You can cancel any time you like … but you can never leave.
One reader passed on some advice from a friend who works for AOL. “Get the name of the person you are speaking with and their shift code,” the reader wrote. “The name will nine times out of ten be made up, but the shift code is the key. When you call back to tell them that, yes, you did indeed cancel it last month, you mention the shift code and that tells them you really did. They will credit the month and then they are forced to offer you free months access. You must decline this. When you think, well, maybe a couple more months is okay, they dump you back into the system and you will have to go through it all again. Of course, you may get a newbie at their call center who actually cancels your order and processes it; the standard is to cancel the order but not finish the processing. That way it is in the system if you call back, but if you do not follow up, they rely on the majority of people who do not look at the itemized bills and just make their credit card payments. AOL’s business model is based on one thing — people use their credit cards a lot — and people are generally lazy. They have automatic bill payment set up for their credit card(s) and rarely look at the charges. Now, I know YOU look at every line item you get, but you are sadly in the very small minority of people in this nation.”
I used AOL when I first moved to Colorado, a decade ago, but after the frickin’ software crashed and corrupted multiple times, and their only recourse was to “rebuild the machine” (my old Mac, no less), I decided to hell with it. And am so glad I did.
One surefire way to get loose of AOL: get your state attorney general to sue their ass.
Included in the article is this little tidbit:
Spitzer’s people had found some particularly interesting facts about why AOL customers would meet with such resistance when they wanted to cancel the service. “The investigation revealed that the company had an elaborate system for rewarding employees who purported to retain or ‘save’ subscribers who had called to cancel their Internet service,” the announcement read. “In many instances, such retention was done against subscribers’ wishes, or without their consent. Under the system, consumer service personnel received bonuses worth tens of thousands of dollars if they could successfully dissuade or ‘save’ half of the people who called to cancel service. For several years, AOL had instituted minimum retention or ‘save’ percentages, which consumer representatives were expected to meet. These bonuses, and the minimum ‘save’ rates accompanying them, had the effect of employees not honoring cancellations, or otherwise making cancellation unduly difficult for consumers. Many consumers complained that AOL personnel ignored their demands to cancel service and stop billing.”
Nifty. Way to go, AOL. Now I have even more reasons to not only use you, but recommend against you to all my friends and family — most of whom are smart enough already to steer clear. Woo-hoo!
Okay, I have just called AOL and cancelled my account. My experience was different yet similar – I was given a cancellation number, and when I asked for the CSR’s “shift code” it seemed to hang him up considerable. However, during the course of the conversation, he also gave me his screen name, which I wrote down with the cancellation code.
The new trick is that they’re sending an email with the cancel code to my old address, which will remain accessible (and looking like a sad puppy, no doubt) at aol.com. Supposedly, free of charge and under no obligation, yadda yadda, “in the hopes that I’d stay on rather than use a free account like Google or Yahoo.”
Then in 2 weeks I’ll get snail mail with the cancellation number. Hmm, I wonder when the billing date on the credit card falls?