{"id":7746,"date":"2005-08-23T13:39:12","date_gmt":"2005-08-23T20:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2005\/08\/23\/aol-hotel-california-for-your-credit-card.html"},"modified":"2005-08-23T13:39:12","modified_gmt":"2005-08-23T20:39:12","slug":"aol_hotel_calif","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/08\/23\/aol_hotel_calif.html","title":{"rendered":"AOL = Hotel California for your credit card"},"content":{"rendered":"

You can cancel any time you like … but you can never leave<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-moguls"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9378,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/07\/19\/aol_retention_m.html","url_meta":{"origin":7746,"position":0},"title":"AOL Retention Manual","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 19-Jul-06 6:52am","format":false,"excerpt":"This is priceless -- a leaked copy of the manual AOL gives its staff on how to retain customers that call up to cancel their service. Now, AOL certainly has...","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8954,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/03\/16\/trust_but_verif.html","url_meta":{"origin":7746,"position":1},"title":"Trust, but verify","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 16-Mar-06 2:51pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Brits are making what sound like an eminently reasonable request (demand) regarding a major defense purchase from the US. The UK has warned America that it will cancel its...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26430,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/15\/comcastic.html","url_meta":{"origin":7746,"position":2},"title":"Comcastic","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 15-Feb-12 5:22pm","format":false,"excerpt":"To give credit where credit is due, I really appreciate that Comcast's service line recognized that my account (based on my phone number) had a service call scheduled, brought that up as an initial menu item, and gave me the chance to check the time, reschedule, or cancel the service\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2024,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/03\/25\/so_easy_to_use.html","url_meta":{"origin":7746,"position":3},"title":"So easy to use, no wonder it’s Number 1!","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 25-Mar-02 3:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"When AOL merged with Time-Warner, everyone in the conglomerate's various divisions was told they had to use AOL for their business e-mail. Hilarity ensued. ... [M]anagement got months of complaints...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7633,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/24\/no_to_all.html","url_meta":{"origin":7746,"position":4},"title":"No to all","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 24-Jan-05 12:52pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's one of the more useful Windows tips I've run across recently. When you drag a folder or files from one Explorer window to another, you may get a dialog...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":133206,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/04\/no-more-yahoo-or-aol-just-oath.html","url_meta":{"origin":7746,"position":5},"title":"No more "Yahoo" or "AOL" — just … "Oath"?","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 4-Apr-17 7:36am","format":false,"excerpt":"Of corporate branding there is no understanding. I can certainly appreciate Verizon deciding to file off the \"Yahoo\" name from the assets it's in the process of acquiring, and doing the same for the old \"AOL\" bits it previously acquired -- but \"Oath\"? I really wish I'd been sitting in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}