I feel validated.... on the Today show they interviewed a man who tried to cancel his AOL account and ended up having to demand its cancellation over and over again before AOL's customer service accepted his instructions. But before this happened the man was interrogated. Interrogated is the correct word to use. The phone conversation was recorded and we heard it.
(I looked on the Today Show web site for the write up about it, but its not there...yet.)
My personal opinion: AOL sucks.... it tries to suck everything out of your wallet. And I have serious doubts regarding its business ethics.
I once tried their 3 month free trial service. At the end of three months I called to cancel the service because I did not want it. The customer service person refused to cancel it immediately. She told me she would cancel service in 30 days and then she hung up on me. This would ensure AOL at least a month's worth of charges. Well, they didn't get their money.
Are you familiar with their current ads stating AOL believes all their customers should have high-speed access to the internet? Well thats a crock of you-know-what, too. They want to show prospective advertisers that they have a huge number of customers with high-speed access in an attempt to get more advertisers signed up. (However... to be fair, a large number of companies use deception in their public personna.)
AOL claims to have fired the customer service representative because of this incident. He became the scapegoat. These representatives reflect the policies of the company and its management staff. But its always the little guy on the line that gets the axe in order to keep the ogre living a little longer.
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I've heard many stories about AOL. But it's not just them, of course. When we moved and tried to cancel Sparkletts water, for gawd's sake, it was a major endeavor to get them to just cancel it...stop trying to talk us into taking it with us...and, no, you did nothing wrong in your deliveries and your delivery people were pleasant, yes, and we did like the taste of the water but we're moving, I tell ya, MOVING!! CANCEL IT! Ugh.
okay, I said i'd check and see if I have to register to post and it looks like I don't have to. it gives one of those crazy hard to read words to copy to prevent auto comments or something...
When I first got a computer 8 years ago, it came with free trial AOL. I called them and said will it come on my phone bill? I had no idea (even how to turn the computer on) I thought AOL billed on the phone bill, but it auto deducts from your bank account. They said NO. Of course they also didn't say the only two numbers for dial up they had in Vermont were LONG DISTANCE. Finally got it set up, and thought "I wonder if it stays on the whole time, or just connects and goes off the phone?" kept wondering, asking and found out it stays connected long distance the whole time. $180 in 3 days time! Someone told me they didn't know this till they got the phone bill $1000 for a month!
Anyway, they didn't want me to cancel either. Even without a local dial up number. Said for 50 cents an hour they would give me an 800 number to connect with.When I convinced them to cancel my account (the free trial one to a customer deal) she said "do you want to cancel BOTH accounts?" They had set up TWO accounts to start coming out of my checking account with the trials were up!
What I don't like about the AOL commercials is they make it sound like AOL is the only place you can get virus and spam protection, send pictures, have IM, etc.
The other day I got an attachment from someone who posts on the newsgroup I go on (and doesn't especially like me (LOL) with a virus in it. She has AOL. I told her, she got pissed (but tried not to show it) said she doesn't even have my email address, how could she have sent me a virus? She said AOL provides her with virus protection, so she couldn't have a virus and not know it (sending itself out) it was her email the IP numbers, etc were identical. Apparently AOL grabbed my email address from the newsgroup (google groups) and sent me a virus, using her email account? I tried to tell AOL about it, thinking they might like to know and guess what? NOBODY CARES. It's up to us to protect our computer from email viruses and nobody cares if their email or company is sending them out.
Just mention AOL (and Walmart) and everyone has at least one story (LOL) You need a board instead of a blog for this.
At least I'll find out if this works. If I can figure out what the strange letters are... It has an option for "anonymous" and "other" so I'll take that one. I'm about as OTHER as you can get.
Hey I checked OTHER and it put me down as anoymous
I'm the mysterious midnight (oops it's 2:11 AM but I have nothing special to go to bed or get up for) blogger tester.
I like having them open and one less thing to NOT have to register and remember a password and sign in for!
Thanks for letting me know about being able to post here without registering, 'anonymous'. (If it doesn't matter to you, perhaps you can add your name at the end of your comments... or the initial. Otherwise just assume I don't know who I'm talking to. hahahaha)
I've noticed a lot of company tout their weaknesses, like Cingular ads saying they don't drop calls... that's all I've heard about them from their customers. You know... the ones who are walking out into the middle of the street trying to get a signal.
>>>>>Thanks for letting me know about being able to post here without registering, 'anonymous'. (If it doesn't matter to you, perhaps you can add your name at the end of your comments... or the initial. Otherwise just assume I don't know who I'm talking to. hahahaha)
Okay...
or I could not add a name and let people thing you are talking to yourself (LOL)
But it's just me
Carrie
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