on the phone. I can't tell you how many times we answered the phones to people snoring because they fell asleep. We'd try and try and try to wake them up (typically it was futile) and that happened several times a day. I can see you are loyal to them but I wasn't. It was a means to an end. Get the college credit for taking AOL's training course work in the support field for a bit and jet. As soon as they said my new posistion was going to be cancel/save, I was gone. There were lots of other crappy non-tech jobs in Ogden.
Ha! This is nothing... (Score:3, Interesting)
then I received a bill for like $200.00, IIRC.
Turns out that my account was somehow switched from BYOA $10/unlimited/month to $10/5hrs/month + $6 for every hour over the initial 5. Mind you, I set up screen names for the rest of my family... 50-hour months were not out of the ordinary...
At any rate, I called AOL, explained that I had been a member for a good year or two, and that the change was obviously a mistake since we had used roughly the same amount of time each month... "why would I make a change to pay more?"
Since I said an unauthorized change was made to my account, I was almost automatically transferred to AOL's fraud dept.
The person I spoke to from the fraud department emphatically denied that anyone but me could have possibly made the changes and was very blunt - I would be paying the whole charge. Oh, and it had already been billed to my credit card... "have a nice day."
I immediately asked to talk to her supervisor but got the same spiel.
Pissed... I called my credit card company. The rep I reached was awesome... she treated it as though my credit card was physically stolen. In effect, she prevented AOL (or anyone else, for that matter) from charging against my account. Then, she marked the account to prevent AOL from making a charge in the event that the $200 bill had already gone onto my "pending charges."
Ready to play ball, I called AOL back...
I ended up talking with a supervisor who was generously willing to cut my bill in half and offered an apology for the whole mess. Mock-worried... I whined that cutting my bill in half was pointless because I had already been charged.
Miraculously, the guy was able to issue a credit to my account for about a hundred dollars... despite the fact that it had been closed for about an hour at that point. Oh, and I hadn't been charged for the $200 yet. w00t.
When everything was said and done, I wound up actually getting the "refund" and was never charged for the erroneous $200 AOL bill.
I'm not sure what was worth more to me... the extra cash... or the sweet satisfaction of knowing I screwed them for trying to screw me.
Re:It's not AOL's fault (Score:3, Interesting)
There are several reasons why you may legitimately do that.
You may be able to recover from the error and avoid re-throwing.
Sometimes, you're calling a lower-level library which throws classes of exception not accepted/understood by classes expecting your punlished interface. (ie. you're not declared to throw a MyProgrammingIsBadException, but might still receive them.)
It's actually not as outrageous as you'd think.
Cheers
Re:HA! (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds stupid, but it's $120/yr... Not too shabby for just having a credit card...
Re:I Take "Retention Calls at an AOL Call Center (Score:3, Interesting)