Ever try to cancel AOL their way!

[ICER]

If you did try to cancel AOL their way...results were null of course.
Now the courts gave AOL a taste of their own doing!

SAN FRANCISCO — Averting a looming court battle over how it has been handling the exodus from its Internet dial-up service, AOL has agreed to make it easier for its remaining
customers to leave as part of a $3 million settlement with 48 states, including New Jersey, and the District of Columbia.

The resolution announced Wednesday was driven by a deluge of complaints from AOL customers who said they tried to close their accounts, only to be thwarted in their attempts or discover they were still being billed for services that they thought had been canceled.
The outcry triggered a multistate investigation that would have culminated in a lawsuit if AOL hadn't agreed to ante up and to change its ways, said David Tiede, a deputy attorney general in California.

California was among the states that played a leading role in the settlement. New York and Florida were the only states that didn't participate in the inquiry.

AOL, the Internet division of Time Warner Inc., didn't acknowledge any wrongdoing in the settlement. The Dulles, Va.-based company said the investigation involved a tiny fraction of the cancellation requests that it has fielded through the years.

"AOL is pleased with this settlement, as it codifies a number of changes that were already made by AOL to improve our service to our members,'' the company said in a statement.

As part of the settlement, AOL agreed to set up an online channel to process customer cancellations. Although it has long been one of the Internet's best-known companies, AOL had previously required customers to make their cancellation requests by fax, mail or telephone.

Subscribers who phoned AOL to cancel their service sometimes were greeted by aggressive customer service representatives who were paid bonuses of up to $3,000 if they found a way to retain the business, according to the multistate settlement. Customers complained that AOL's incentive system created an obstructive culture that made service cancellations difficult.

"Consumers who called were put on hold or transferred repeatedly until they hung up in disgust,'' said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who described AOL's practices as "outlandish and underhanded.''

The settlement requires AOL to issue refunds to consumers who can show they were still charged monthly fees after trying to cancel their services. AOL's fees currently range from $9.95 to $25.90 per month. Tiede said the multistate investigation didn't estimate how much money AOL might have to refund.

The $3 million settlement will be divided among the 48 states and the District of Columbia to cover the costs of their inquiry into AOL's practices and finance other consumer protection efforts.

AOL ended March with 12 million U.S. subscribers, down from 21 million less than two years ago.

Customers have been defecting with greater frequency since last August, when AOL began giving away e-mail accounts and software that was previously available only to subscribers. The decision, prompted by free services from Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., removed one of the main reasons many customers had been clinging to their AOL accounts, even if they lived in households with high-speed Internet access.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown predicted Wednesday's multistate agreement "will minimize the potential for consumer confusion during the transition to free e-mail accounts.''

This isn't the first time AOL has run into legal trouble for frustrating customers who wanted to dump the Internet access service.
In 2005, AOL paid $1.25 million in penalties and costs to resolve a similar complaint in New York. In 2003, the company agreed to improve the way it dealt with customer cancellation requests as part of a Federal Trade Commission inquiry into allegations about unfair billing practices.

Never had AOL in my life  0:....first public ISP before AOL even started up was Prodigy.AOL will be history by 2008.

[Xander.in.the.mist]

If I could find high speed in my neighborhood I would drop AOL so fast... :%#

[underdog]

I keep it on one computer.  It's free and I actually like their email features.

[debbie87]

Swear to God, I must be the only person in the world that has never had a problem with AOHELL. I have had it since 1999. I piggy back it with my cable now and I love it. I have been on several mailing lists and even helped run a few over the years and any time there was a glitch on their end with email etc, it was always fixed in a day or so. Even got a few free months over the years, lol

[xxunluv3dlizxx]

AOL is hell! I had it on my laptop and called and cancelled it, the person could barely speak any english, argued with me over the phone when I said I didn't want it anymore, asked for a confirmation number and they "couldn't" understand what I was asking for, and to top it all off they never cancelled it. It wasn't until a couple months ago when I looked at the bank account it was linked to that I realized they never cancelled it because I was still being charged monthly for it. Pissed me off.