AOL forced to allow dial-up customers to cancel

[zekrahminator]

Anyone who's ever subscribed to AOL dial up service knew how hard it was to cancel. Sales representatives would pick up the phone, spend hours offering customers free hours, arguing with them, and doing all sorts of stuff, just to keep an AOL account open. Sales representatives might have even got paid for every account they kept alive. However, these low-ball tactics have come to an end. AOL has reached a settlement with 48 states (the only two excluded were New York and Florida) that makes AOL promise never to use such tactics again. AOL is paying $3 million dollars to each state in order to avoid the massive lawsuit that AOL would otherwise face.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[ex_reven]

Kill it with fire!

I hate AOL. Even their advertisements suck.

 

[Jonnycat]

AOL is the Mac of ISPs.

 

[Darknova]

HAHAH, we had to deal with AOL once....we had that happen, so we cancelled the payments and had a representative call us and BEG us to come back

 

[Benpi]

AOL is the Mac of ISPs.

lol ya! it's for noobs. My noob grandparents bought AOL, and once they upgraded to broadband, they just stuck with paying for aol because it's too much of a hassle to try to call them up and be put on hold for abour 12 hours.

 

[WarEagleAU]

I had AOL several years ago. They used to piss me off with these tactics. In fact, AOL was my first gateway onto the internet (used Compuserve at school and that bit) Coincidentally, AOL turned me onto ONLINE RPGs and Computer games in general.


I remember the first time my dad was cancelling the account and a guy tried for about 10 minutes to get him to stay. Needless to say, the guy wound up in tears over what my dad said to him. ::


Im glad they got this straightened out, it was a bully tactic at best.

 

[Mussels]

This is why i pay by credit card, its quite convenient to just dispute the payment at the bank, and tell the ISP to call you (written letters/faxes are excellent)

 

[GJSNeptune]

As soon as AOL offered their services for free with an existing Internet connection, my dad dropped them. We got AOL in '92 or so, and my latest screen name was created in '94. It would be a pain in the ass to lose it, since I used it to register for crap for over a decade.

 

[d44ve]

HAHAHAH

I used to tech for AOL..... and they are right. Over on the cancelation department, they would get paid for each account they kept active.

They were known for hanging up on the customers.... they would still get the credit because they didnt lose the account "technically"