Cancelling AOL. Enough said?

The BBQ Pit
1

Ugh. I’ve had AOL for Broadband for a while. Transitioning away from AOL with cable internet and still using the AIM stuff while I leave. I finally decided enough was enough, $14.95 a month for this service was not worth it. So I called to cancel. (I know that there have been threads before on this but I didn’t wanna bump from the crypt.) The following is true. I’m sure customer service changed their own damn names.

The** first ** person I talked to is named Tanya. I talk with Tanya civilly for about 3 minutes before I get upset. We start going around in circles with me explaining that I want only to cancel the service and she saying that she’s happy to “credit me” for January and February. I said, you’re more than welcome to credit me for January, but I don’t plan on being around in February so just cancel me. Ten more minutes of that ensue. Exasperated at this, I finally say through gritted teeth “I just fucking want to cancel the account”. To which she replies “Click”.

The second call to AOL and it’s Joe that answers. Joe begins the litany of bullshit. Joe feigns communication problems by saying that something is wrong with his headset and that he can’t hear me. I said “You can hear me just fine, as well as I can hear you, I’m not going to go down that road”

“Hello? Hello? Oh, I can hear you now” Joe assures me.

I stop him and say this is what I want. Please give me the cancellation confirmation number. No such luck. He starts yammering on about the service and why would I want to cancel now when I can have their free service for two months. I reply “I hate you”. 7 minutes have passed at this point which doesn’t include the 2 minutes going through the automated system which didn’t recognize my account.

After that, every time Joe talks, I repeat over his voice “I want to cancel. I want to cancel. I want to cancelllllllllllllllllllllllllll”.

Joe says “OK, I’ve got you set up for the next two month which will be free and you can call and cancel after that”. I have had it at this point, my leg is bouncing up and down and if Joe were in front of me, I’d be kicking.

“Maybe you’re not hearing me, Joe” I growl.

“Oh, are you saying that although you use our services, you feel you no longer want them? Because I am showing that you were logged on earlier today”.

I feel like I’m going insane at this point. So I do. I start singing the Meow Mix theme song over Joe. “Meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow”.

“I’m sorry, hello? I can’t hear you”. Joe rebuffs.

“Thank you”, I grin, “could I please get that cancellation confirmation number again, you were breaking up”.

“Now I see over the last six months that you’ve used your account for 386 hours, are you sure you’d want to give up the great service that you’ve been enjoyed?”

“Yes. Yes I do”.

Joe then goes into his final winddown spiel about coming back to enjoy more of this abuse at any time and gives me the cancellation confirmation number.

I quickly realize that it’s going to be a very crappy day when I have to show my parents how to cancel their AOL account.

2

There are 7 important words when dealing with customer disservice morons: “Can I speak to your manager, please?”

3

BwaaHaaaHaaaaaHaaaaHaaaa!!!

It took me 9 months to get out of that cult.

Every time I thought I’d succeeded, I’d find another charge on my card.

Good luck to you! :smiley:

4

Man, join the club. For us, one day AOL just stopped working. We called only to find out we some how magically owed them $140 dollars for “regular fees” or some such. Not, say, late bills and late fees - we paid all of our months on time - they just decided randomly to charge us a little extra. We not only had to cancel, we had to get them to waive their extra fee. No small task, but it got done.

Bastards.

5

Be prepared for them to call you and beg you to come back.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Screen your calls. Or tell them that you’re Amish. (The latter worked for me.)

6

Be sure and pay attention to your credit statement for the next couple months-people have mentioned here before about cancelling with AOL-only to find out that AOL continues to bill them.

7

I must be the only person on this planet who didn’t have a problem cancelling my AOL subscription. I called and said, “I want to cancel my account.” They said, “How about we give you three free months?” To which I said, “No thank you. Can I please have my cancellation confirmation number?” “Sure, sir. It’s 123456789.” I never had another charge on my card.

It might have something to do with the fact that you’re being an asshole on the phone with them. Or perhaps I just got lucky.

8

So you think it’s all over do ya? Keep an eye on that credit card. You may find out you’re not so cancelled as you think.

Years ago I found out the best way to cancel AOHell – bounce a check to them.

9

Uh huh. Sounds like a fake, made-up number to me. You sure it really got cancelled? :wink:

“So hard to cancel, no wonder it’s number one.”

10

Hmm, I wasn’t an asshole until Tanya decided to ignore my repeated requests to have my account cancelled. If they would have just asked if I wanted to keep my service for a couple months and after I declined, gave me a cancellation confirmation number, I would see no reason for the rest of the call and subsequent call to have taken place.

I have called my Credit Union and told them that I have cancelled AOL and that any future charges would be unauthorized. I figured it’d be good to keep them aware of that right now.

11

No, there are at least two of us. I was dreading the call myself, based on all the horror stories. I did get a tiny bit of runaround – the guy told me that I should keep the account for a few months to make sure I had notified everyone of the change, and maybe I’d like to hang on for the two free months just be sure I wanted to cancel? I told him that I hadn’t logged into the account for several months already, had switched and notified everyone long before that, and anyone who has only that old, old address (and not, say, my phone number) is probably not someone I need to stay in touch with anyway, especially since my contact info is readily available online and in the phone directory. Then he relented and cancelled the account, and I had no further charges.

Not quite the smooth sailing that you had, but nowhere near as bad as I was expecting.

Now how much hassle should I expect when I call to cancel my US Cellular account later this month? :smiley: (switching to prepaid – not theirs)

12

What was it you said after she offered to credit you?

Why didn’t you just say no thank you?

13

Why shouldn’t “Please cancel my account” suffice? Especially when after that exchange I repeated my desire to be cancelled? Are you arguing just to argue at this point?

14

It should be enough, I agree. All I’m saying is that if you offer even the slightest possiblity that you won’t cancel, they’ll do everything possible to prevent it. Your comment “Go ahead and credit me for January” was probably interpreted as such.

15

My crazy sister got kicked off for being an asshole on their message boards too many times. You could try that.

16

Why would the manager be of any help? Speaking as a customer service rep I can pretty much assure you, what “Joe” really wants to say is “Cancel? Sure thing, here’s your cancellation number, have a nice day” and go back to whatever he was doing. It’s not his money anyway. Who do you think is telling him to badger people into keeping their subscriptions?

17

If this is correct, I’m not too sure that “Joe” wants to cancel.Look at this:

18

:smiley: You owe me a new keyboard. You probably owe Joe one, too.

19

When I called to cancel away back when, it was a pretty painless process.

Trying to get them to stop charging me after that, however, was much harder.

Trying to get SBC to stop charging me for dial-up, while I was subscribed to their DSL, was slightly less sucky.

20

Canceling AOL is easy.

Uninstalling AOL… that is a pain in the ass.