Pertaining to the failing business model that almost sunk Time Warner, it may have something to do with the drastically over-rated customer service model and the gauntlet one has to run to cancel service.
Now imagine what it’s like to cancel the service, and then get a bill in the mail five months later for a hundred bucks. And yes, you can accurately interpret the title of this post as saying, “AOL sucks.”
My 1st ISP was Compuserve, which I was stuck with for 3 years (computer rebate issue). It was bought out by AOL pretty close to the beginning of my tenure. So – all the Suck of AOL with many fewer features, for like 99% of the price. They talked me into trying the “dual service” for $5 more per month and I found AOL to be a bigger pain and not worth all the “exclusives” – ooh, that took a few calls to get them to finally back off and put me back to Compuserve only.
Around the same time (about 6 months past the end of my 3 mandatory years) I tried to quit and got a little ‘tude, I ended up losing my card and had to get a new # on the reissue. So they lost the direct debit and there wasn’t a GD thing they could do in terms of sneaking the charges back on.
Actually, that last part of your story is incredibly similar to what happened with me. My card actually expired in between the time I opted for the free trial and the time they decided to charge me for it, which was fine with me, as I had no intention of paying them anyway. Somehow the cancellation of the service didn’t factor into the equation.
I’m sure it’s a mix-up, but the people I spoke with on the phone yesterday were a combination of impossible to understand and uncooperative in answering any of my questions about how I came to owe them a hundred bucks.
This will be straightened out in due time, but even then, I predict I’ll still have a relatively venomous attitude toward AOL.
You talkin’ about AO-Hell?
I’ve been there. We got it in ‘98 with our first family PC. I guess it was nice back then, but talk about lagging behind the times. When I went to cancel in ‘04, it was like pulling teeth.
Speaking of which, here’s an interesting link from someone writing about how hard it is to “break up” with AO-Hell.
Oops, forgot the actual link:
http://marahs-aol-log.livejournal.com/3678.html
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