AOL Tries New Tactic to Keep Customers 799
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!"
Vincent was probably following procedure, but (Score:5, Insightful)
stop paying? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's ridiculous! (Score:2, Insightful)
I actually heard somewhere that if you call, identify yourself and your account, say, ``Cancel the account'' and hang up, they can't do anything about it and must cancel it. I do not know myself. Does anyone else?
A similar thing has actually happened with my friend, albeit with Comcast and with signing up as opposed to cancelling. He called to ask about prices and the exact product. After the lady told it to him, he asked her to wait a few minutes and asked a family member about purchasing. The family member told him that he was busy and to call Comcast back later. After my friend told this to the lady, her response was ``Well... what if I gave you another five minutes, will you be done then?'' He responded that he will not. Her answer was ``But I don't understand! It's so easy! I'm giving you five minutes...'' At this point, my friend completely lost it, and screamed ``I don't bloody care whether or not you understand it! I will call back later!'' and hung up.
Re:Post megapack (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Call your credit card company.
Tell the credit card company to no longer accept charges from AOL because they refuse to cancel your account.
If you really want to play it safe then write a letter to your credit card company after the call that reiterates the request and the reason for it.
Re:Post megapack (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like the account was hijacked... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is I am sure this has been standard operating procedure at AOL every single day for the last decade. Everyone that has experienced this level of customer "service" needs to complain to the FTC and hopefully they will investigate. If memory serves, wasn't AOL already investigated for this by the FTC in years past?
Re:Vincent was probably following procedure, but (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh huh, right. Four words:
"My card was lost."
Let's see AOL or anyone else continue to charge it once the old number is invalidated.
Re:Vincent was probably following procedure, but (Score:5, Insightful)
Vincent wasn't unreasonable at all. He answered John's first four or five questions. After that, he basically said "you're not going to convince me, so just cancel the account." At that point, the conversation is over.
Maybe John just isn't a good listener, or maybe it's corporate policy. I think it's a little of both; it seems obvious that AOL CS reps either get rewarded for customer retentions or punished for customer losses. So first you have a corporate policy that encourages annoying behavior on the part of CS reps, and then you have this particular CS rep who just does. not. listen.
I mean by about the third minute of the call, he's just going over and over the same ground. His entire routine seemed to be that Vincent uses the account more than he thinks he does. This is his sales tactic - "sir, would you believe it if I told you that you used this account for THREE DAYS STRAIGHT last week? Do you STILL want to cancel??"
But after the first time Vincent said "I don't care, cancel the account", that's it. You can't just keep saying "no, but seriously, do you have ANY IDEA how much you use this account?? No, really!" Because then not only are you being a stubborn ass, you're on the borderline of doing something illegal, which is charging somebody for an unwanted and unsolicited service.
It sounds to me like you're dangerously close to saying companies have a right to harrass you into backing out of a cancellation. They certainly have a right to OFFER customers something not to cancel, but they don't have a right to either guilt you into not cancelling or to otherwise harangue you about it. It's the customer's money, and it's the customer's credit card. In the absence of a contractual agreement, they have the right and expectation to be able to call and cancel at any time without getting any guff about it.
As far as I'm concerned, only one "cancel the account" should have been sufficient to get the job done.
Re:Vincent was probably following procedure, but (Score:4, Insightful)
Identity Theft? (Score:4, Insightful)
Direct Debt is Dangerous (Score:1, Insightful)
When I left the US, I cancelled my CompuServer account. Did it by email, as I was supposed to be able to do. They ignored it, and kept deducting from my US bank account until it ran dry.
Now, if I did that, I'd be in jail. If Big Business does that, it's just fine.
Re:Post megapack (Score:5, Insightful)
A valid CSR retention attempt might go something like this:
Customer: I want to cancel my account
CSR: OK, can I ask why>
Customer: Because I never use it anymore
CSR: Oh, do you have DSL or Cable?
Customer: No, my phone charges are too high
CSR:: Ok, well before I cancel it, would you allow me to try to find you a better dial-up access number to try, which should reduce or eliminate your local phone charges?
...
Then from here, either the customer says "No, I've had it" and the CSR complies, or maybe the customer says "You can do that? Sure..."
Not every CSR conversation has to go like this:
Customer: I want to cancel
CSR: Done. Thanks. bye.
Re:No different than Dell/McAfee (Score:2, Insightful)
They're all off trying to ban video games.
Re:Vincent was probably following procedure, but (Score:2, Insightful)
I lived out of my car for 2 years getting my own business going because working for places like AOL is not an option for me. Now I support my wife and myself. I'll be a hard one to convince that working for an evil company is justified by need of money.
Re:For his trouble (Score:2, Insightful)
Four minutes (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would you not reformat the drive? (Score:5, Insightful)
a) This usually saves lots of space and you can partition the way you like.
b) You know what you have, and only load what you want.
c) You can then image the minimal "clean" install for later recovery, cleanup, etc.
This method works wonders - my last el-cheapo HP Pavilion laptop went from 63 second boot time to under 30 seconds when it wasn't burdened with stuff I didn't want/need.
Just make sure you have any special drivers you'll need "on hand" before you do this.
Re:Fax 'em (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No different than Dell/McAfee (Score:2, Insightful)
No, no, no. It's that attitude that has made the world the craphole it is today. If people are too dumb to be able to boot into safe mode even with explicit instructions, that doesn't mean the government needs to butt in. The government is already too big and powerful anyway. They legislate everything, even if they have no jurisdiction over it. People sue and win over small things because the courts don't throw out enough cases, and the executive is so fucked up that they try to rule the rest of the world. The last thing we need is the courts getting involved in the contents of people's personal (and personally funded) computers.
Re:Why would you not reformat the drive? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's all rather frustrating. You'd think the manufacturers focus would be on clean, fast, easy to use systems, rather than on near-useless extras that make their hardware seem slow.
Re:Post megapack (Score:5, Insightful)
Customer: I want to cancel my account
CSR: OK, can I ask why
Customer: No, I just want to cancel my account. I know what I'm doing, and I'm certain I don't want it.
CSR: No problem, it's done. Thanks. Bye.
Re:Vincent was probably following procedure, but (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Post megapack (Score:1, Insightful)
I get any resistance, and I will imply very strongly that the rep is placing himself at very strong risk of personal legal expense.
I'm not going to waste my time on a fucking damage control script so a corporation can stave off the bleeding. If I say cancel, you'd better damned well do what I tell you or you, mister phone goon, will be paying not only my unwanted fees, but a large punitive sum as well.
Oh you dont' have that much? that's OK, my lawyer can have your future income attached. Your miserable life just got a little more miserable because you just HAD to tow the company line. Have a nice day.
Re:Why would you not reformat the drive? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're obviously under the misapprehension that the manufacturer considers you the customer. They don't. You're the commodity. Their customers are the other big corporations that pay them to install their crap on the machine.
Why did the OP use the _telephone_? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they refuse to cancel by phone, write a letter and that's it. If in doubt, send it with registered mail. And yes, fellow Geeks, it doesn't even matter if you use a template in MS Word or KOMA-script with LaTeX!
I find the advice to---again---call the fraud dept. of the institution that handles payment for you potentially dangerous. If I had a contrct with AOL I'd sure know how to EOL that---the correct way.
But again, your legal system might differ... Mod me down then!
Re:Post megapack (Score:2, Insightful)
How quaint. Customers stopped being right sometime late in 1998. Actually, they stopped being customers. Now you're just a consumer.
The way it works is they feed it to you, and you're obligated to consume it; it's your duty to consume it. You are not an active participant in this transaction, merely a resource that different competing companies (if there is any real competition) can scrap over. In some circumstances it's even worse than this. Many companies consider consumers an enemy or adversary: witness DRM, Sony rootkits, abusive contractual service limitations, your local ILEC, etc...
Now quit reading this and go watch some advertising on televion (and don't be changing channel -- that's stealing!).
John was definitely following procedure (Score:4, Insightful)
There are two victims, the customer that's put through this crap, and the poor kid on the other end who would have been fired if he hadn't put him through it.
And then actually DID get fired anyway, even though he was doing EXACTLY what he was required to do by his employer, because the case got publicised. But it's no abberation. This is EXACTLY what these kids are trained to do, and required to do to if they want to keep their jobs. The executives who bear responsibility for both of these hells are still drawing enormous checks, of course.
Re:Vincent was probably following procedure, but (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why would you not reformat the drive? (Score:4, Insightful)
8 registers, however, are not. [pcstats.com]
understandable that it's hard to uninstall (Score:5, Insightful)
A good number of viruses do infact uninstall or otherwise disable the software.
So in this case, I can forgive a difficult uninstall.
Re:Post megapack (Score:1, Insightful)
God, I hate comments that start with this line of tripe. Look, you're NOT sorry, and you're just being condescending. Your point of view on this matter is just that: a point of view. An opinion. It is not THE truth. There is no right or wrong on this topic. Hell, if I call in to cancel a service, I will be the one to decide whether or not I tell them WHY I want to cancel. I don't want to be questioned on the matter. And that's my opinion.
Re:Post megapack (Score:3, Insightful)
Service rep: "Is there anything we could have done differently to keep you with our service?"
Customer: "Yeah, my service didn't work after I moved my computer to a different room."
Service rep: "That does sound like a problem. If we could fix that problem, would you still want to cancel your service or would you be all set?"
That transitions the call from customer service, "I want to cancel my account" call to technical support, "My service isn't working".
In Vincent's case, the call would continue:
Service rep: "Is there anything we could have done differently to keep you with our service?"
Vincent: "No, I just want to cancel my service."
Service rep: "Okay, then let me get the account details so I can cancel it."
Re:Post megapack (Score:4, Insightful)
I call with an issue (generally something like "I'm moving and need to cancel my service") and try in a nice, civil manner to get a solution. I know what it's like on the other end of the phone. I worked my way through college as a network analyst and admin and had to field a lot of calls from people who thought that their issue was the only one in the world.
However, what starts out as a civil call on my part ends up as him taking an opportunity to "upsell" me on some service that I'm canceling because I won't be living there anymore or, in the case of my old dialup account many years ago, because I moved to dsl (Earthlink tried to bill me for a couple of months afterward if memory serves). This sort of thing really ticks me off. I realize that not all customer service people do it, and most of my calls actually go really well, but to say that bad callers are the sole reason customer support sucks is just a wee bit of oversimplification.
Re:Post megapack (Score:5, Insightful)
You've said it right there, he's paid to harass. This is not a case of "just a peon". Perhaps not entirely "goon" either, since harassment probably doesn't reach the threshold of "terrorize" that the term "goon" implies. Still, a CSR trying to out-argue, out-badger or just out-annoy a cancelling customer is not completely blameless if the customer becomes annoyed and shows it.
You then give a different example (the luxury hotel) where politeness and class are appropriate. Presumably the staff at your hotel didn't try to pressure guests not to leave, then refuse to check them out and badger them until they gave up trying to stop paying for a room and just left with the meter running. Naturally, a bullying guest would not be welcome back, but this is an entirely different context. It's late, and I forget the debating term for this practice is -- some kind of fallacy.
Before your context-switch, the subject was dealing with CSRs who deliberately try to avoid processing your cancellation request. I'm sorry that you've had to deal with jerks from the other side. But it is not reasonable to assume that a customer who is repeatedly thwarted in their request will not become annoyed and show his anger in some way.
Your argument about banning a customer for life would actually be the ideal situation with AOL -- so in that case, if AOL followed your reasoning, the empty threat would pay off far better than the customer imagined.
Re:Post megapack (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No different than Dell/McAfee (Score:2, Insightful)
And why are you having them install Avast? I thought the point of antivirus software was to prevent viruses. Avast let 3 Viruses on a system in 1.5 hours, and meanwhile thought that windows was a virus.
Post some links to back that up, or did you just pull it out of your ass? I've been recommending Avast to my customers ever since AVG became too much of a headache to re-register. I've had one virus myself since installing Avast, which it caught and quarantined properly. That's more than I can say about Symantec or McAfee, both of which have failed me and my customers in the past.
Since you seem to think Avast is such a lousy product, please tell us what you recommend instead?
Re:No different than Dell/McAfee (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, the grandparent was talking about suing them and you go off on a tangent about the size of government. They weren't suggesting legislation, they were suggesting that someone sue these companies to make them start behaving better. And why did he suggest that? Because frankly with many companies it's the only way to get them to listen or change things. Why shouldn't the courts be involved in "people's personal (and personally funded) computers"? If the software coming on those "personally funded" computers is making it damn near impossible for a normal user to remove it to put on whatever they prefer then people have every right to be mad and demand change. If the companies don't change then they have every right to sue. It's their computer after all, not McAfee's or Symantec's.
Honestly I suspect it will take losing a class-action lawsuit to get McAfee or Symantec to pay any attention and fix this problem. And it is a problem. Even if you have the knowledge to know about safe mode you shouldn't have to boot into safe mode to uninstall an anti-virus program. Most of the times I've had to boot a PC into safe mode it was to remove the remnants of a virus or some particular annoying spy/ad/malware. In my mind McAfee and Norton needing to be removed from safe mode puts them into that category, and I would hope that's not the category of software they want their products to be in.
To be fair I've not tried removing either product lately personally, I stopped using McAfee and Norton years ago. I discovered that the free alternatives worked better, scanned faster and used less system resources.
Re:understandable that it's hard to uninstall (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Post megapack (Score:4, Insightful)
The people who were calm and polite in return got their problem(s) resolved immediately. People who started yelling before I even finished introducing myself end up arguing for 30 minutes. I'd finally get them to calm down and work with me, the problem would get resolved, and then they'd end up apologizing to me for yelling at me. It's a lot easier to be polite in the first place, and make someone actually want to help you.
Re:Post megapack (Score:1, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MOD PARENT UP plz (Score:2, Insightful)
"B-but, in five years!"
"Fine, if that happens, I'll be back in five years, but I would like to cancel the account."
Gah! I can totally identify with the caller. Personally, however, I found him remarkably polite for all the crap they were giving him. I'm pretty sure I was much less polite
Re:Post megapack (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I don't got it. He has 100% control over whether what is printed in the script comes out of his mouth.
Are you saying that for enough money anything is OK? Are you insane? (I guess the technical term is "sociopathic") Does what Enron did suddenly become OK because they made a lot of money at it?
Money has zero to do with morality. When you choose to enforce a policy, you are making a choice. The fact that you get a paycheck for it has zero to do with the moral decision. You may be willing to sell your morals for a given price, but that doesn't absolve you of the guilt.
If you steal bread to feed your family because the system is corrupt, that doesn't make the stealing OK. It makes it justifiable.
Your mother probably tried (but apparently failed) to teach you this as the doctrine of "Two wrongs don't make a right."
Now let's toss in that, unless this is a call center in a third world country, the hypothetical person reading an immoral script was not doing it because it was the only possible way to avoid starvation. He was doing it because he decided he would rather do that than sweep floors or clean toilets or any of a thousand other shitty, but morally straight, jobs that are available in this country. So he doesn't have impending doom to justify, let alone sanctify, his choice.
That doesn't mean a person can't, or even shouldn't, choose to sell their morals in this incredibly immoral society (by which I'm referring to the robber barons, not people who enjoy recreational sex - but that's my moral set), but it does mean that they are 100% judgeable for their actions. It's called "personal responsibility" and it is the exact same thing which we all find so lacking in congress. It's no better in an individual than in a public official.
Nothing New. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:MOD PARENT UP plz (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it disturbing that you need to explain why you are cancelling your online account, and in fact come up with excuses for it. I find it especially disturbing when combined with the other posts in this thread, explaining how they had to cancel their credit card since they couldn't get AOL to cancel the account, and how they spent an hour trying to get the account cancelled.
I think this is a clear example of what happens when the government isn't powerfull enough to force companies to behave. Those companies fill the power vacuum and stat behaving like medieval lords, treating people like as serfs. You americans really need to get rid of your delusion that only the government needs to be regulated; any entity that has power is capable of abusing it, and needs to be kept from doing so - which doesn't neccessarily mean laws, of course; peer pressure works fine for limiting socially distruptive excesses of human behavior most of the time. Corporations, however, are specifically designed to be shameless, heartless and powerfull, and should be held to the same standards as the government, since they are every bit as capable of oppressing and harming people as the government is.
Re:No different than Dell/McAfee (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong approach (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why did the OP use the _telephone_? (Score:3, Insightful)
If for some reason that failed, then of course my next step would be to write to them (as a paper trail is hard to deny), but I personally would consider that to be an escalation, not a first step. The exception would be if the contract specifically stated that it needed to be cancelled in writing; failing that, I'd definitely 'phone first.
Re:No different than Dell/McAfee (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy. Don't open executables in e-mails. Don't view attachments from people you don't know. Don't go to shady sites.
Re:No different than Dell/McAfee (Score:3, Insightful)
Arrogance about the skills of the writers of viruses/worms has gone a long way to get us where we are now. The may be immoral as hell, but they are not stupid. Also the webbrowser (yes some are better than others (cough IE) but all have problems) is an excellent route. "I don't visit bad sites" isn't a defense because with cross site scripting and people just attacking "safe sites" and inserting things can just as easily happen.
I have only really been hit once or twice in years...but I would rather have the AV around saying "By the way, this file is logging keystrokes and trying to send CC numbers off" for those few times, than to find out through a bank statement or credit report. They don't want your comptuter, they don't want your files, they don't want to laugh while you have to rebuild a slow machine...they want your identity and they want your money and being stealthy is the best way to not get caught.
Defense in depth is the only safe solution...smart use is by far at the top of the list, but firewalls, antivirus, intrusion detection are all very high too.
Re:MOD PARENT UP plz (Score:3, Insightful)
The trouble I had can't be a coincidence. I think they're trained to do this very thing. The real crock is that the poor rep got fired for probably doing exactly what he was trained to do just because of the press coverage.
Re:MOD PARENT UP plz (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why would you not reformat the drive? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MOD PARENT UP plz (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporations have money and can buy guns to make you do things. The only thing that's keeping them from doing that is the government. But even without guns, the corporation has enough financial resources to bankcrupt you (with made-up charges which are too expensive to defend against, for example); and finally, since government is so weak, it is pending to the will of the corporations, which means that they do have guns, even if it's their servant that does the actual wielding.
I have no idea how AOL is doing financially. I do know that this thread is full of complaints about how the AOL behaves, so obviously their financial status - whatever it is - and the market combined isn't making them behave.
And why would the market make them behave ? The market is simply a decentralized distribution channel - a matter of logistics, not social control. The whole concept of an "invisible hand" has been proven wrong so many times that it's absurd how many people still seem to cling to it like a poor substitute for a religion.
Re:MOD PARENT UP plz (Score:4, Insightful)
Any story mentioning Microsoft that gets posted on Slashdot :).
Seriously, when this sites front page has several stories about companies abusing their power every single day, isn't it a bit pointless to ask for links to examples of such abuses ?
Remember, the "Invisible Hand" means the hypothesis that, in a free market, people will generally behave in a way that benefits the society since that way is also the way that benefits them the most. This is what all of those claims of "the market will fix it" are based on. It simply is not true - time and again the most immoral, sociopathic and disruptive behavior will yield most personal gain. Don't forget that one purpose - perhaps the most important one - of a corporation is to shield its owners from liability; surely there would be no reason for such a shield if moral behavior would be the most effective way of making money on a free market ?
You need government to stop people from killing each other and looting the corpses, first and foremost. Then you need the government to provide the level of cooperation required to build the infrastructure to support a large enough population that an economy beyond simple tribal gift system can evolve. Thirdly, you need the government to keep any other governments from killing you and looting the corpse. Fourthly, you need the government to stop guilds, local influential people and such from regulating all commerce. And finally you need the government to make money, since without it the logistics of trading become a nightmare - and no, you can't simply say "I accept only gold", since you'll be spending too much time verifying that the customer isn't paying with painted rocks; you need a central agency that can (forcibly) stop people from counterfeiting whatever it is you're using as tokens of exchange.
The whole concept of "free market" is artificial. In no way is it "natural" to humankind; a mixture of gift economy and communism is (in the sense that that's what you get in a society without a central government of any kind). "Free market" is an artificial construct meant to handle logistics of distribution and production of non-critical goods so the government can concentrate to securing the production and distribution of critical ones; every point of it that isn't regulated and therefore supported (forced to stay in proper alignment) by laws is a failure point; there is no "natural free market" that would be protected by laws, it is entirely constructed by them. Somehow, it has become a substitute for religion for this age. Consequently, we have people chanting "the market will take care of it" and closing their eyes from the possibility that it won't; ironically, some of these same people will then turn around and laugh at religious people for believing in an invisible force.
Not saying that you are such a person; I'm just remembering how every story about commerce gets a chorus of "Market force! Invisible Hand! Don't doubt the wisdom of them, ye of little faith!" and every story about religion gets a chorus of "Anyone who believes in any invisible force is a deluded fundamentalist!" and can't help but notice that there seems to be a double standard here.
Well, this became a rant, and my only excuse is that it's late :(. Sorry.