Panda was talking about this via her blog.
The nightmare of cancelling AOL is a recording of a phone conversation with an Aol customer and a customer service rep of AOL. The user was simply trying to cancel his AOL account. According to ibloggedthis, who was doubting the authenticity of this call, the AOL customer representative in the recording has been fired.
My husband (Shawn) had a fairly similar experience when trying to cancel the service for one of his customers. Dealing with customer service can really be a nightmare.
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14 responses so far ↓
Wrote: Jun 16, 2006 at 8:41 pm
I don’t doubt it’s authenticity. I’ve had customer service just like this poor gentleman had. I think a LOT of companies these days need to SERIOUSLY review how they handle customers. :shakes head:
Wrote: Jun 16, 2006 at 9:53 pm
Well, I have never had AOL, so I never had to deal with them. Like I said in the post, I doubted the authenticity of it, because of just how ridiculous the whole thing was.
Wrote: Jun 16, 2006 at 10:03 pm
Ibloggedthis, I personally have never used AOL & you’ll never find me using AOL and I can understand why you may have doubted the authenticity of it. Thanks for dropping by.
Panda, my husband has worked Tech support. You deal with irate customer after customer and see how you handle customers. However in the case of this AOL user, I just have to shake my head.
Wrote: Jun 16, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Update: Beta Netscape has an interview with Vincent Ferrari – the Aol Customer in the recording.
Wrote: Jun 16, 2006 at 10:47 pm
I updated my blog entry to include his blog post and interview.
A side note: you know blogging is a big deal when a blog post gets this kind of media attention.
Wrote: Jun 21, 2006 at 12:00 pm
I am on AOL for my business (long boring story) but my husband got an aol account when we bought a computer at one of the “Superstores” because they gave him some money off the price. He had to keep it for 2 years but he was going to need a ISP so he thought he would kill two birds with one stone.
Two years later, and he really didn’t like AOL. We have a Cable connection and he didn’t want all the “fluff”. I called and made my way through the automated system. I got a lady that barely spoke english. I kept on having to ask her to repeat her questions. Even though I had put my customer info into their automated system she asked for all that again but she couldn’t understabd what I was saying. I tried spelling it but we had a definite communications problem.
Once she had confirmed all that she wanted the credit card number, address, and phone number from 2 years ago BEFORE she could cancel! My husbands’ job requires a lot of moving so I had to dig out my old address book. One of two adresses was correct but I didn’t have the credit card number from 2 years ago. He had cancelled that one and we were using a different one to pay our AOL account. She didn’t want that one – she wanted the old one?!
Once again, after digging around I found that but, maybe because we couldn’t understand each other very well – after I gave her that number what she really did need the one we were using now.
Then we went through the whole “why are you canceling, we will give you a better deal, your account will be able to be activated for three months and then you perminantly lose your screen name” stuff.
Finally, I was cancelled, but I only had time for a very quick bite before going back to work because all that had taken up a good portion of my lunch break
Wrote: Jun 25, 2006 at 3:12 am
Who are they fooling ?
These nasty, aggressive marketing practices got AOL sued in the late 90’s, but they never reformed. AOL has also been the subject of a Class Action suit because they continue to lie about their membership numbers. They churn more than any other service, meaning that often more members quit than join in a given year, and then they counted the IM users, which are not paying members.
AOL is the posterchild of bad, immoral business.
In my personal experience, they take unfair advantage of the elderly, who, like my own father and other of his contemporaries, signed up for AOL service, on my advice, as a safe place to surf and do email. Unfortunately, all of them were billed for months and years on their credit card accounts, long after they had moved on to broadband services.
AOL is in the same class as Wal-Mart, only Wal-Mart seems to have noticed. AOL is the parent-partner of CNN and Time, so don¨t expect to hear any editorials about this cruel, heartless company. They have a bad corporate culture, not a rouge customer service agent.
AOL = SUCKS
Wrote: Jun 26, 2006 at 8:19 pm
I used AOL many years ago and had a miserable time cancelling the service. They DO make you jump through hoops. Don’t expect it to be resolved in one phone call. It took me a half a dozen. I’m surprised people are only talking about it now. AOL has ALWAYS been this way! I will never use AOL service again… unless I turn into a monkey, cuz they provide monkey service.
Wrote: Aug 7, 2006 at 1:40 pm
[...] AOL was under fire recently for a customer service disaster as well as there was a recent story about a woman who was unable to cancel her deceased father’s AOL account, nine months after his death. [...]
Wrote: Nov 28, 2006 at 3:34 pm
I’ve had multiple problems with aol since i switched my 8 year old account to free. First when i cancelled in sept they told me it would take one billing cycle for me to be activated to a free account. So they billed me for one more month. Next i had cancelled my premium service caller id alert since I had aquired dsl and they have continued to bill me for this service since I left aol paid. Also they had me signed up for a premium service I had never heard of before that i just found out they have been billing me for for over 10 months. They couldn’t provide any verification information that I had actually ordered this service and the three people i spoke to all had a different story on what the service was, if it was a free trial, when it started etc… a total nightmare. Finally i was told multiple times i could have my cc information removed from their billing system since i was no longer a paid member. when i tried to do that they refused to remove my cc info. The way i see it is when you switch from paid to free they are just trying anyway they can to abuse the cc info and continue to bill your cc for erroneous “premium” services they “forget” to canel or claim you signed up for. AOL Customer service is a total nightmare avoid them if you can!
Wrote: Nov 28, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Denise, I’m sorry that you had such a horrible experience with Aol. Thank you for sharing your review with us.
Wrote: Dec 14, 2007 at 5:59 pm
let me tell you, I JUST cancelled my aol account and that guy that talked to me just wouldnt let go! he was like a pittbull: do you have DSL? we dont have to cancel it, we can give it to you for free!
i am like: they why have i been paying 24 bucks a month since 2002 (i feel like such an idiot!)
he kept yaping… anyway i just told him flat out:
i dont want the account for free, i just want it gone, i use gmail now. he gave up and told me he cancel it and that i am responsible for any charges incurred in my account until its finally effective in two weeks.
stay away from aol people!
Wrote: Feb 5, 2008 at 10:31 am
i cancelled with aol 6 months ago they have taken so much money out of my bank account since then using my debit card details that i am now having to sell my house because i cannot pay the mortgage
Wrote: Jun 11, 2008 at 8:36 am
cancel five month ago had a disk it was a tial bases. Only use for a week than cancel. they been taking money out of my banking account
than when ,I call 6-11-08 they tell me that they do
not have my account under my name after they
took my account number and my routing number they problemly take some more money
out my account. So somebody need do something about this.