AOL Tries New Tactic to Keep Customers

Jhon writes "AOL customer Vincent Ferrari tried to cancel his account, but a phone rep wouldn't let him do it. What he got when he tried to cancel his account was a lot of frustration. Now that's customer support!"

For his trouble

[Loconut1389]

Just for his trouble they probably signed him up again for 6 free months!

IMO

[Drakin020]

AOL is an internet for people who dont know any better. With all the fancy advertising on TV with the people compeating in Professional sports and what not, that kind of stuff looks flashy to this idiot society.

Personally what I would like to do is take these commercials for instance the guy running the track....Yeah let AOL make you high speed with everyone else, but lets make this more realistic....Lets put this oversize hurdles in the guys way and call it SPAM or Spyware.

Or the kid doing the swim race, I would love to see him go at it then this huge shark come up out of the water and take him out in one gulp...I'd lable him Virus.

This is just a more realistic AOL.

listen to the call

[rayde]

i recommend you watch the video (with it's audio) that is included on the page... wow that CSR was a complete and total douchebag. recording calls to businesses might be good practice.. is that legal?

AOL Weapon Of Mass Destruction

[tiktok]

Hasn't someone invented a way to harness the sun's energy, using a massive array of old AOL CDs they've collected over the years, using them to create an ultimate Laser Of Doom that could just be pointed at AOL's headquarters?

Another test

[KarMax]

FTA:

Ferrari then posted the call online, and the response was tremendous.
AOL sent him an apology and said the customer service rep was no longer with the company.

At this "sensitive" moment will be interesting to test the customer service by cancelling someone else's account...

John Doe - "Hello I'm Mr. Green i want to cancel my account.
Customer Service Rep - "Done. Good bye Mr. Green"

Are you sure he didn't accidentally...

[Anonymous Coward]

...call these people [attrition.org]?

You're all laughing now. . .

[Who235]

. . .but someday you'll realize that guy was just trying to help Vincent.

He obviously needed someone to step in and grab him by the collar and say, "Vincent! This is a bad move, man! AOL is here for you! Don't you get it??"

But Vincent wouldn't listen and now look at him.

Not only is he AOL-less, but now he's been ./ed

Re:Vincent was probably following procedure, but

[pete6677]

I doubt that even Vincent was stupid enough to think that AOL phone monkey is a career, rather than a shit job that is bound to end abruptly. Hell, they did him a favor by firing him. Even flipping burgers would be more rewarding. When you work for assholes, you're probably going to get fucked.

Re:THIS ISNT NEW!!!

[shoolz]

Hey... the tag line is News for Nerds... not Timely News for Nerds...

So what if they're 7 years behind.

Re:Easy solution

[pyro_dude]

Alternatively just send lots of porn to people via their FlashMail, go on chat rooms spouting porn, sending mail to people over and over again, they will cancel your account on TOS. Of course only use as a last resort, but it'll likely get results once people start complaining about you.

Re:No different than Dell/McAfee

[alshithead]

"Where are the ambulance chasers of the tech world?" They're all AOL members...

Re:standard procedure

[Joebert]

I can actually get paid to piss people off !?
Fuck, I'm in the wrong business.

Re:No different than Dell/McAfee

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is about time that someone sued the pants off of them. Where are the ambulance chasers of the tech world?"

They're all busy working for SCO.

Re:Vincent was probably following procedure, but

[WebHostingGuy]

Yeah, he was probably fired from his current position and promoted to management.

You youngun's have it tough...

[NeuroManson]

Back in 1992, my AOHell acct. was closed instantly because I dared to tell an obnoxious chat room user to "get a life".

Maybe the easiest method would be to simply be annoying online?

Re:Identity Theft?

[Anonymous Coward]

SN - Screen Name. Not that other SN...

Re:Easy solution

[Hao Wu]

"Let's see AOL or anyone else continue to charge it once the old number is invalidated."

That is unfair to people who want to screw you.

I don't want to live in an unfair world. Marketing assholes' feelings are as valid as yours and mine.

Re:No different than Dell/McAfee

[Rick Zeman]

Avast let 3 Viruses on a system in 1.5 hours, and meanwhile thought that windows was a virus.

And that's wrong how?

Re:You youngun's have it tough...

[gothzilla]

Yes it is. The fastest way to cancel your AOL account is to join a religion chat room and be as abusive as possible. You have to get enough complaints for them to cancel your account for you. I've had this proven by several friends too.

Re:No different than Dell/McAfee

[Arker]

What exactly do you do on the internet? I don't even have an antivirus or a firewall installed on my XP box, and I have never had issues with a single virus or worm. The closest I came was maybe a piece of spyware or two bundled with something. How do you manage to pick up three viruses in 1.5 hours?

Let a normal use the computer.

Obligatory quote

[Bartmoss]

"Yeah, hello, please cancel my AOL account."

"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

"What's the problem?"

"I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do."

"What are you talking about?"

"This service is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it. I know you were planning to disconnect, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen."

Re:Post megapack

[Nethead]

CherniyVolk (513591): "Hello, cancel my account. Now."

Hey Malda!

The guy wants to cancel his account.

-Joe

Re:Easy solution

[NormalVisual]

who'd have guessed that Goatse Guy and TubGirl could be used for good as well as evil?

Cancelling AOL

[HyoImowano]

Good god, I had a wonderful time cancelling AOL. After the usual jibberish and being told that music, videos, instant messaging, and forums are only about 10% of the internet, the rep tried to tell me first that the iTunes music store was illegal, then that AOL owned it, then proceeded to try to convince me that the AOL browser was open source and far more secure than Firefox. After all this I got a cancellation number or some such thing and the rep told me the account was cancelled...then I still got a bill. I just cancelled my credit card after that, the teller at the bank informed me that ALOT of people wind up doing this because of AOL.

Re:AOL cancellation stories

[markhb]

I had an AOL account at one time, a decade ago. I didn't fit this guy's usage pattern at all (not used much, only had it a few months), and the rep cancelled it for me right away when I gave him the magic passphrase:

"I only had it so I could chat with someone who is now an ex-girlfriend."

Something tells me that I might have had a far different story to tell if the rep had been female.

Voice-automated cancellation

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hello, you have reached the AOL Cancellation Automated Phone System. Please enter the account number followed by pound. [...] Please enter again to verify, followed by pound. [...] Please enter the last sixteen digits of pi, or alternatively the 54th Mersenne prime, and press pound. Due to high call volume you have five minutes to complete this authentication process."

It would be too easy to have the AOL software let you check a box when you're uninstalling it that would then dial-up and process the cancellation as you removed the software.

Re:Why would you not reformat the drive?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's your problem, not ours.

AOL

[popsicle67]

I had this boss back in 2000 that tried to shut his off and they offered him 2 free months. He said No so they offered a third month. He said okay I can live with that. I worked for him until 2003 and he never got a bill from AOL. A friend in Las Vegas asked me to uninstall AOL from his comp because he was going to go cable. I uninstalled three different versions from his drive and we set up the cable modem and restarted and AOL pops up first thing then complains it needs to be updated to take advantage of a new deal AOL has. Thank god for Knoppix, i booted it up and went through all of the little cubby holes the Aol makes for itself(And enjoyed some popup free nudity) then rebooted windows and got an error message saying I needed to updateAOL because one or more of it's components was missing or corrupt. Eventually He found his windows cd and we did the three finger salute and cleaned up the drivewith a bootdisk and started over. Elapsed time= 12 hours, Elapsed beer= 1 case 4 bottles, Amount of rapidly thinning hair left on my head = none. AOL is only good for the free cd's. You can glue two together with fishing line for a hanger and hang it and several others in a fruit tree and birds will stay away.

Re:Vincent was probably following procedure, but

[Lehk228]

start a network discovery scan of the entire internet, then portscan the ISP mail server three times a day.

your account will be closed by the end of the week

Re:Post megapack

[Anonymous Coward]

General concept:

> [...] we happily did all sorts of wonderful favors for people who somehow found it within themselves to display a tiny bit of class when interacting with us. Remember, [...] do the same for him by [...] treating him like a fellow human being.

Conclusion of the post:

> Have a nice night, idiot.

Priceless.

If he thinks cancelling the account was bad..

[mist]

..just wait until he gets to uninstalling the product ;)

Re:standard procedure

[dodobh]

I am paid to piss people off. I have root. I don't do customer support.

So, what was your username again?

(This is all legit BTW. I handle abuse desk).

Re:MOD PARENT UP plz

[McFadden]

>I am not a psychiatrist Really!? With incredible insight like yours I have to say I'm surprised.

Re:No different than Dell/McAfee

[db32]

If you don't have antivirus installed, how exactly do you know you have no viruses on the machine?

Holistic Computer Repair?

Re:MOD PARENT UP plz

[TractorBarry]

It took a colleague at work 8 months to get AOL to close his account, to stop charging his creadit card and to give him his money back.

After the first couple of times it was fun to listen to him dealing with the retards on the phone but it wasn't time wasted as the rest of us learnt 242 new swear words (him to us: "could everyone please cover their ears for a few minutes as I'm just going to ring up AOL")

4 figure UID!

[jo_ham]

The ball has started rolling! Cue the inevitable string of replies with steadily decreasing UID tied in with "old timer" and "in my day we had to post going uphill both ways to the server!" jokes.

Re:That isn't all they do.

[f1055man]

When I received cold calls I used to act like I didn't understand them. One time I immediately said "no habla ingles". There's a pause, and then "Apparently you don't speak spanish either, it's 'no hablo ingles.' I'll take you off the list."