Nicholas Graham, Executive Vice President of AOL Corporate Communications contacted me to officially apologize for the infamous “Jon” call. Here’s the full text of the e-mail:
Vincent, thank you for returning my phone call. I appreciate hearing from you and being able to talk to you – and to personally apologize for your experience. At AOL, we have zero-tolerance for customer care incidents like this – which is deeply regrettable and also absolutely inexcusable. The employee in question violated our customer service guidelines and practices, and everything that AOL believes to be important in customer care – chief among them being respect for the member, and swiftly honoring their requests. This matter was dealt with immediately and appropriately, and the employee cited here is no longer with the Company.
Vincent – please get in touch with me again in the future I can be of help at all. And good luck to you and to “Insignificant Thoughts”.
Sincerely,
Nicholas
I’ll take it. Thank you very much to both Nicholas Graham and Zach Katzaris of AOL, both of whom contacted me to apologize on behalf of the company. I don’t doubt the sincerity of either, and both of them have promised to make efforts to improve this situation for others.
[tags]aol, cancellation, nicholas graham, zach katzaris[/tags]
I had a terribly difficult time at AOL as well. I called to cancel due to going cable, and was disturbingly kept on the line for over half an hour by, unfortunately, I don’t know who. First he tried to subvert my every reason for cancelling, then offered me not one, not two, but three different rate reduction and access plans. Eventually, my attitude became one of obvious but controlled hostility, and it still took me at least 5 more minutes before I was transferred to a completely different individual (after holding several more minutes) who handled the actual cancellation. It is quite obvious from this latter situation that AOL has specialists trained in keeping you on the line until you capitulate. This is one of the worst experiences I have ever had with this type of correspondence. I hope for others’ sake that management is serious about cleaning up this annoying act. I will never even think about doing business with AOL again.
HRN
He only apologized because of the publicity.
It was not sincere.
They have been fined for this ad-nauseum and everyone at AOL is well-aware of the practice. When you get sued by 3 different states, then you become very aware of the problem.
He apologized for PR reasons.
The same thing is happening to 1,000 people as I type this, but they just don’t have the forethought to tape it, or a website on which to post it.
AOL was sorry. Sorry they get caught.
Then know that this will die down in a week, and it will be business as usual.
I agree. They apologized because of the publicity. I cancelled my account last week after 30 minute of arguing with a foreign woman that kept insisting that my email on AOL, which only receives spam will be kept active. She insisted I needed it. I insisted that I didn’t. We went through a few rounds of that until she argued with me that I use AOL all of the time. I have DSL and really don’t. She insisted that I use the messenger all of the time – I really don’t. It was one of the most ridiculous conversations that I’ve ever had. My only guess is that people just get so frustrated that they give up and pay the cash each month only to avoid the customer service issue.
I too had problems canceling my account, after I signed up for a “free” 90 day membership. Well to make a long story short, I then recieved an e-mail from AOL saying my bank account was going to be charged the next day. I called AOL, to cancel and was told that they would issue a credit to my payment method, and would give me 3 months for free, isn’t that what I had in the first place.
No credit ever appeared in my bank account, but they did charge my account again. When I called and spoke to the cancelation department, I was told that the 1st credit was denied, but that it would be coming in 30 days. (yes, I typed that correctly). I was also told that they would credit my bank account for the second charge, and that it would take up to seven days. After seven days, when I called, to ask about the credit, I was told it could take up to 30 days for the credit be issued. I told them to cancel my account, and after an hour and a half; resulting in my having to scream and ask for a supervisor, my account was cancelled.
I then called my bank, and contested the charges, provided the bank with the e-mails and letters verifying my claim, and they reversed the charges. I should have dealt with my bank, not AOL.
Perhaps you can pass my name and email on to Nicholas Graham. He said in his note to you “Vincent – please get in touch with me again in the future I can be of help at all. And good luck to you and to “Insignificant Thoughts”. I had an account that was next to impossible to cancel – took multiple attempts over the course of 8 months. Each time I thought it was cancelled, charges would show up on my credit card. And, I never got all my money back.
Kudos to you. You were able to accomplish what I was unable to do for eight months.
Dude, your acceptance of that bullshit ‘apology’ from AOL is really stanky. You think these ‘Johns’ act like this on their freaking OWN?
What world do you live in? I mean, you from NYC! Don’t let these AOL virus aholes get away with ‘we so sorry. we immoliated the ‘John’ that used to work for us. That will solve the problem. Hope you is happy’.
Unbelievable. Hopefully you are very young, in your 20′s or so. You’ve got an edge to you that I understand. But you have this 15 minutes of fame. If you sell out, twenty years from now, you will seriously regret it. The way to handle this is to do what that *edge* tells you to do!
Explain how AOL is a virus, how they track every move you make on the internet; how it is *OBVIOUS* company policy to train the ‘Johns’, since I ditched my AOL account in 1996, and got pretty much the same BS that you got. Just a different day, my man.
So do the right thing. Tell the EVP or whatever the f he is that he’s full of s. That the person he needs to fire is himself. Since he and his ilk promote that policy.
And, oh, BTW, don’t forget to put in a word or two about the freaking cable and baby bell monopoly/oligopoly we got going on here. I’ve been where you are right now dude. I did the wrong thing. You are primpin’ on the ‘Today show’ thing and all, and you’ll go in there and they’ll tell you what little, very small, window of things they want to say.
And if you just KA and do that, you’re just another ‘John’ who just ain’t working for AOL just now…
I had the same experience. The only thing I can compare to my conversation with the AOL rep is trying to shake a Sun Myung-Moon cult member on the UC Berkeley campus back in the 70s.
No selling out here, man. Had they offered me anything to shut me up, it woulda been all over the news (as it is, I’m going to be on CNBC and the Today Show today).
I can only take people on their word. I’m a good Catholic boy from the Bronx and that’s the way I live. That doesn’t mean I’m naive or crazy either, but I don’t doubt the sincerity of the letter, despite its impersonality (most of it was a statement that was previously issued).
We’ll see if things change. Something tells me this story isn’t going away as easily as they would like it to.
Hi,
I appreciate your publishing the call and talking about it. I had a very similar experience last night with AOL though. Unfortunately, I just read the article about your experience this morning, or I would have also recorded the call. Reading this makes me feel kind of sorry for the guy who you talked to who got fired. What he did (at least judging by all the response to your article) was clearly in accordance with AOL policy and he seems to have been made a scapegoat because of the publicity. In the meantime, AOL just continues to harass people who want to cancel their accounts. Too bad that they apparently haven’t really learned anything from this.
Vinnie
Saw you on cnbc this am
had THE SAME EXPERIENCE
no longer use the service and will never recommend it
Scott
I guess it is desperation from AOL that is making them do anything and go so far not to do lose a customer in their rapidly shrinking market size.
I was working with Netzero internet formerly, in the technology sector though, and am pretty confident that no customer would ever have to go through 45 minutes to just cancel an account.
I’m not sure if they have it automated such that the user can cancel it online himself through simple steps, but definitely friendlier than AOL.
I wonder what others think or if they’ve faced such problems with Netzero too. With the whole dial-up internet market’s pie decreasing in size, these ISP’s better increase their retention rate through better customer satisfaction, not this way.
Hey Vinny,
Saw you on CNBC today, man. I liked your response when you were asked if your next mission was to take on Sprint and others listed!
Yup, That was my experience also with AOL. I got a woman who wouldn’t let it go. John, the guy you got, was trained to do so, so they sould retrain or fire them all!!! Thanks Vincent, for exposing AOL for what they really are.
Reading Lee’s comments convinces me that I am unlikely to receive the credit AOL promised me.
After she graduated from college, my daughter (with my permission) used my credit card to take advantage of the “free” trial — only so she could download Juno’s software. (She’s Very frugal!)
She never had any intention of paying for AOL service. At the end of the trial she cancelled, but, after a lapse of about a year, charges began appearing on my credit card statement.
When she contacted AOL to complain, she was told that a telemarketer they employ had told them that my daughter had consented to have the account re-opened!
Lies, lies, lies!
Good luck to you, Vincent. Just be sure to check your credit card statements for years to come.
Randy
If you go into any place of business and want to return or cancel anything, they’re going to ask you why. All you had to do was let the poor guy speak and you would’ve gotten what you wanted either way, it’s the way service works and always has been. Have you even ever been outside of your house? You have a blog so you probably don’t leave like must other people who have blogs. I’m surprised you changed out of your feetie pj’s for the interview. Anywho, I just can’t believe how rude your were to that poor guy…and then HE gets fired. Sure, he crossed the line eventually, but only when provoked. The worse thing is that this if so obviously orchestrated to publize your blog. Shame on you. On the other hand, Aol sucks, so smart move on that front.
Vinny
Just saw you on CNBC. Great interview. I would appreciate getting from you the info on Nicholas Graham as I would like to tell him about my own absolutely dreadful experince with AOL. IT is absolutely NOT true that your experience was a fluke. It took me months, yes months to cancel my account and even so, I was being charged incredibly high monthly charges (sometimes $145.00) without anyone being able to tell me why! Of course I never got my money back. Now mind you, I had other internet service from my own cable provider so used the AOL account rarely- I was the main subscriber to AOL, with three email addresses and one son with his. Bills were absolutely preposterous- when I called to cancel (probably more than 25 times, it was ABSOLUTELY impossible to do so- either you got cut off, talked non stop to stop me from talking, asked incdredibly unprofessional questions… was never, ever connected to a supervisor, or they just kept going on and on, bringing up another subject as it happened to you- pass the phone to your MOm…. Hey, I’m a 60 year old mom myself, I”M the mom! Well, to no avail until finally after a 45 minute screaming session with a guy, I was able to get the word in. CANCEL. I received a letter confirming the closure of the account but not until January (21st I think) which still gave me according to AOL, a few weeks in which to “think it over”.
My middle son, who lives on his own and is an actor, also had exactly the same problem cancelling- I was with him in the apartment and said, wait for this to happen today! It did not happen, he had to call again and again. He also was in the most incredible screaming matches for almost an hour. No supervisors available, ever.
Forgot to mention, AFTER I was finally able to cancel, I received several phone calls at my home, from AOL, trying to convince me to reinstate the account, even saying that they were keeping my email addresses for a time in order to allow the changing of mind!!!!
Anyway, I would very much like to speak to Nicholas Graham and would appreciate you emailing me his information. This cannot stop here- it is a total problem and just as it happened to me that I had to absorb these ridiculous amounts of moneys charged because nobody would clarify the situation with me, plus the canceling problems which were positively horrendous, I do not believe that AOL should get away with this.
What hurts me the most is the fact that they had the gall to fire ONE guy when their entire crew is trained to handle customers exactly this way.
Thanks Vinny for your effort. It is greatly appreciated. Please let’s not stop here.
Vinny I saw the clip on the Today show. It’s not yet done with AOL. I had AOL for years till I decided like you to get rid of it. Your 15 min call was a short one. I had to call them back a few times before they got it threw there thick heads I don’t want it anymore. I finally got so feed up with the AOL employees I in a loud voice told them I want to talk to your boss now. I was transferred and started the whole loop over again. I was told “No Mr. $#$@ you don’t want to cancel really“. I told whomever I was talking to yes and if you don’t I will seek legal counsel. Finally, they canceled BUT the end wasn’t anywhere near soon enough for me. They canceled my account but for some reason still were trying to get the monthly fee. I kept a close eye on my account, I was told by friends AOL sometimes doesn’t stop taking there monthly fee. I went down to my bank to put a stop payment for AOL on my checking account. You would think it’s over right. I haven’t had AOL for 2-3 years. I just called AOL a month or so ago, I was told I owe them for past payment. I wasn’t very nice to whomever I was talking to. AOL never really truly goes away. I’m not even going to get started on there tech area. Do they speak English?
Good Luck Mike
Vinny I saw the clip on the Today show. It’s not yet done with AOL. I had AOL for years till I decided like you to get rid of it. Your 15 min call was a short one. I had to call them back a few times before they got it threw there thick heads I don’t want it anymore. I finally got so feed up with the AOL employees I in a loud voice told them I want to talk to your boss now. I was transferred and started the whole loop over again. I was told “No Mr. $#$@ you don’t want to cancel really“. I told whomever I was talking to yes and if you don’t I will seek legal counsel. Finally, they canceled BUT the end wasn’t anywhere near soon enough for me. They canceled my account but for some reason still were trying to get the monthly fee. I kept a close eye on my account, I was told by friends AOL sometimes doesn’t stop taking there monthly fee. I went down to my bank to put a stop payment for AOL on my checking account. You would think it’s over right. I haven’t had AOL for 2-3 years. I just called AOL a month or so ago, I was told I owe them for past payment. I wasn’t very nice to whomever I was talking to. AOL never really truly goes away. I’m not even going to get started on there tech area. Do they speak English? I now have High Speed Cable.
Good Luck, Mike
I just wanted you to know that I had the SAME experience. Thanks for bringing it out. They made it a miserable experience, but at the end of the day, there is no use for AOL anymore.
Another AOL comment if you can stand one more. My mother signed a contract with AOL about October 2004 for 12 months. She died 6 months into the contract. Even though we called, sent written requests, and mailed a certified copy of the death certificate, AOL still charged her credit card 2 months after she died for a $50.00 cancellation fee. Thanks for standing up and calling attention to a company that uses improper business practices.
Same story with me. I did a free 90 day trial period when I first moved to Florida. The SOB at the other end of the AOL Customer Service line would not let me cancel my membership. After telling them that I don’t need or want to use their service, they put another person on the phone. Honestly, it was dealing with Time Share Salespeopl who just don’t let up!!! Finally I said “F*ck AOL, and you and if you were the last internet provider on earth I would start writing letters and going snail mail again!” I let my bank handle it. Told them to NOT accept any charges from AOL and the whole ugly story behind trying to quit my free service. I agree with one of the other people who posted here, the higher ups at AOL know full well this is how they train their staff to deal with people who want to cancel their service. Once the heat of your appearance on the Today show quiets down it will be business, all be it BAD business, as usual.
AOL SUCKS!!!
JMO
Mary
Berfore the publicity they were probably rewarding this guy for his ability to keep customers.
Vinny,
The real crime here was that ‘Jon’ got fired for doing what AOL forces him to do. If you recall he told you that if you wanted to cancel, you’d have to listen to his “paragraph”. Who talks like that? What he was trying to tell you was that AOL forces him to read the paragraph and he could get fired if he did not. I had the same problem back in 1995 and the guy almost cried because I wouldn’t let me read the paragraph. He finally said, in a low voice, “I’m only doing my job”. I said – go ahead and read your paragraph.
Jon also told you that he could “stall” you all day. He used that term which should let you know that it was something that is in the culture of the company.
Get real, do you think Jon really wanted to stay on the phone with you? He was annoyed to.. that he had to pull up your account and look at your hours and all of that, all the while knowing you want to cancel.. He got the short end of the stick. He was rude, but your frustration made you rude and his frustration with the AOL culture may have made him rude.
Imagine if you had to tell someone they “needed” AOL – who in the world “needs” AOL?? If I had to peddle that BS, I’d go bonkers every now and again too.
Bottom line, the apology is not sincere. Look at the FCC website and find all the fines against AOL for this same thing. No employee would risk it after such publicity unless he was told he had to do so. AOL is up to no good and needs to stop. The fines they are given do not outweigh the revenues from the customers they keep – its simple math.
I heard your interview with Matt Lauer and couldn’t beleive that so many other people have had a hard time cancelling AOL. I thought I was the only one. My calls to AOL were also interminably long and by the time I was done, they had offered me another free month of service. Because I just wanted to get off the phone, I stupidly accepted thinking I’ll just cancel the next month, but of course, the thought of calling back and going through all of it again is why AOL wins and I am still a “member”. Haven’t used the service in months. Today, I will cancel and hopefully, due to your story, it won’t be as bad!! Thanks for bringing this to the public.
Ah, I too tried to cancle my acct 2 months ago and am still being charged for it. I don’t even access it any longer!
You go Vincent!!
I think this is article about problems with AOL is great. It’s hard to believe nobody documented an AOL customer service call before with all the reported problems with AOL.
Two quick points:
First of all, I don’t buy the apology from AOL given by Nicholas Graham, Executive Vice President of AOL Corporate Communications. Why would an employee of AOL in this situation (and all the employees in all the reported situations) go so inredibly out of their way to violate AOL company policy just to prevent a customer from cancelling their AOL account? It makes absolutely zero sense. You’d think that it would be so much easier for the employee to just cancel the account. Why would the employee make their job so much more difficult for themselves and enrage a customer when they can just “follow company policy” and take care of the matter promptly. I have never known anybody to willingly make their job more difficult for no reason! And, to think that “Jon” went so far out of his way to violate AOL’s customer service policy in the process is just an insult to everyone’s intelligence, especially when you have to assume their was nothing to gain on his part (i.e. commission).
Second, it so hard to believe that AOL has escaped so much scrutiny and animosity over the years for completely dumbing down the Internet, gouging customers, and holding people hostage to its system. So much rancor has been directed towards Microsoft, but at least Windows and Internet Explorer let you know there is an Internet out there. They give you options to use other browsers and help you understand how to use the Internet. A lot of AOL users still don’t even know how to type in a URL. The easy to use AOL interface may have once had its place, but the web has changed. Through busy signals, high rates, poor performance, and the havoc AOL products can reek on your computer system, it’s just such a shame that people continue to use their service. Well, I guess I now see why. If AOL doesn’t let you cancel your account…then I guess you have no choice.
Bravo Vinny!!!
I woke up this morning and found that my husband had taped your interview on the Today Show. It immediately brought back the heart palpitations I experienced the day I tried to cancel. After approximately a 25 minute go-round with the A.O.L. rep, many expletives on my end (I commend you for your patience) my husband finally had to take the phone from me and finish (another 10 minutes)and he ended up hanging up on them. My rep insisted that we wait for her computer to take the information which was an extremely slow process. Maybe AOL needs to update their software. She said the account would not be cancelled until she could cancel in her computer. I doubt very much that anyone was fired because the script was exactly the same. After we finally hung up neither of us was sure if the account would be cancelled but I did receive a confirmation letter from the them the following week.
I commend you for taking this to the next level. I really wanted to reach through the phone and choke the life out of her. Maybe with advancing technology we will be able to do that some day.
Sorry they got caught is right!
I HAVE A GREAT STORY. My husband called to cancel an AOL account that was in my name. After the run around, the gal asked to speak directly to me. I got on the phone and plainly said, “Please cancel the account.” She then gave me the same run around. I stayed polite and again said, “Cancel the account.” Her response was, “DO YOU ALWAYS DO WHAT YOUR HUSBAND TELLS YOU TO DO?” I was livid, lost my cool, and after profuse swearing on my part and her using the same line, “I don’t understand why you’re so upset,” she finally canceled the account. I called AOL to complain, and I never received any kind of response. Good for you.
I HAVE A GREAT STORY. My husband called to cancel an AOL account that was in my name. After the run around, the gal asked to speak directly to me. I got on the phone and plainly said, “Please cancel the account.” She then gave me the same run around. I stayed polite and again said, “Cancel the account.” Her response was, “DO YOU ALWAYS DO WHAT YOUR HUSBAND TELLS YOU TO DO?” I was livid, lost my cool, and after profuse swearing on my part and her using the same line, “I don’t understand why you’re so upset,” she finally canceled the account. I called AOL to complain, and I never received any kind of response. Good for you.
Saw you on the Today show regarding cancelling aol. I am a computer consultant and the only residential work we do is for business clients. They will ask us to go to their house to setup stuff and a popular request is when they get broadband and leave dialup.
If they have aol I always mention that the cable or DSL provider is now their ISP and aol is no longer providing that function so they might want to consider cancelling aol.
I have seen this same scenerio dozens of times even after I prep them that it is difficult to cancel aol. They will call and after a wait and threading thru an antomated system they politely ask to cancel their account. They are asked why and they reply they have a new broadband ISP and don’t need aol. They are told how important aol is and that they will loose their screenmane *forever* and they need aol with their new ISP. I suggested that clients also give other responses such as “I am moving into a retirement home, I am leaving the country, I decided I don’t want to use a computer anymore” etc and none of those responses are acceptable.
The aol person keeps insisting they need it and offers various discounts and logic why they shouldn’t cancel.
The minimum call I have ever heard was 30 minutes. The longest was almost an hour. A few mentioned that charges still appeared on their credit card after cancelling. One said they even had to cancel the card after making multiple requests and aol started charging another card without asking.
Contrast this with every other dialup provider I have seen where you simply go to the “I want to cancel my service” web page and at the most get asked to pick from a few choices why you cancelled.
My mother-in-law died in the fall of 2004 and it took me several months to get AOL to cancel the account. I only noticed the charge on her credit card after my husband had me take over her bills, so when I called to cancel, telling “John” that she had died and no longer needed AOL, he kept trying to give her a discount on the service if I’d leave it open. I repeated that she had died, and that there was no phone line at the house, the house was being sold, and please cancel it. He offered me another “great package” every time I told him this.
I said, “She has died, she has ceased to be. She is no more.” I tried doing the Monty Python Dead Parrot routine, which did not move him. I was near hysterical laughter at the ridiculousness of the thing.
This guy was EXACTLY like the idiot you got on the phone; he kept me on the phone for 45 minutes, actually asked to speak to my mother-in-law, said she’d have to cancel the account, and then would start arguing with me all over again, “You need AOL, you need to keep it for the email account. Was there a problem with the service?” on and on.
It’s a game, a huge game.
I asked to speak to his supervisor and he became rude with me, and after talking to me for another ten minutes while he “waited for his supervisor to be available” he hung up on me. I called back and got someone in India who was actually polite, did not insist on reading me a statement, did not argue with me, and promised to cancel the account.
The following month there was another charge. I called again, was told the account was cancelled but that they had the right to charge us for that month. I countered with a threat to call the state Attorney General, and the account was cancelled and two months charges were refunded to us.
Honestly, this guy asked to speak to my dead mother-in-law.
My dad has AOL. He will be 88 this summer. When the time comes, I will be sure to tape my cancellation discussion with this company.
Thank you.
Jeanne
My two nieces used to work for aol and they told me that’s how they are taught to respond to people that want to cancel their account. Do whatever it takes to keep the customer. If you lose too many customers, you lose your job.
When I called to cancel my account I was armed with this knowledge and was ready to do battle.
My girl did everything she could think of to keep me. First, if you can believe this, she told me she could not cancel my account at that time and I would have to call back next month to cancel. What?! I told her no. This would be my only call.
She offered me 2 free months. I said make it 6 and you have a deal. No, that’s too many.
After more arguing she put me on hold for 5 minutes “to ask her supervisor if it was ok to cancel me”. My nieces told me this is another tactic they use once you’ve made them mad in order to stall you. Apparently they think they’re really getting you with this one.:roll:
I don’t believe the appology was sincere and I don’t believe John was fired either. That letter of appololy is just another way to pacify people because you went public with this.
i am so disappointed in the way that the general public is vilifying “john” for doing his job! vincent was incredibly rude! we are human beings, people! he simply followed company guidelines for connecting on a personal level with the member in order to acertain their motives for cancelling. do you know how often members call us with absolutely no information to be able to properly verify an accounts info, then rages at us for their inconvenience? how would they like it if we let their online stalker have free reign to their private info, just because the got a little upset and screamed at us?
where john made his mistake is that he let a total JERK get under his skin and lowered himself to the level of someone whose idea of cust svc doesnt extent past the drive through window at mickey d’s! for that, his job is forfeit, he is aware of that, and we all feel sympathy for him, but he screwed up. maintaining a professional demeanor is difficult but necessary. vincent, you deserve to be sued for recording a call over state lines without both parties awareness, talk about breaking the law! get a good attorney, buddy! i wish people would realize how many comapnies who are monopolies in their field just dont care whether they loose you or not. i triend to cancel my cable service because it wasnt working, do you think they even once asked me why i chose to leave them? why should they care? well, at aol, WE DO CARE. our product is the #1 in the industry for a reason. don’t fault us for treating you like your business is worth our time!
Vincent, I applaud your efforts to bring to our attention the bad customer service of the largest internet provider in the world. I admit it is bad even though I worked in the “retention” queue of AOL (or “saves” as it’s called in the company) for about 7 months. From one side, I feel for the employee because he got fired. He was trying, however poorly and unsuccessfully, to do his job and he does deserve that because he was so bad. But unfortunately, there are still thousands of others just as bad or worse that are blindly following AOL’s policies.
The 3 weeks of training you go through to “save” members is really more like brainwashing. They convince you that you really are doing the best thing for the member. Showing them all the great things they will give up by cancelling, all the “benifits” and perks that other services don’t provide. This may be true, and I was actually pretty good at convincing people to stay. I even did it with class and respect, unlike the employee you dealt with. They pay you bonuses on top of your hourly rate for how many saves you get, and with my results, I was paid better than any other job I’d had in the past. But after a while, the job became painful. Not because I had to deal with rotten people – and believe me, I dealt with my fair share – but because I realized that I wasn’t helping these people. I was just annoying them as you say in the recording. I did feel bad after talking to the 80 year old grandmothers who signed up for their spoiled grandkids to be nice and then got screwed by AOL with charges and lies. I even dealt with the occasional deceased member – it is a task to convince their grieving relative to stay with AOL.
In the end, I quit because of the guilt of what I was doing and the “carpal tunnel syndrome” of my brain from asking the same questions and repeating the same script over and over. I think customer service is one of the most difficult jobs there is and if the executives in charge would try it for a day, they would agree and maybe even change some policies. But we know that will never happen and these horrible tactics will continue because they are still making money doing it this way, and not losing enough – even with this bad publicity – to make the change.
Even though I have high speed with a different company, I still have my AOL account, mainly to keep my long time email address. But I know if the day ever comes to cancel it, I can do it with confidence. For those who still need to cancel their AOL accounts, try mailing a registered, return receipt requested, letter to AOL here:
AOL
PO BOX 17100
Jacksonville, FL 32245-7100
In addition, fax the same request to 1-703-433-7283.
Just keep this legal junk in mind. If you miss one thing they won’t cancel the account. And keep copies for yourself as well.
From the AOL website:
“If you choose to write or fax us, please include a brief note stating the nature of your request, the primary billing contact’s full name, phone number, address and handwritten signature.
In addition to that, for account security purpose please provide any one of the following:
-The master screen name of the AOL account
-The last four digits of the current method of payment (for your security, please include only the last four digits)
-The answer to the account security question of the master screen name.
Cancellation will take effect within 72 hours of receipt of your request and AOL will send you a written confirmation. Please note that AOL LLC reserves the right to charge and collect fees, surcharges or costs incurred before your cancellation takes effect.”
Hopefully this helps any other members who are having trouble with this. Last thing to keep in mind – large corporations are brutal and willing to do almost anything to keep their customers. They will lie, cheat, and steal and somehow justify it later in apologies and PR statements. Customers shouldn’t have to put up with it, but try not to take it out on the CSR who is doing their job. Respectful persistance goes a long way in getting what you want.
just a work about the above post from brad, the jacksonville call center was previously closed this year, can you say “disgruntled employee”? the 3 weeks of training we go through at aol are to inundate us in the culutre of aol, yes, OF COURSE! it’s not brainwashing, that’s rediculous, next thing you know you’ll be saying there needs to be mass interventions in which we are encouraged to leave or employment where the atmosphere is one of competetive fun and spirit and find jobs making have the money to balm some sort of guilt we dont even feel! if you use aol, you are in a safer environment, period. facts are facts. we have the right to charge for that safety, but we understand that the consumer has the right to cancel. we will do so if given the chance to do our jobs properly, always.
When I called to cancel my AOL membership I, like so many others, experienced the same exact long drawn out conversation! I cancelled during a break-up where my name was on the account and I was leaving the residence…why I explained that to the guy in customer service was a last ditch effort to just get the membership cancelled, and get off the phone – but it was terrible! Good going, Vincent!
I can’t even tell you how this hit home. My husband and I had the same situation 3 years ago when we tried to do the same. We were “disconnected”, re routed, and argued with throughout the entire process. If this happened 3 years ago I find it hard to believe that someone hasn’t brought this issue up to the higher ups before. They are quite clearly not concerned with their customer service. Why else the extra ad budget. People leave because they are unhappy. It took a hold on their unauthorized charges to our AMEX card, and approximately 3 hours of spamming them to get them to agree. (Only to have them re-activate the account without our authorization, this happen to anyone else?? They said it reactivated when we clicked the icon on the desktop. If it is cancelled the first time, the icon shouldn’t work.Are they kidding me????)
It’s about time. I had an AOL account for two months because I needed dial up. Once my need for dialup was over, I called to cancel. 55 minutes later they were still begging me to try AOL for Broadband, 2 free months, etc etc etc. They asked me who I was going to use for ISP, I told them Time Warner (road runner). They never heard of them. HELLO !!! You are the same company.
AOL is not sorry, John shouldn’t have lost his job, his supervisor and all the higher ups should have because they are the ones telling him to do this. John was not an isolated bad CSR, he was trained to be this way.
I got rid of AOL almost 2 years ago after they so lovingly blocked my account because of ‘spam mail’ when I tried to contact them to fix the problem I was told they would not talk to me because I was not the primary account holder. They would only talk to my husband, who had put me on the account from the very beginning as the person to deal with. When I informed them that my husband was in fact out of the country they asked if I had a phone number they could reach him at. I tried several times to explain to him that he was out of the COUNTRY…Finally I told them that if before he returned in 6 months there was any type of charge to the bank account, I would sue. I called the bank and they put a stop to the revolving charge immediately. After almost an hour of being treated like a child I told her in not such a nice manner that I was glad my husband put his life on the line every day to give AOL the freedom to (you can take it from there) When my husband did return and called to make sure that account was closed, after they sent us a bill for 6 months of non payment…he had a hard time closing the account also. Thank God someone finally brought this to light, because they are good at what they do..AOL may say that this is not they way they operate, but I’m sure there is an entire course these people take on how to act this way.
I was getting ready for work when I heard the conversation on the Today Show between you and AOL. It immediatley caught my attention (and put a pit in my stomach) as I have had not 1 but 3 identical conversations with 3 different AOL staff members all using the same physco bable “I’m trying to help you” yadda yadda yadda. They don’t take “no” for an answer. If AOL fired 1 guy, they would have to fire all of their Customer service staff because I believe they have been trained to manipulate the public into submission. I’m now down to $4.95 a month as I gave in to them.. . weak on my part. I’m going to sign the “cancel request form” on the back of my last “confirmation of continued service”. I’m so glad you have started the ball rolling in alerting the public. For all of you out there who want to cancel, sign a form to cancel rather than call in. It works and you won’t have to go through the demeaning behaviour of AOL customer relations staff on the phone.
I had a very similar experience with AOL when I called to inquire about the price for their high-speed service. The female “CSR” I spoke too would not stop trying to sell me the same crap services over and over after I told her I was not interested because of the price. So I ultimately had to just hang up on her while she was still trying to sell crap to me. That is when I decided that I would never do business with or call AOL ever again.
I saw the segment on CNBC about the troubles with cancelling with AOL. About 6 months ago I went through the same thing when trying to cancel my AOL account. I went though a recording and then put on hold for about 1/2 hour before I got to speak with a customer service representative. When asking to cancel my account I got the 1000 questions on why. After they heard my reason of I don’t use it enough for what I am paying a month. I was getting offered free trial periods and then discounted rates. After all was being said I told the representative that I was not interested and I was about to hang up the phone so please cancel the account. The representative then got the last word in saying that I will receive an email about my free trial period. I then had to go though everything again. With all said and done I went through HELL trying to cancel this account and never thought I was only one. These guys are trained to get the member not to cancel and I believe that the guy John who was let go was doing his job. When hearing all of the same complaints about cancelling your AOL account why does AOL still have a customer service department? Shouldn’t all these representatives be fired!!
My story is the same as yours, Vincent. I signed up with my cable company and no longer wanted AOL. I was totally taken by suprise when the AOL rep started hammering me with how many hours of use I had, I shouldn’t cancel because my Time Warner Cable Company owned AOL, I needed to retain my email address. I responded to his every comment with ‘I don’t care, I just called to cancel my account.’ Like the others, my call lasted around a half hour. In a week or so, I did receive my cancellation confirmation letter. In reading the other comments, I think I may have been charged for an extra month of access for no reason but it was too long ago (last March) for me to remember those exact details. Hallelujah, I did manage to get cancelled!
I, too, believe that ‘John’ wasn’t fired. That was just one more shot at you, the subscriber, to continue the guilt trip.
Just saw you on the Today webcast…excellent job!
I myself had a similarly frustrating call with AOL. My mother recently needed to cancel AOL, and I told her that her best line of defense would be to tell them she is moving to a remote African village with no electricity or phone lines. Funny that you need a good story or defense to get customer service!
Thanks for sheding light to this all too common nightmare!!
AOL continued to charge me for two accounts for almost two years even though I had cancelled both. I finally had to go to my bank to complete an unauthorized draft and cancel my bank account as well. I was never refunded my money. As far as that bogus apology goes, “john” was just doing his job. Why would everyone who calls AOL to cancel their accounts also always get the runaround? that’s what employees are trained to do. john was doing his job, to keep you from cancelling your account. after calling on numerous occasions, i’ve been told the same thing over and over again, how much usage i have, how they want me to continue the account, questions about why i want to cancel the account, etc., etc.
Please forward my email to them as well. I tried to cancel my account a few years ago and got the same run around with a rude person that kept offering me free days. Not only that but they continued to charge my checking account for 6 months after I cancelled. After numerous calls to them I finally, FINALLY got my money back. However, about 6 months after that I got a bill in the mail for $80 that I owed them for months that they kept charging my account. I called them once again and was told they didn’t cancel my account when I told them to that’s why these charges had racked up. My precise words were “so I have to pay because someone there didn’t do their job and cancel my account when I requested it.” I was told yes. I haven’t paid them to this day neither will I. My parents had the same problem they were charged over and over again as well. So please, if their so “customer oriented” give them my email and have them contact me. Good for you i’m proud of you for standing up to the big “corporate” jerks.
I was actually employed at AOL for about 2 months, six weeks was training as a “Retention Specialist.” Even as an employee people working there don’t like what they do. That’s why AOL has such a high turnover rate and pays their retentionists 14.00 an hour and up PLUS bonuses for every person who calls in to cancel but doesn’t. One of the easiest ways that employees get what’s called a “save” is to offer more free months. They get paid when a person stays for 24 hours and again if they stay for 90 days. They’re motto is to be assumptive, don’t let the customer cancel on you is what they tell you. If the employee doesn’t save at least 60% of their calls, their job is in serious jeopardy. To illustrate how high the turnover rate is, at the beginning of my training, my class had 26 people in it. When I quit, about two months later, there were 3 people left from my class. I agree that the AOL apology was for publicity reasons and also firmly believe that this kind of practice will continue for this company. I promise you, this is more disappointing to the people who get brainwashed into thinking that what they’re doing is right, all for the almighty buck.
As a former employee of AOL, let me tell everyone out there good luck with a smooth AOL cancellation. I worked as a “Retention Specialist.” Otherwise known as the jerk on the other end of the line when you call to cancel. If an employee in this department doesn’t “save” at least 60% of the people that call to cancel, their job is in serious jeopardy. If the person stays for 24 hours and then 90 days, the employee gets bonuses for that person. Sometimes up to $3 per save. Now you know why they’re so intent on keeping their customers. I agree that the apology was just for publicity and seriously doubt that the company has changed their policy on cancellations.
I tried to cancel a couple of years ago and went through a lot of the same hassle. The account was being paid by automatic charges to my credit card but the card expired shortly after I cancelled.
About 4 months later I received a huge bill for the previous months’ service, with a threat that it would go to a collection agency. It took me forever to get them off my back. Even though I had not used the account, since I figured it was cancelled, they said there was considerable use on the account.
They also told me that I should have gotten the name of the individual who took my cancellation – as if a real name was ever given!
I truly doubt that anyone was fired over Vincent’s situation. Thanks Vincent for getting it out there!
Hi,
Love the story. My friend had EXACTLY the same problem, but he ultimately woosed out, and still has his AOL account (but just doesn’t use it (smart, huh)). This leads me to believe that AOL’s apology is disingenuous. In your interviews, you have been asked if you regret that you got the guy fired. Are you specifically aware that a) you and your incident are why the guy got fired, or that b) he didn’t quit or get fired for some other reason. The letter from AOL states, “This matter was dealt with immediately and appropriately, and the employee cited here is no longer with the Company.” “No longer with the company” does not say “Because of this incident”. He may have been fired, or quit, and perhaps for other reasons. He also may have been the unlucky scapegoat of this attention to THE COMPANY’S tactics.
Either way, he may no longer be there coincidentally. Your regret that he got fired makes it almost seem that the company is getting off the hook as if it was some anomoly or rogue employee, as opposed to saying, “Well, since others have had the same experience as I have, I assume if John was let go he was just a scapegoat, even though he was just doing what he was told to do, and towing the company line.”
I think this may highlight that the corporation is responsible for this shoddy CRM and their PR “after-the-fact” is insincere.
Your current dialogue is almost forgiving. Don’t let these bastards off so easy!
Thanks.
I think it’s shameful to fire a telephone representative for behavior that was obviously encouraged by his superiors. This man was obviously trained not to take “cancel my account” seriously, and that training is a very high level AOL policy.
How many people do you suppose call to cancel and wind up with another month or more, simply because they don’t want to be argumentative? This is good policy for subscription services, but bad policy for consumers. I believe that the FTC should get on this immediately, it’s at least as bad as telemarketing and probably costs consumers as much as identity theft.
I had similar trouble trying to cancel a credit card account with Discover a few years back. The second I said I was going to cancel, they transferred my call to another department, where I left the harried front line CS rep for a cool customer with a (can you believe it) Texas – Bostonian accent. He instantly began assaulting me from all sides, trying to draw me into an argument, trying to make me understand how it made bad basic financial sense to cancel this card (that I rarely used because of its high rates, high fees and tendency to ignore my automatic payments). I finally got him to cut the card by saying, “Look, I agree with you. It’s probably a bad idea. But now that you’re trying to convince me not to cancel, I’m more adamant about it that ever. I can’t lose this argument. I guess I’m just an asshole like that.”
i currently have aol, but it is just because my husband wants them. i can’t stand aol. about 3 years ago, we got a gateway computer with 1 yr free aol. my husband already had another account set up to check his email so we used that log in name thinking we had a free year. two months and 150.00 debited from our account later, we were advised that we had to open a new account to get the 1 yr free. i begged them to credit the 150.00 and they refused. i asked to speak to a supervisor and i was advised they did not have any. that’s right. not that one was not available, i was told they did not have any. i was so mad, i was ready to explode and we still never got any of our money back.
Yeah I agree with one of the comments that the executive only apologized because this came out in the news. We were a victim too of this practice by AOL. Last year we canceled our account and the CSR said ok and that we could still use the service until the end of that period (month) cause we already paid for it. Guess what happened the following month… instead of cancelling our service they charged us again, through automatic debit of my account, for another month. When I called to complain they said because we didn’t call them “again” to cancel. So we argued that that was the reason for my call the previous month. To make a long story short they wouldn’t cancel the payment but this time I insisted and requested a cancelation number. So all of you out there, in case you don’t know always ask for a cancelation number.
I too had a nightmare with AOL if fact I cancelled my subscription after a long argument and they continued to debit my credit card which caused more phone calls and similar treatment
I finally changed my credit card number with b of a and they somehow followed to the new number it wasnt until I threatened B of A with a complaint to the feds that they stopped honoring the debit
by the way Rapsody does the same thing
the truth is that AOL probably gives incentives to phone employees who convince customers to stay on nobody gives all that grief without some sort of monetary carrot you are my hero
Everybody has this problem with AOL. The thing everyone needs to do is never subscribe to it again. And tell everyone you know the same thing.
Dennis from NY Says:
June 21st, 2006 at 7:22 pm
Vincent , saw you on NBC Today show thanks for taping and bringing to light the “in MY opinion the practices” of AOL in refusing to cancel a person’s account, yes AOL will blame the customer service rep
who tried to talk you into staying , yes he deserved to be let go not fired as i truly believe he was just carrying out the AOL managements desires
and philosophy don’t let them cancel no matter what! As for me yes in 2001
my daughter graduated from USC in LA and I called and she called not once not twice but several times to no avail until i threatened a lawsuit. to cancel her account . Net result was they still stiffed my daughter’s credit card account for about $50.00
I’d like you, since you are somewhat of a crusader for the AOL cancel problem to organize us at this blog into a class action lawsuit against aol
to re-imburse all aol customers wrongly billed and not cancelled when they asked to. OH by the way if your listening AOL you got me for 50.00 but you lost many many more dollars from me in the long run as i don’t do business with you or your parent company if i can help it.
Vincent,
Your experience was identical to mine… except I cancelled my AOL account FOUR YEARS AGO! John is not a rogue employee and Nicholas and Zach are no different than Ken and Jeffrey. Denial is not just a river in Africa! They can fire all the John’s they want but until you get rid of the management that fosters and promotes this kind of behavior, nothing will change. AOL is aware that they have the most uninformed and, unfortunately, some of the least enlightened online consumers. They are the easiest to confuse, confound and ultimately con into keeping their account. Honestly, how many others decided that $15 a month was worth not having to deal with the hassle of dealing with a “John”? Too many, and that’s why the “policy” remains. I guarantee that if you follow up in 3 days, 3 weeks or 3 months you will see the exact same treatment and that the sincerity that Nicholas proffesses is nothing but smoke and mirrors…
I just tried to cancel AOL yesterday and got the same response all of you did. However, I’ve cancelled AOL before so was prepared for the long list of excuse that they were going to throw at me. I got a hold of a lady and told her I wanted to cancel, then she went on and on about why I was cancelling, I was using AOL for so much length of time. I told her plain and simple, I didn’t need it anymore. She kept goin…after about 10 minute she started in on her different rate plan. I told her to stop right there, I wanted to cancel and do not need to hear the rate plan. She said it was her job to tell me, and I told her, that’s fine, you can pretend you already told me, but I do not need to listen to it. So she kept trying tell me the rate plan, as my voice started to show a bit of annoyance. She then had the nerve to tell me that if I didn’t calm down that she was going to hang up on me. I told her that I was not being mean yet, and that I was simply stating I do not need to hear the rate plan. So as she started to get ruder than the beginning, I told her I want it cancelled and just hung up. I called back again after 1 min. and got someome else. She asked me when had I called, I said about a few minutes ago. She said my account was already cancelled and if I wanted the cancellation # which she gave to me. I thanked her and hung up. Then I tried to log into AOL, and it showed that the account was cancelled, however it popped up a message asking if I wanted to reactivate the account. I just clicked “No”. So here is an advice to those that want to cancel, call in…and tell them you want to cancel the account. Wait a few minute and then just state you want cancel and hang up. Then call them back again, you will usually get someone else. Check to see if your account was really cancelled, if it is get the Cancellation #. Then try to log into AOL to make sure that the account is actually gone. Of course for the next few months I’m going to keep an eye out on my bank statement to make sure that charges aren’t going through, because it would be fraud to charge me for services that I am not receiving, since I can’t get onto AOL anymore.
“Zero tolerance” for abuse my butt. This is COMPANY POLICY! I was a charter member of AOL back in the old 2400 baud dialup days when there were only 400,000 members total. It was a VERY different company then that really did believe in customer service. I had 2 or 3 accounts over a period of as many years. It didn’t take longer than 5 minutes ONLINE to cancel an account then. It was all automated and you did it yourself!
After they became huge and successful they gradually made it more and more difficult to cancel the service. It now takes numerous call and/or threats of legal action to cancel. They hope you’ll just give up and stop fighting (You will be assimilated, resistance is futile)!
Also, as others have mentioned, the software can actually damage your Windows registry making life after AOL miserable even if you do manage to cancel. It can take hours to clean up the mess it leaves behind, even for a computer tech.
Here’s how to get out with as little headache and some satisfaction as well – Tell them to cancel the account, and when (not if) they start philibustering you, tell them LOUDLY AND FIRMLY that the matter is NOT up for discussion, you will NOT answer any questions and you WILL file a consumer fraud complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and have your bank reverse the charges on your card if they continue charging you. Record the conversation if possible, log the time and date, then follow up on your promises if you get charged again.
A year ago, I also cancelled. It was crazy!!! “Was it something we said, did. Can we offer you a free trial for 30 days. Tell us exactly why you want to cancel.” It just wenr on and on and like Vince, I kept saying, “I just want to cancel my account.” I believe I told them also that with their rates, it was just too much for me. Oh yeah, my daughter noted too many viruses came through on AOL, and it should be noted that it would be anywhere from 10 minutes into 30 minutes while I was on hold. It was a nightmare! Thank you VInce for tackling this problem.
this is so rediculous! after reading all these posts here, all i can say is “get off your soapbox!” as a former employee of aol, i can say that the job i performed in retention was one of the most stressful i’ve ever had. people are IDIOTS sometimes. it would amaze us as to how many people would fault us for their own bad business sense. of course there are incentives to promote retention of an account. the job is essentially a SALES job. all sales jobs have incentives. it was our job to sell aol and its benefits (of which there are many). do you begrudge us for trying to excel at our careers? honest, genuine cust service is valuable and should be rewarded. ask the other 99% of aol customers who are loyal and satisfied whether the rep who handled their problem deserved to be paid for it. i used to have people send me gifts cards out of their own pockets as a thank you for excellent service! not all aol cust feel the way these few people featured here do.
it is stupid to say aol messes up your registry files. that statement had to have been made by an armchair tech who knows NOTHING about what he’s talking about, too bad he has a forum like this to spread his ignorance. i
f we are told to cancel, we have to cancel, period. the problem is…people dont listen to what they’re agreeing to. if we offered a free month or a dif rate, you had to have agreed to it or the account doesnt remain active. gaming an account will get you walked out the door at aol. the only reason this is getting so much attention is due to the poor rep losing his cool in the face of an asshole. he may have had a family, mortgage, bills, etc. who knows how many responsibilities that man shouldered? let me guess… if your order is wrong at a resaurant, do you try to get the waiter fired? get over yourself, vinny-boy. enjoy your petty 15 mins and make them work for you. such an abrasive mentality probably means you have very little interpersonal relationships, no wonder you have nothing better to do than record your every converstaion. get a life. i am so disgusted right now. the only reson i would EVER have left aol’s employ is due to a move out of state. i was considered one of the best in retention at my call center, not by my supervisors, but by the members themselves. my cust satisfaction ratings were exceptionally high. despite that, after hearing your call it made me wish i could follow YOU around with a recorder at your own job (if you actually HAVE one) and set every irrational jerk possible on you. it would be entertaining to see how long it takes to break YOU.
to: i love my aol
Here’s the problem you can’t seem to wrap your little brain around, and the point that most of us are trying to make.
Your job is NOT to sell your product/service……YOUR ONLY JOB is to serve the customer…
Look at the comments again…AOL has lost customers FOREVER!!! (They’ve also lost a lot of class action suits concerning their unethical customer service practices….so I guess that speaks to their dedication to their members)
What is “absolutely inexcusable” are the lies Mr. Nicholas Graham tells! As so many have and will tell, I HAD THE SAME EXPERIENCE. In fact, I became so frustrated at the incessant questioning of my reasons and total refusal to recognize my request that after 15 minutes of it I felt my heart racing, felt faint, and thought I was having a heart attack! Seriously. And the rep started chuckling as my voice quavered. He really seemed to be enjoying my discomfort. I had to just hang up. A month later, I steeled myself and called again. I knew what was coming and managed to stay in control and get through the ordeal in less than 10 minutes.
Back to Mr. Graham. To suggest that AOL has “zero-tolerance for customer care incidents like this” is simply not true. The tidal wave of “me too” comments in this venue and others proves this sort of “customer care” is AOL retention policy, not the exception.
AOL should be ashamed of itself for yesterday’s behavior and today’s lies. And those that continue to utilize its services should reconsider supporting such a company. Finally, thank you Vincent for getting AOL the publicity they deserve.
First tell this former AOL guy to stick it in his cornhole..
Vincent and others, this recorded phone call is an almost exact thing that happened to me 5 years ago… I got DSL and called AOL to cancel.. the guy was just like John.. I kept saying just cancel it.. and he kept saying he needed a reason. So I said I don’t use it, I have DSL.. so he offered rate changes.. free months.. and I said no just cancel. I changed my reason for wanting to cancel about 5 times.. and no matter what I said, he refused to cancel.
I got fed up.. hung up and called my Credit card company to dispute the charges. Capital One took my complaint, and they called AOL.. then the Capitol One guy called me back and patched me into the call. He got the run around trying to get a superviser on the line to correct the problem without a credit charge dispute.. finally a superviser gets on the line.. and cancels my account in like 5 minutes.. and even back credits me a month I had already paid for… superviser claims that he has had problems witht he first guy before and their policy would probably result in his termination.
Since that time.. I have heard rumors that the customer service reps are trained to do anything to prevent you from cancelling.. and that they are somehow “docked” if they cancel too many accounts a month..
I personally think AOL is stupid and here is why… they had their time during the dialup years.. they made gazillions of money with those hourly charges etc.. now instead of trying to develop the next big thing… they are instead fighting to keep members signed up to keep the income… sad but probably true.
I’ve been a member of AOL since 1995 and it served me well enough – although I also used IE. Six years ago when I got a cable connection I grew out of AOL but changed the service to only 3 hours a month for $ 4.95. I found that I only used AOL to delete the spam but kept the service in case my cable connection went down. Then three years ago when I got my new computer I immediately deleted everything in the registry related to AOL and their free offer. Why muck up a clean computer?
I”ve meant to cancel AOL for a long time now and figured that since Vincent’s problem with cancelling AOL has gotten so much TV coverage, I figured that with all the bad publicity AOL would condense their questions and it wouldn’t take so long to cancel.
I don’t know if my situation is different than anyone else’s, but it took all of about 7 minutes to go thru the process. I spoke with a young man named Aaron. When he looked at my account he saw that I hadn’t used it in 6 months. Yes, he tried telling me about a $10.00 rate (why would I pay for that when I am currently paying half that?) and I kept reminding him that I don’t even have the AOL software on my computer and that according to him I haven’t used the service for more than 6 months. I also told him I don’t use AIM or any IM client. He agreed to cancel and gave me a cancellation number. I then asked him if I will be billed by AOL anymore and he said no because my month starts on the 22nd of the month and ends on the 21st. He even made a joke about me getting in under the deadline!
Aaron did tell me that my email addresses will still work. About 10 minutes after I cancelled, I went to aol.com and it says “Your AOL screen name and AOL e-mail account will remain yours for life for free even though you are no longer a paid subscriber.” Of course there is an asterik saying “Maintenance of Screen Name and e-mail account subject to AOL’s Terms of Service, Network Registered User Agreement, and the terms of the AOL products you use. Regular sign-in required.” So, do I believe that I wouldn’t have to pay for my email? I’m not taking any chances.
This was an unexpected pleasant experience!!
If you want to cancel, do it now while AOL’s feet are in the fire.
Just another checking in with the same story. I signed up for AOL while i was living in a hotel room with a laptop for a few months, and forgot about it once i’d gotten back home. After a year of not using it, I called to cancel, and it went down pretty much exactly as on the tape. The sheer ferocity with which this guy all but REFUSED to cancel my service after REPEATED polite requests finally sent me flying off the handle. All in all, with hold times, the call took over half an hour. I was astounded that a company would have the nerve to treat a customer that way. I understand that these are customers who are leaving the service, but a customer is a customer.
I don’t have a doubt in my mind that any of these stories are isolated. AOL’s “apology” was the most transparent, gutless, cowardly move I’ve ever seen by a company. These AOL execs know goddamn good and well that their CSR’s are ORDERED to badger customers into staying with the service, going so far as to punish them if they don’t, and then they publicly shame and dismiss a man who did they very job he was ordered to do.
I hope to god that company never recovers from the tailspin it’s been on in the last few years. They pander to the weak and stupid, touting services that are common and free to everybody else as “exclusive member benefits”.
I’m sorry to hear you publicly let them off the hook, Vince.
But hey, congrats on successfully cancelling your account.
Yeah yeah, the rep “was just doing his job”. That’s an excuse I WILL NOT TOLERATE again. I’ve heard that crap for too many years from too many abusive morons. It stops here. Customer service used to mean just that – service to the customer. NOT maximizing profits by stressing out people to the breaking point. If AOL would get its head out of the stone age and try actually increasing its value and service to the customer they might be able to retain more users. As someone else here said, the old dialup days are gone and no amount of abrasive business tactics are gonna change it – SO DEAL WITH IT Mr. CEO! Or get the hell out of the business!
the EXACT thing happened to me when I tried to cancel my account. Even when I said, “there is nothing you can say that will change my mind from cancelling my account” the guy still went on. The things that the customer rep said were very similar to what the guy I spoke to said. I’m really sure that they’re all told to act that way and say those things. I will never deal with that company every again.
Ya know Vincent what is really funny the most is you broke the law. You can’t knowingly record a phone conversation and withhold that from the person your speaking to, dont you know that alone can get you into some seirous trouble? If the problem wasnt as escalated at drawing negative attention to AOL im sure they would have some lawyers serving you papers. Also as a former employee when they pull your account, when they show activity on the account, its not AIM activity, its activity from signing into the software, so if AOL wasnt installed on your “dads” computer and you guys dont use it, how do you account for almost 600hrs of usage, again AIM doesnt rack up usage on your account. I mean you simply read website’s at other members comments and PLANNED out the call and had intentions of aggravating the AOL Rep. you spoke to and hoped to draw out something you’d catch on tape and hope to draw some “national attention” to yourself, and possibly looking for some settlement out of it. Well i hope your 15 minutes of fame were worth it because in all honesty it makes you look pretty stupid by wire tapping the conversation which is against the law, ecspecially across state lines as “some” states do allow call recording without both parties being aware, so you might ought to realize that you will in the end probably get off lucky. I mean you treated “Jon” like an ass from the get go. Yes, you wanted to cancel your service, but everyone on the planet knows what retention for any company is. Simply to do whatever it would take to have the member continue service. Most people dont know about all AOL offers, or the wide variety of pricing plans they offer. If you would have shut your arrogant mouth and listened for 2 minutes of Jon’s time he probably could have done what is required in ANY retention department of ANY company, told you some exclusive price plans, you could than have said not interested just cancel and had been done, but no you had to lie to the agent by saying you dont use the service when 600hrs is a TON of usage. Come on, be honest with everyone, you were looking to score on this and that is exactly why you decided to record the conversation. Now your a national idiot for doing it the way you had…. good luck
It depends on the state that the guy did it in. in some states it’s not illegal to record a conversation without the other person knowing.
regardless of the state he was in, he would also need to be speaking with someone in the same state, which means he would need to know ahead of time which call center he would get routed to which isnt humanly possible, so yes he broke the law because there are less than 5 states that allow calls to be recorded without both parties knowing, he knew he was breaking the law, and if he didnt they he really is not too intelligent.
Hi Vincent,
I am just amazed, stunned, shocked and enraged that AOL has made cancelling one’s account a hoop-jumping, belittling, humiliating, capitulating, insulting vile experience. I am saying this because I have read the responses other users have made to your story.
Please, Alan Avante is correct. The VP’s said what they did for the media but don’t believe it for one minute. Catholic that you are, remember that you must use some of that wisdom that made you record the conversation to realize that you must remain a wise serpent in this controversy and not a self-effasing sheep that meekly accepts any apology not worth a dime. Too many people have posted truly atrocious experiences to note that the treatment you received is par for the course-IT is the NORM!
If you do any more interviews I would quote the responses that other users have posted here to show that the treatment that was meted to you is the norm and that just as there is a “do not call list”, Congress should have to legislate a cancelation policy that is short and simple and curries what the customer wants at the time of the call. The preposterous responses that people have posted are crying out for this need. I realize that K-street lobbyists will be out in full force against such a bill because every company selling a service that uses the methods espoused by AOL will be against it.
I would also ask permission of the people who interview you to put forth your opinions on the matter now that you know how prevalent the cancellation machinery at aol is and that based on the evidence that you seriously question the validity of the apologies offered by the veeps at AOL.
I do not believe for one sec that the CSR, Jon, was fired. From the responses given by April and others, such a statement is pure pandering for the media. In any event, even if it is true, I would not weep for such a rude, disrespectful person who humiliated you in his attempt to make you do what you didn’t want to do. You were not rude to him. You simply stated your request and this Jon fellow IGNORED you. Those responders who have sided with him are either veeps at AOL or just contrarians.
Please try to use the air time that you still have to let the world know of the belittling, humiliating, criminal tactics that AOL has used for years to make its bottom line. Surely from the responses you’ve read you realize that this company is doing a serious wrong to the old, pc illiterate (as some users have stated), humble people who are being kept on, overcharged, badgered.
Cheers and fight the good fight (against AOL).
Hi all,
Looks like 60% of the people fall out for this kind of behavior (John’s behavior). Even in this thread we had some “weak” persons that agreed to stay in the service.
My personal philosophy is that the stupid must pay. Too many stupid people with money in America. Someone will take advantage of them – sooner or later. That being the case, it is rightfully from AOL’s perspective to put it this way:
- Most of the people calling here are too stupid or weak or uninformed to make a decision. If we don’t take their money, somebody else surely will, so why not us ? Why allow them to keep the money – surely they will loose it under similar circumstances.
More companies like AOL and soon the stupid will have to wake up. If they don’t they will suffer.
Kudos for all the people that manage to cancel the account. This is a very small life test that you managed to pass. You are stronger than 60% of the people who call. This may seems surprising considering how easy this test is.
For all the other “people” that failed: what do you expect ? Mercy ? Be happy that you are born in America, otherwise in other parts of the world you will be eaten alive.
One last note:
Education cannot be used as an excuse for failing this test. Education doesn’t mean that you are meant to be weak. This is just a simple proof of the quick decay of the human specie. If you would make this test 100 years ago, most of the people would have passed.
Have a nice day,
TeoCrat
It gets worse. Twice, AOL has reinstated my Compuserve account and started drafting my account for monthly fees. Each time, it was 2 or more years since the account had been cancelled. Haven’t used the account since the mid 90′s and I still have to check monthly to make sure AOL hasn’t started drafting my account again.
What a wonderful way to quit AOL. Tactics like yours are a great way to get AOL and similar companies to change their operations. I imagine that the quickest way for someone to quit AOL is to tell them that the call is being recorded and timed and the results will be published on the internet. This should work for anyone experiencing stall tactics from any company. Because of the bad press, AOL will likely lose millions from customers they have badgered and intimidated.
Watch your billing after I cancelled AOL i was billed for the following month. Hmmm…a million cancel this month only half catch the additional billing= BIG BONUS!!!
Hi,
Has anyone (media outlet, Vincent, etc.) tried to get in touch with “John” the “retention specialist.” It would be interesting to hear his side of the story. Or perhaps AOL has paid him pending no public statements regarding this incident. Some media bloodhound should look into this.
I personally have worked under Zach Catsaros (thats how you spell his name!) For many years- he recently transferred to Virgina, but I can assure you any apology from him is most definitely sincere; Zach is a stand-up man, and coming from an aol employee, I can tell you that the company really does not tolerate this type of behavior. People may have had bad experiences in the past, but I can guarantee you that if the consultant acted like John, they were terminated.
The apology is pure hogwash. The same thing happened to me with the dialog of the “customer service rep” almost the same. These replies are scripted. The rep would put up this unless they were forced to by the company they work for.
oops– I meant “wouldn’t put up this unless they were forced to be the company they work for” .
just want to read the aol story
REAL, REAL, REAL – Jon was following AOL corporate policy to the letter.
1. Never sign up for AOL!
2. Remove al AOL software from your computer now and regularly!
3. Collect all the free AOL disk laying around in public (Post Office, etc) and throw them in the trash.
4. Tell everyone AOL is a crap company and customers can get easier, faster, cheaper, and better service from any other internet company.
I had to go through this same BS a few times over 2 years in 2002 and 2003 when I was mobilized for the Army. I started 2 accounts at 2 addresses at different times and called to cancel both when I moved. I had to call back multiple times on both accounts just to keep AOL from stealing my money on subsequent credit card bills. I went through this AOL corporate policy except it took longer and the AOL reps I spoke with where bigger jerks.
I want a personnal apology from Nicholas Graham, Executive Vice President of AOL Corporate Communications!!! Nic can explain to me why the AOL is run by assholes. Post your phone number, Nic.
I just read the story in the Boston herald and I had a similar incident when I went to cancel my daughters AOL Account.
It seemed like the rep just didn’t want to let go. After listening to his sales pitch about the benefits of AOL, I finally got done to brass tacks and cancel the account. After being my “friend” during this conversation, he turned very belligerent, gave me a confirmation number and stated that a letter will be forth coming confirming the cancellation and basically hung-up. That was 7 months ago and I’m still waiting for the confirmation letter.
I agree with Andy throw away all of those disks and continuously delete the AOL spyware
most new systems come with AOL software it holds on like a virus
This company aggressively tries to capture and keep customers
>> If you go into any place of business and want to return or cancel
>> anything, they’re going to ask you why. All you had to do was let
>> the poor guy speak and you would’ve gotten what you wanted
>> either way, it’s the way service works and always has been.
I know that you, “Mr. Someone who Knows”, are an extremely busy guy, but maybe you should have listened to the recording before making your post. If you had listened to the recording you would have heard Vincent mention why he was canceling his account. If you missed it just wait a few seconds because he mentions it again. Go ahead; listen again and you’ll hear that he has a high speed internet connection and no longer uses his AOL account.
Just let this be a lesson in keeping your mouth shut before knowing the details because you’ll generally just make a jackass out of yourself.
Went through the same deal two years ago after my wife fell for the “free” trial. I knew enough not to ever sign up with them, but there you go…
Anyway, after a couple weeks of not really even using the account, I called up to cancel and got the same runaround everyone else is talking about.
The BS that AOL is spouting about this being an aberration is hogwash. This is a long-established company policy designed specifically to make it so hard to cancel that at least some people will give up and keep the account. I wonder what percentage of people giving up was used in the cost/benefit analysis to justify this strategy.
Vincent, keep up singing about this. You deserve your “15 minutes” for having the presence of mind to record your call to AOL. Something tells me more people will do this in the future.
What’s left to be said? Good grief… I leave my computer for a minute to grab a sandwich and all hell breaks loose! Vinnie, I’m glad you left AOL because, as has been generally agreed, they do indeed suck. “John”, I have it on good authority that the Texas prison system will hire any warm, breathing body – check it out for new employment. (I think annoyance of clientele is a plus there, by the way.)
Peace, love and 15 minutes of whatever…
not1jot
I can’t believe more x-AOL employees aren’t posting here. I worked for these sleazeballs for a couple of months before quitting in utter disgust of the business practices of this horrible company. If someone calls in to cancel a membership of a deceased family member they train you to suggest keeping the account open as a memorial. Unbelievable. But their real scam is keeping people on the phones that are argumentative, and will “Game” the system i.e. when all else fails tell someone you cancelled their account but don’t. This keeps their “Saves Rate” up which increases their bonuses and ensures continued employment. AOL will tolerate almost any transgression from these reps when dealing with members…some things that were said to members you wouldn’t believe. And when these unscrupulous reps would finally go to far they would indeed be fired. But keep in mind up to that point they were keeping all those accounts open, all those bank charges re-occuring for all those months…and AOL rarely refunds those bogus charges. So with a membership base in the tens of millions…well do the math. AOL is laughing so hard they wet their pants! So yeah “wink wink, we took care of that John character” yeah bulls_ _ t! He was doing exactly what he was vigorously trained, coached and counciled to do.
How about a class action suit? They did it to Sears!
I just wanted to say kudos to you for busting AOL on this and curses on AOL for trying to pretend this isn’t standard policy.
I tried to quit AOL several times and the first 3 or 4 I experienced the same script, except my repeated refusals led to an offer for free months of service with unlimited or large amounts of hours.
The level of reward diminished each time, but I got a free ride for a year.
When I finally could afford DSL, cancelling for real was a nightmare. After a few scripted questions I requested to a supervisor, who then started in on the script until I said something along the lines of “I know you’re following orders, and excuse my French but if this bullshit doesn’t stop I’m calling consumer fraud and suing you.”
I suspect there might also be an “angry customer” override, if one is polite with your fury. He apologized and stopped with the script, but it still took several long pauses to get a confirmation. My guess – and it’s only a guess – is the script is built into their account management program and they can’t get to the actual functions without paging through it.
This is an annoying an toxic practice and AOL is just about the worst practioner of it. It’s not only unfair to the customers – the service reps are obviously required to stick to the script no matter what and I can’t imagine what sort of abuse they tolerate. Plus AOL is clearly outsourcing many calls to India, so we have people working for 2nd rate wages getting top rate abuse from irate customers.
I just saw the clip of the Today show. Last year, I tried to cancel my account and it took over 6 months to get it done. At the end, I calculated that I paid over $80 in service that I didn’t want. AOL kept promising my money back only if I kept my account. To make a long story short, at the end I was screaming at them to cancel the account and keep the $80. It was such a nightmare to get them to just do it.
I am sure that this guy Nicholas cannot be serious about respect for the customer. Trust me…take your call and the minutes you spent times six or seven times in 6 months and that is what I experienced. My ordeal was last summer so it seems to me that this is a very common practice at AOL. I already gave up on getting my moeny back but at least it is a pleasure to know that now someone actually recorded what they do.
As for the guy they fired…shame on AOL. I am sure he was doing what he was instructed to do. I talked to several of them and they all did the same thing.
Good job!
I have to agree with the other million posts on this, and i hope you are sharing their stories too when you go on the networks. I have only had an AOL account twice in my life – once at the very early stages when i think i was version 2.0 and once recently by accident (long story). On both cases, it was a huge pain to cancel the account. First of all, they told me they can’t take online cancellations because of privacy issues related to the account and credit card fraud. But, they certainly have no problem signing you up online using a secure server and your credit card! They make you call so they can have one of their retention folks try to keep you.
I think they are encouraged to behave the way John did because in both cases, i experienced basically the same thing. In fact, i don’t think it was until i started yelling at them that they finally agreed to process the cancellation.
While the letter was nice, it was for pure publicity and damage control. I know. I work in Public Relations and Marketing. The guy said something about reading this paragraph to you, right? They have a script and i guarantee you he followed it!! Now, he may have gotten a little too far from what they want, but i am sure that is because they get a bonus if they keep the person from cancelling.
And don’t worry about John. I am sure he’ll find a nice sales job somewhere else. In fact, i think that might be him calling me now….
I had the same EXACT experience back in 1999. My father had signed up with AOL (cuz it had 3 months for free) so he could download Juno. He was in a terrible motorcycle accident and was in a coma. I knew that the account needed to be canceled, so I took my dad’s credit card #, SSN, and when I called, I gave them my dad’s name (O.K., lock me up for impersonation). What transpired after I dialed was EXACTLY like what happened here. The tone the guy took with me, everything was the same. During the conversation, I was called a bad parent because I didn’t want them to protect my kids from porn on the internet. I finally told the guy that I’m the customer and that he WILL comply with my wishes. The AOL rep promptly hung up on me! He got pissy with me and when I wouldn’t relent, he hung up on me. Fortunately, when the next month came around, there were no charges to my dad’s credit card. AOL customer service leaves a lot to be desired.
PS: My dad us up and walking around today.
Thank you soo much for recording that call. For years my family and I suffered under AOL. I can truly identify with yours and others experiences. My mother wouldn’t even get on the phone with the “customer service” reps, she would make me do it back in ’95…I was 11!
I also have a friend who had the same experience so many of us have had, he had gotten rid of his computer and they wouldn’t cancel the account! No lie!
I have also heard stories of when AOL would finally cancel the account and then continue to bill for service!!!
What a nightmare!
Thank you again Vincent, well done.
You go, Vincent!! As for me, same story. 6 month trial of AOL came with my Dell. I called to cancel. I kid you not…48 minutes later they finally did the deed. I was offered everything plus a ham sandwhich to stay with them. I finally told the customer service rep, “look, don’t s*** me here, I am a salesperson, too, I know when someone is putting the screws to me so cancel my frickin account.” I waited on hold for quite some time before transferring me to some guy in India who finished the call (but not before making VERY SURE I wanted it cancelled).
And I agree with some of the other comments…AOL is certainly aware of their own tactics and their reps have the company’s blessing to make your cancellation experience as Hell-like as possible. From a corporate standpoint, I am sure they figure that their tactics get a large percentage to resubscribe (probably due to the customer’s exhaustion from the mental gymnastics). Why would they give a damn once they lost you…I am sure the brass at AOL don’t lose any sleep if you go away angry as hell. But I imagine it would royally suck to work in their customer service department, assuming you were a halfway decent human being.
Keep the heat on! Thanks!
It’s not unreasonable to try to find out why someone wants to cancel a service.
It’s not unreasonable to ask a probing question when someone (such as the latest 15-minutes-of-fame Crusader, Vincent Ferrari) obviously LIES about the facts . . .
(How is it that Vinny’s account had hundreds of hours of log-in time if neither he nor Daddy Ferrari used it? Maybe there’s some identity theft at work here. Or maybe Vinny set up this whole deal to defame AOL–knowing in advance he would be able to exploit this for some sort of fame/gain)
“Exit interviews” provide valuable feedback which assists companies in improving service for all. Moreover, many times, when people are angry enough to “cancel” something, the real motivation can be addressed with less drastic action. The worst kind of customer service is merely “order taking” because it says “I don’t care about you.”
Any customer service professional realizes that sometimes, however, you just have to “let go” and “dump” unreasonable, secretive, defensive and mendacious ex-customers. John’s error wasn’t in asking the “exit” questions or in pointing out Vinny’s apparent lack of truthfulness. Rather, John’s error was in almost losing his temper and in pursuing the “exit” interview too long (after it became obvious that Vinny wasn’t going to behave reasonably).
I’d hire John in a second, though. He was merely a hard-working customer service rep placed in a tough spot. He could be trained to use better judgment. On the other hand, I wouldn’t let someone like Vinny carry out my trash . . . .
I actually worked for AOL in the “Retention” department (in training) for a while. I was not at all surprised when I saw this video. I know that AOL apologized for this sort of thing but let me tell you that they are lying. They train the agents to act just like that. They have a whole month where they teach you the process of getting the customer to keep the account. If you don’t do the process you can get warned by your supervisor. They monitor your calls to make sure that you don’t just cancel the account when asked.
Another thing is that every agent is required to retain a certain percentage of calls on their account. When I worked there I think it was between 70 – 75% of calls must be retained. If this didn’t happen you could be fired. If you’re wanting to keep your job you are going to do whatever you can to keep it. Especially following the “plan” they train you on.
I feel really bad for the agents there. They really are all (for the most part) really nice, agreeable people, but AOL pretty much forces them to act like that. I feel bad that “John” lost his job because he was just doing what they tell them to (if maybe just a little extreme.) I would just suggest to those who call in to listen to the little speech the agent has to give because they have to fill it all in on the program to get to the cancellation page. then just say that you want to cancel the account and hang up. They have to go with the last thing that you say.
AOL really does have good service except for the “Retention” department. So I hope this doesn’t taint your view of all of their service. They just make things tough when you want to get out. So, I wish the best of luck to all of you!
I had to cancel my credit card in order to stop AOL from charging me!!!
To Dr511sjc:
your description/summation of the recording is laughable…..
According to the class action suits filed against AOL, apparently THE LAW finds these tactics unreasonable…and illegal.
…idiot…..
honestly i work for a call center and its people like vincent that makes the days go longer and harder they call and just strike up an attitude looking for an argument did u know it is our jobs to help u remain service we have to read script by script he was just doing his job!
I just saw your conversation recording on Global National. I just wanted to say that it sounded exactly like the conversation I had with AOL about 2 years ago. It got to the point where they weren’t cancelling my account regardless of many promises that it would be cancelled. eventually I had to go to my bank and put a stop payment on the automatic withdrawl that was going out every 27th of the month. I wish I had had the resources to record every single conversation I had with an AOL representitive. Thanks for bringing that out!! Gave me chills to hear it cause I felt like I was reliving every single different attempt I had made to cancel it.
Dr511scj, you are a jackass. Vincent was initially asked questions about his reasons for leaving and he politely answered. He was also polite when “John” began informing him on the supposed hours of use.
There’s a line between asking helpful exit interview questions and refusing to comply with a customer’s wishes. “John” was told several times why the customer was leaving. The fact that the account may have been used was irrelevant if the customer did not care.
I find it amusing how you John-supporters act like we haven’t listened to the call. You all act like John asked a couple innocent questions and was met with a barrage of hostile profanities. Keep in mind that when you write your posts in defense of “John” that all of us on this site have heard the conversation. If you act like we haven’t you’ll come across like a Dr511sjc or Terri: a complete and utter jackass.
reminds me of when I bought a car once, and it was supposed to have license plates on it. Well, it didn’t, found out later they had been stolen off the lot. BUT, those plates I never saw (I had personal ones anyway) ended up in my name, for that car! Say What!?! Well, I didn’t even know that much until I started getting parking tickets, did I mention I was 17 at the time, and living at home, etc etc? The parking tickets were in downtown San Diego, 45 miles from home and at 3am. WHOA! No really mom, I wasn’t there! Until we noticed that the car on the tickets had 4 doors (mine only had 2), I tried to handle it by calling the traffic division.
So, I explain it to the lady on the phone, seems simple enough. I wasn’t in the car that recieved the tickets, it had stolen plates, I never saw those plates, ever. So, she just kept asking me “Who was driving the car?” like 50 times!!!
I hope they really did fire that guy. That type of behavior is just lame.
“terri” says “….did u know it is our jobs to help u remain service we have to read script by script he was just doing his job! ”
Go waste your own time “doing your job”. I don’t have to be held hostage on the phone while I try to get a legitimate cancellation of a service I’m paying for.
Does your job include stealing by scamming people’s credit cards, too? How much do we have to endure while you’re just “doing your job?”.
Why would you blame customers trying to cancel the service who don’t want to waste precious time on the phone? They also have “jobs” to get back to, after all.
I was an early subscriber to AOL about 20 years ago. When I cancelled my account, I went through the same passive-aggressive attack from AOL customer service. Took me about 50 minutes to cancel the account. I swore to never have anything to do with them again.
Their apologies are dishonest and are only offered because they were caught with their hand in the cookie jar. They know very well that this “disconnection” strategy is common and is in fact corporate policy AND I BELIEVE I CAN PROVE IT—-
Here is the incontrovertible evidence: Why doesn’t AOL offer an automatic option to cancel service on their customer support page. It has been suggested mutliple times. I loudly demanded it from them about 20 years ago. The answer: They don’t want to make it easy… they never have…”you can check in anytime you want, but you can never leave!”
Here is how I recommend cancelling AOL: Tell the customer service agent, “I’m recording this call”, then tell them to cancel your service effective the date of your choice. Tell them that any further charges against your bank account or credit card are explicity unauthorized and will result in a chargeback fee from the credit card. If you’ve authorized auto withdrawals from your bank, tell them that further withdrawals are unauthorized and will be reported to authorities as wire fraud. Then call your credit card or bank and tell them that you’ve duly notified the vendor and instruct them to reject any charges from AOL’s company. Follow verbal communications with a written letter documenting your verbal direction and the date it was given, and the name of the person you talked to.
Dr511scj: you’re a brainwashed idiot. Refusing to acknowledge and process an credible order from a customer to stop service, whether or not the customer tells you why, is criminal if you subsequently knowingly are party to posting an UNAUTHORIZED charge against the customer’s credit card or bank account. This tactic is called extortion and robbery, it is illegal as hell, and you should be in jail if you participate in it. A burglar, who breaks into a house could claim he is just doing his job. Wake up! The burglar belongs in jail, and if you’re party to fraudulent billing, you belong there too.
John’s real offense for which he was fired was stupidly admitting to a customer that he was trained to stall. Guarantee he was not supposed to admit this to a customer.
Everyone involved in this extortion tactic, who knowingly allows charges to be issued to a credit card or funds withdrawn from a bank account, after being told to stop, should be prosecuted for fraud and put in jail. If you are a call center employee and know your company is doing this, you have a legal obligation to report is to authorities, or you are an accessory to crime (and should be prosecuted too).
WOW!!! I had the same experience and just got it cleared up yesterday!!! I went through 2 customer representatives on 2 different days and still ended up paying $25 for not ever signing on to the crazy place!!! It was unreal how many arguments they put up trying to make me stay enrolled! I finally ended up hanging up on the last guy and calling back and got that automated lady and it cancelled!! I would not recommend their services to anyone even if they were absolutely free!! I’m glad to hear that others have experienced this madness and are speaking out! Thanks to you Vincent for representing what must be a great number of people!
Vincent, good for you!
I only wished I had taped my AOL “cancellation” conversation. It was the worst thing I had ever experienced. I was a AOL customer for 11 years.
I will never have anything to do with them again.
Why is it that this happens all over the place? Not just specifically at AOL – but at other companies – everywhere??? Think about it – retailers, hospitals, your insurance company, credit card companies, cable and telephone companies… It’s all the same – the big giants against the little guy. We’ve become accustomed to this BS… It is really nothing new. What is unique about this instance is that someone recorded it and it got some air time… It will most likely be soon forgotten… – Just my 2 cents.
AOL is good for one thing: Cup coasters. Saw your CNBC bit on You Tube. I’d rather see AOL receive a class-action lawsuit on behalf of each former (* and current *) customer that has received this treatment. Imagine them trying to fit that loss on the bottom line.
Am I the only one who suspects that john was not fired and the whole letter was just another scam from AOL.
I’ve never had AOL
). When I got my XP computer Dell had AOL free trail installed. First thing I did was uninstall the AOL portal (Opera is much better). The thing had 20 pages of
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Vincent: You are too kind…perhaps literally. I personally doubt the fundamental honesty of the apology. It’s a quick-reflex PR response, not the profound self-examination that is called for. What’s missing is an apology for the entire anything-for-money-right-now, screw-the-customer culture of the company, and the practices that led to your particular experience. Countless numbers of people (including myself) have had very similar experiences with people at AOL OTHER than “John.” It’s not John. It’s offensive to me, actually, for Nicholas to pass it off as “John.” It’s Nicholas and the leadership of the company that leads to training, curriculum, scripts, and contingencies on “customer retention” and how John behaved. John was reacting precisely to the training and contingencies (including retention quotas — which are both horrifying and stupid) that are part of the company ethos — for which Nicholas, not John, is responsible (read Deming — http://www.deming.org). I think former and present AOL Customer Care Consultants can back that up. They are already doing so on your blog and elsewhere, and I imagine we’re going to be seeing more of that in the coming days.
hey .vince .
guess u jus got ur 1 second of fame.. man that aol guy was jus doing his job , he is paid for that, well i must admit ur patients hats off … common bro.. what are u getting out of all this.. u could have used all that time to do something better…
cheers vince
hey .vince .
guess u jus got ur 1 second of fame.. man that aol guy was jus doing his job , he is paid for that, well i must admit ur patients hats off … common bro.. what are u getting out of all this.. u could have used all that time to do something better…
cheers vince ….
Vincent,
What was the reason you were canceling the acct. I beleive it was asked and you lied to him to instigate an argument. Why would you cancel it if you used it 545 hrs? If you were honest with the consultant it would have been smoother. I worked in jax retention (sales) for 4+ yrs and there are some benefits you just have no clue how to get to and use them. also I bet you were paying more then 4.95 which is all it cost to have AOL on your highspeed. Get with it and get your head out of your arse. I hope you get fired!!
===
Vincent: You did the right thing. No question. Don’t listen to Moonie-like brainwashees. The job of someone to whom you submit a request to cancel the account is . . . to cancel the account. No, it’s not to sell. No, it’s not to retain. No, it’s not to “consult.” It is to cancel the account. You are the customer. It is your money. You have every right in the world to cancel the account. And if someone responds to your request to cancel the account by ignoring that request, and instead commencing with a “sales job,” when you were calling to cancel the account, any “rudeness” on your part has been earned by their presumptious, offensive behavior.
The irony here — which AOL doesn’t get, apparently — is that treating customers with respect will increase a company’s chances that customers will come back and/or speak highly of the company to others. Customers have legitimate reasons to cancel, and to question those reasons is insulting. To “talk them out” of their reasons is extremely offensive.
Does anyone here shop at Trader Joe’s? Now that’s a company that understands customer satisfaction and they understand that customer satisfaction leads to healthy profit. (vs. the AOL model: Get $ through any means possible, no matter what it does to customer satisfaction. The future be damned.) If Trader Joe’s had something similar to “account cancelling,” I can picture that it would be straightforward, respectful, non-insulting. Maybe they’d ask permission to do a short exit interview to gather information, but they would never have AOL’s stance of “talking someone out of” cancelling.
It’s worth pointing out that AOL’s crap has been going on for a long time (see http://www.epinions.com, for one, as well as comments here). It’s just that a particularly bright light is presently being shown on it.
That comment from an ex-AOL employee about the consultants’ encouraging the retention of dead people’s accounts as a memorial — wow. I believe it. Is anyone familiar with Stanley Milgram’s experiments? Pressure from authority figures (as in, bosses) can get people to leave their humanity at the door, and treat others like Nazis.
Thank you once again Vincent!!!
Hey AOL worker…
Guess what, moron. Vincent (or any one else for that matter) doesn’t HAVE to give you/AOL a reason for cancelling. He doesn’t NEED to do anything but say “Cancel the account”. Period. You/AOL are owed NOTHING MORE.
AOL was voted by PC world as the #1 WORST tech product in the world.
So much for the “benefits” that we ” just have no clue how to get to and use them”
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,125772,pg,2,00.asp
Not to mention all the class action lawsuits that AOL has LOST because of their horrible “customer Service” and “Billing” practices.
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/ny_aol.html
Any more stupid comments? ya…i didn’t think so.
So glad this was brought to the surface. It took two years to finally get the fee removed from my account. For so long, the $4.95 was not enough of a bother to cancel the credit card and then change over so many other accounts that utilized my main credit card number.
Two times I was on hold, once for 30 minutes and another for over an hour while doing work with the speakerphone on.
I hope they crash for this. Isolated…no-way!
VINDICATION!!!!!!!!!!
C’est la Vie!
This crap has been going on for at least a decade. I was an AOL user from the first days, and when I went to cancel not only was I given the 20 minute run-around, but back in the day they would then try to sell you long distance service after you cancelled which woud take another 10 minutes.
I’ve almost weaned all of my immediate family off of AOHELL, and each time it was the usual grueling process.
I hate to say it but, the apology is AOL CYA crap. Their policy is to try to keep members from cancelling at all costs. A direct result of typical, rampant corporate greed.
And that’s my peace.
I signed up for a temp account used for a few days last in feb 2005. I called a few days later and caneled. They billed me for a few months. I called back to straighten this out and they said I never called to cancel. What a scam!
I said ‘go ahead and bill me’. Since then I’ve talled a few dozen people into canceling AOL. You get nothing for it. I tell most people to just get internet from cable or DSL and use gmail.
I hope AOL is happy. The made me spend $60 dollars. I made them lose $700 a month. As the old saying goes, “for every customer you loose, you lose another eight you don’t know”.
I think the media coverage you are getting is great! Good work.
My wife passed suddenly in 2002 ..She had AOL, I had
another server..I called AOL to cancell her account ..It
took over an hour to close her account..They asked me
what she thought of AOL’s service and why she wanted to
cancell her account..They asked me at least 25 questions
about what SHE thought about AOL’s service .Finally , I
told them that I would mail a copy of the Death Certificate
if necessary ..Still received three more bills after this
initial phone call ..Said they were going to refer her bill
to a collection agency …I was livid …
Why to go! Don’t be gullible enough to worry for a second to believe that “John” got fired…because it DID NOT happen. Since customer service reps make up their “work names” there will never be a way for CNN or other news to determine whether John was really fired without some investigation that would cost too much to pursue, so AOL isn’t worried about that. It’s easy to say…”we fired him” just as it’s easy to say “he didn’t follow our policy” when it couldn’t be more obvious that he was doing just that. Think about it. AOL can’t afford to fire this guy. They probably actually promoted him to head of the customer service training department and gave him a huge bonus. It makes plain sense that AOL would logically NEVER fire this guy because if they did he would be all over CNN right behind you laying it all on the line about how he did exactly what he was told to do and telling far worse “horror stories of customer service” than the ones you experienced. AOL would do anything to avoid that additional publicity. Then next he would have his lawyer beating down the door to sue AOL and subpoena all their customer service training materials and “recorded for customer assurance” tapes into discovery and that would be a catastrophe. Alas, John is now sitting pretty in a cushy job and set for life. You were the best thing that ever happened to that jerk…feel proud!
I was not successful at cancelling my account. I currently have a collection for months not paid. It was the ONLY way I could cancel.
They require you to validate who you are. I opened my account in 1994. I could not remember my password to the main account. Because I did not know the number of the card that was used to process the payment I could not cancel it. I could not remember the address I was at when I created the account, so I could not validate that way. They would not put me through to a supervisor. I could never get into the 30 minute + wait to even tell them to cancel.
I worked for AOL for 4.5 years from ’94 until ’99 and had the highest respect for them. I lost that respect about 2 years ago. I can’t even discuss the past payment with them because I “Can’t validate myself”.
I am sorry they lost their focus on the customer and the people that make the service real. I think that was lost when Steve Case left. I miss the good old days.
Have a GREAT day.
K
I cant beleive we are all having this problem and nothing is done about it. I was watching CNN last night and saw your interview. I had a similar experience. I got AOL because it was easier to have it in college and it saved time because I can use the messenger. After realizing why am I paying for a service I hardly use and can dowload AIM, I didnt need it nor want it. I called asking to Cancel. Of course I got someone who speaks broken English reads from a book and constantly called me “Ma’am”. I was told I am going to come back after I realized that my current provider was not a good one. He only knew my provider because they had to ask about DHL service and try to sell that. After constantly repeating the word cancel ,25 minutes later and him “trying to get me to cancel my membership” and awarding me another 6 month free trial, DSL service and free virus protection as well as free math sessions from AOL (obviously this is where the school thing kicked in) I finally said I cant take it anymore, please please please cancel dont ask me questions just CANCEL. Obviously they read from a paragraph because the ending statement he said was “Thank you for choosing AOL and have a great day please wait for the recording about cancellation requirements”. Uggh, AOL is the absolute worst and I hope they become nonexistant. Oh by the way they made sure to charge me that 35 dollars. I dont even want the money back if that means I have to call them again. Keep it. Good Luck AOL people.
I just saw the CNN piece and it brought back nightmares when I first used AOL back in the early 90′s . I had tried to cancel the account and when they tried talking me out of it I got upset and threatend legal action. Two weeks later they billed my credit card twice several days apart for service. It took me 3 months to get it cleared up. Although I think that AOL execs do really want to take care of customers. It may be incentive pay scales, Job perks or some other money realted push to their staff to keep you from trying to cancel your account.
AOL: Word of advice…. You will keep more customers by taking care of them and thanking them for their business. In this day of a down economy, postive customer service will prevail over a negative one. Get back to the basics and to the CEO’s CFO’s Etc…. Go down and walk through the customer service floor to get a better pulse on whats going on …… And lastly always have a good MORAL Compass…
Hi,
Great job. I had a similar incident with AOL a couple of years ago in which a manager was screaming obscenities at me at the top of her lungs. It was bad.
AOL has been treating customers like this for a long time, and it’s hard to believe that they really fired this guy when he was following protocol. Three years ago, I cancelled my account, but not before a pain-in-the-ass cs rep acted personally affronted by my cancellation saying coldly, “you’ll be back, I know you will.” He was seriously pissed that I wanted to cancel. The only reason I never contacted AOL about this rep was because I’m convinced that the entire organization is ran this way and complaining won’t do any good. Who are these people that work for AOL? Don’t they know how much it sucks when they start working there, and that the only reason AOL has customers is because many PCs come with it already installed with three free months of service?
Two weeks ago I had the exact same experience with Netscape Internet. They must all be trained in a secret facility in India because it was almost verbatim what you went through. I got high speed internet so I called to cancel. After 10 minutes of the person ignoring me about cancelling my account, I caved to a free month. They said I wouldn’t be billed. The kicker as when I got a letter from Netscape saying they were happy to resolve my problem and the service would continue being charged to my credit card. I immeditely called them. When I asked why my account wasn’t cancelled I was told I should’ve got a cancellation number (Like I’m suppose to know that). So for 10 minutes my repeated sentence was “Cancel my account”. Then the final 10 minutes was, “Give me a cancellation number” (over and over and over again). My wife couldn’t believe the telephone call she was hearing. I’m an extremely calm, hard to rattle person, and I was literally flipping out trying to get this account closed. I finally got a cancellation number. I also faxed Netscape a blistering customer service complaint and told them never to call me about it, worst customer service I’ve ever experienced, and I’m spreading the word about your horrid business practices.
Good work on this. I do have somewhat of a problem with AOL’s response to this matter. Judging by the responses received by this story this isn’t an isolated incident. So in the apology by stating that they have a zero tolerance policy for this type of “customer service” AOL asks us to believe ALL of their phone reps seem to have the same bad idea of making account cancellation difficult independently of any company coaching or encouragement. It seems to be a bit of a stretch to me, but hopefully the smoking gun in this incident will help bring about some change in the way AOL treats it customers.
If you asked 100 people how their cancellation experience was with aol I think you would get the same story 100 times over. The company I work for just recently cancelled our account with them and went through the same BS. They even sent out letters after the fact for you to sign to keep the account active. I also had a relative cancel her policy her youngest son (after she cancelled) continued to use AOL “free” email and of course she kept getting bills, they said by him continuing to use it that authorized them to continue billing it. What a crock!!! I am glad to see that someone finally exposed them, although, I can’t say it will really do much good. Tomorrow it will still be the same s*** just a different day.
Way to go Vincent! The call you recorded was almost identical to a conversation I had with a Sprint PCS representative when I tried to cancel my wireless account. My responses were similar to yours and the rep had the audacity to ask me why I was being rude. I simply stated that I had already set up a wireless account with a different provider, and the only way she could “help” was by closing my account. But what really upsets me about the whole thing is that Sprint charged me for the entire next billing cycle. Funny how they are able to prorate your first bill, but coming up with a way to prorate your last bill totally eludes them. I used their service for over seven year, but I will never make that mistake again.
God bless you, dude.
I tried to cancel my dial up account 2 years ago and ended up having to cancel my credit card account to stop the charges.
I had a similar delay time before speaking to someone, gave them ALL my personally identifiable information and was told I had to mail in a hand written request to cancel the account. I mailed it in and was still charged another month. I called back and they had no record of receiving the hand written copy. I mailed a 2nd one in with signature receipt. It was a month before I got the receipt back and I was still being charged. I called again and again they had no record, even when I read them the date from the signature card. That was when I decided to cancel the credit card.
I had a horrible experience trying to cancel AOL several years ago. The first time I attempted to cancel I became so frustrated that I finally hung up. The second time I remained calm (although it was difficult) just to get it over with, but I was on the line with the representative for more than 30 minutes and it was incredibly painful. This “apology” was only rendered because of the negative publicity and I seriously doubt that “John” was fired. This is clearly the way they operate. I will NEVER NEVER have anything to do with AOL. I even resent receiving their introductory cds in the mail! I have to echo that “God bless you!”
Vincent, as others have pointed out this has been going on for some time with AOL. In early 2002 I purchased a new computer and signed up for 3 free months of AOL dial up service. I used it for a couple months beyond the 3 and then called to cancel. It was the single most frustrating customer service call I have ever made.
I could have been talking to that same guy. I don’t remember the exact words but at one point the rep basically called me an idiot. I had to threaten to contest any future charges through my credit card before he finally relented. I vowed never to use AOL again. When I later started using cable broadband AOL was an option. Even though AOL offered free dial up along with the broadband service I went with a competitor.
I hadn’t heard the rumours that prompted you to record your session and was unaware in advance how difficult it would be to cancel my service. I wondered if it could have been one terrible representative even though AOL made it hard just to figure out the number to call. I think businesses are often wrongly accused of misdeeds, however, I think AOL truly deserves the bad press. THANKS!
Perhaps a less frustrating and far more efficient way to terminate AOL service is to communicate with AOL, via email or registered letter, that you wish to cancel your account. Then, when AOL lives up to its reputation and fails to take the requested action, simply contest the AOL charge on your credit card bill. Let Visa, MasterCard, AMEX, etc. deal with AOL through an official investigation. If you save a copy of the email/letter, you will have proof that you formally requested to terminate your account. You are perfectly within your rights to contest a credit card charge for a product or service that you have clearly stated you do not want and for which you are under no obligation to pay. Contesting the charge with your credit card company will very likely be less headache-inducing than intereaction with AOL customer service representatives.
I went through it also. Just do yourself a big favor! Contact your bank or Credit Card Co and make sure you put a “Stop Payment” on any affiliated account that pays your AOL bill. They billed for a year of service 364 days after I cancelled. The bank reimbursed me. They came back 30 days later as Time Warner and took another $290+ out of the account. The bank again reimbursed me….Have Fun!
I’m glad to see someone out there has the legal and technical know-how to fight back with these racketeering companies that the FTC and FCC seem to be ignoring…. I presume they have them paid-off as well. I had the same problem with Dish Network (EchoStar) and they have repeatedly called asking “Why?” I canceled the account after several dozen phone calls and letters advising them to do so.
I was watching a documentary DVD, and on it a woman spoke about the same big corporation problems that we are talking about now….
What she said was this….
she had attended the WTO protest in Seattle a few years back and was talking to some Corporate Big-Wig..and he admitted the following…
Big corporations aren’t afraid of the law…the government…what they fear most is “CONSUMER REVOLT”…for that is where the true power is…
Just thought this was worth pondering….
Same thing happened to me years ago. I called to cancel but was kept on line. Make me think that this comes from higher-ups. AOL trains people in trying to keep you on line. This happened to me just before they were sold. (to Time-Warner?)It just didn’t look good to have cancellations and not have as many members as they claimed. I would not be suprised if AOL one day is found ennroning their books. Didn’t trust them than – don’t trust them now.
I had an experience w/AOL but not on cancellation. About 4 years ago, AOL was my ISP… I was paying about $23.00/mon for Unlimited Time… I got a call from my back( small credit unon from work)… I had bounced about 4 checks ($50 charge ea) the bank manager said that se notced that AOL had taken $492.00 ot of m acct!!!! WTH? I said… I got a hold of AOL who proceeded to tell me that I went online, into m acct settngs and had changed my payment plan from Unlimited to Limited and had clocled over 11,000 mins…. WTH? So I asked for a copy of the transfer, their response was that the transaction was AOL property and that I could not have a copy… long story short I ended up with my money back plus an additional $292.00… No thanks to AOL.. the bank manager got it for me!!!
AOL is a horrible company, I will never use them or their services again and would never let anyone I know use it….
I had the exact same problem. I signed onto AOL for a trial run. I called and canceled the account but continues to be billed. I called again and talked to a woman who definitely sounded like she was in or from India. She would not just cancel the account. I had to repeat myself over and over again. Finally, after about 1/2 hour, she said she would cancel the account and refund me my money for the time between then and when I first asked for the account to be dropped. I never got my money back but the account did go away. That “trial” account ended up costing me somewhere around $60. I’d like my money back but I just don’t want to deal with their phone hell any further. %$#! AOL.
–
Walter
I’m in the same boat as Walter. I knew better- I worked at a bank when AOL began to expand and I can’t tell you how many customers were being billed illegally! But, I needed a dial-up connection for a month following surgery so I went for their “free trial”. I must have talked to John when I tried to cancel my account. I had done what they said to do- faxed a letter with my account information and my full name but my account wasn’t closed and I was charged. I get a postcard saying my request was incomplete but didn’t tell me what was missing. I faxed another letter, even included a copy their online instructions with a checkmark by each item that was included. I hear nothing back. A month later, I’m charged again so I decided to call and wait 25 minutes to talk to someone. My representative was TERRIBLE- after 15 minutes, I had lost my voice so I asked to be transeferred to a supervisor- someone named Ty I believe. Anyway, this “supervisor” is even ruder than the first guy! He keeps trying to tell me what kind of computer connection I have in my home and that I didn’t really have a cable modem (which my husband has used for 3 years to telecommute)! I told him I wanted my money back since I had followed their instructions and he tried to sell me more services as a consolation, insisting that I didn’t have a cable modem and I still needed AOL. They said there was a problem with my name but they had no problem charging my credit card! I finally told him I was sorry I ever signed up in the first place and hung up on him- talk about thick headed! I was able to successfully dispute the charges through my credit card company after showing them the letters I faxed that provided all of the information they needed and AOL sent me a bill!!!! I guess Vincent’s situation must have woken them up because they have stopped harrassing me. Walter I feel for you- I was only out $23. If you signed up with a credit card, check with your bank about disputing the charges. AOL SUCKS!
BTW, I’ve cost AOL more than the money they got out of me by talking people I know out of joining or into leaving. %$#! AOL. What part of BAD BUSINESS do they not understand?
I will not be surprised AOL give incentive to those sales representatives who successful ward off customers who wants to cancel their service.
Back in 1998, I had the similar problem with AOL. I understand AOL does not want to have customer turnover, but after my confrontation with their sales person, I swear to the LORD! I will not sign with AOL ever again.
In a way, AOL tactic backfired. At least in my case back in 1998.
I forgot to add. Those people who think “Jon” is the bad guy here, may have to consider his supervisors or upper management actually want him to play the delay tactic when cancelling customer’s service.
I will be interested to know those who worked in AOL before, what their thoughts are on this incident.
Just a quick note about AOL. for those of you who didn’t know, PC Magazine rated them the number one worst product of the twentieth century. I guess this is just more evidence of why.
The same thing happened to me when I canceled my account. I spent several minutes with the customer service rep on the phone. When I realized that she had planned on asking me questions until I became frustrated, I informed her that I was about to begin recording our conversation. She demanded that I stop while I continued to request that my account be closed. That I believe was the only thing that made her actually fulfill my request. This must be standard operating procedure.
It has been many years since I got rid of AOL.. back in the days of $300 bills. I happen to believe “John” should have lost his job, but only indirectly. By being replaced by a “press 1 to confirm cancelation” on the phone tree. The entire call center needs shut down. If you want to close an account the very title “retention specialist” implies a complete disrespect for your request. Time for them to stand in the unemployment line behind the former telemarketers that used to call at dinner time. Oh I forgot, they are now doing “surveys”.
I do not know if it still takes place, but PAYPAL also used to be nearly impossible to cancel. I managed after hearing their customer records had their security compromised. It took over a week to accomplish. At that time you had to log in to close the account, and you could not log in without agreeing to an updated security policy (which would hold them not responsible for damages)
Hey Vinny.. are you ready for your next 10 minutes of fame?
Crossposting a portion of the comment – because I do think I’ve made some good points that deserve to be reviewed, and I welcome the feedback on this blog.
“RJ, explain to me how the customer — or any citizen in the free world, for that matter — is legally bound to give a Customer Rep a “good enough” reason for canceling a service he’s paying for.”
I never stated he was legally bound to give a “good enough” reason. I said that he LIED about why he wanted to cancel the account. That alone makes me lose respect for the guy.
Let me point you out to this article:
http://www.cepro.com/news/editorial/13792.html
Not this part here “While the AOL rep definitely handled the situation poorly, he was right to ask questions. The cancellation process is a good opportunity for dealers to mine clients for information. Obviously, if they are canceling, the company didn’t serve them well enough. It’s the service rep’s responsibility to try to find out what the company could have done better.”
Instead, Vince decided to be rude to the rep by interrupting him and not get the matter resolved in a respectful manner. However, had Vince himself been more respectful to at least listen for a moment rather than bait the rep, I’m sure that you’ll agree that the call could have ended in an entirely different matter. This isn’t a matter of AOL being unwilling to cancel the account. It’s a matter of the rep taking the call responding negatively to Vinnie’s own rudeness during the call and now it’s being scrutinized. There is a fact being overlooked. If the rep hadn’t been rude to Vinnie there, there would be no story.
I am in no way condoing the way the the rep handled the call towards the end. He lost his composure and behaved poorly. I do handle some retention calls myself (though it’s not the primary function of my job). The stress is high – not just because a portion of the pay is dependent on keeping paying customers, but because of being berated constantly while trying to do the job. I’ve been working in the customer service industry for more than twelve years. More than ten years of that has been spent on the phone. Burnout happens, and I suspect “Jon” probably needed a vacation.
Unfortunately, the mindset of “the customer is always right” has grown into this creature that somehow gives the idea that there is no reason to be respectful to the customer service employee – there is often the mindset that the CSR is just a mindless stupid drone who has his head shoved up his ass and is there for the customer to walk all over.
It happens enough in retail as it is (I’ve worked that side too) and I’ve been crapped on by customers in that respect. It’s significantly worse on the phones. In the world of retail, there is typically face-to-face interaction. People have that human element in front of them and it seems to create a filter – where somebody who is upset will at least be willing to deal with the person in front of them (or at least keep in mind that they are talking to another human being.)
When working on the phones, I’ve heard people say things and behave in ways that they would NEVER do if they were face to face. Why? Because there is that lack of human contact. The connection is gone. They don’t have a fear of repercussion or feel a need to have regard for the other person’s feelings. That said, when it comes to the customer service industry, phone representatives have it the hardest. It’s probably the most stressful of all jobs in the customer service industry. I don’t know how many reading this have worked in a customer service job. Put yourself in the rep’s shoes for a moment. Whether you have done this type of job or not, the best way to get excellent customer service (even if cancelling an AOL account) is to be an excellent human being. This doesn’t mean being a doormat, it means being respectful and courteous in your exchange, inspite of how you may feel.
The question is, can we objectively look at this phone call and say that Vince was on his best behavior? If that is his best behavior, you certainly don’t want him to be the face leading the cause for better customer service.
RJ – Since you chose to reference this paragraph, so shall I.
Not this part here “While the AOL rep definitely handled the situation poorly, he was right to ask questions. The cancellation process is a good opportunity for dealers to mine clients for information. Obviously, if they are canceling, the company didn’t serve them well enough. It’s the service rep’s responsibility to try to find out what the company could have done better.”
1. while it may be a good opportunity to “mine” clients for information…I, as a client, have no legal, personal or moral obligation to oblige. If you want to take up MY valuable time to figure out how to increase YOUR profits….you had better ask verrrrrry nicely….
2. JOHN had no intention of cancelling Vincent and then finding out how AOL could have served him better. His priority was “retain” Vincent as a customer. Naming the “Cancellation” Center the “Retention” Center represents the most blatent conflict of interest….it just gives me the creeps….
3. When dealing with a client who is adamant about cancelling their service, well then you, as a CSR, should just do that and move on to the next call. JOHN chose to berate, degrade, insult and flat out refuse Vincents request.
4. Whether Vincent was on his best behavior is completely irrelevant. If I pay YOU for a service….it’s YOUR job to be on your best behavior, not mine.
You know, I’m definitely seeing a pattern here.
i love my aol posted:
[quote]
this is so rediculous! after reading all these posts here, all i can say is “get off your soapbox!” as a former employee of aol, i can say that the job i performed in retention was one of the most stressful i’ve ever had. people are IDIOTS sometimes. it would amaze us as to how many people would fault us for their own bad business sense.
[/quote]
terri posted:
[quote]
honestly i work for a call center and its people like vincent that makes the days go longer and harder they call and just strike up an attitude looking for an argument did u know it is our jobs to help u remain service we have to read script by script he was just doing his job!
[/quote]
Why are most of the people here supporting AOL nearly illiterate? The only punctuation terri seems to know is the exclamation point.
“i love my aol” uses commas, but can’t spell a simple word like “ridiculous.”
With these two drooling slack-jawed morons in their court, fighting for their cause, AOL can’t help but win!
Morgan
To the very few people defending AOL:
You are proving to be as stubborn and pigheaded as the CSR. You bring up completely irrelevant points, such as the customer being “rude”. I also work in Customer SERVICE (!) for a public utility (talk about angry customers!!!), and my first rule is to LISTEN to what the customer is requesting, NOT to try to “read between the lines”, as this bozo “John” was attempting to do.
When a customer tells me he/she wants to cancel, the first words out of my mouth are, “Okay… let me pull up that screen”, and then I begin the process. I then VERY POLITELY ask if I may inquire as to the reason for the cancellation AS I CONTINUE TO PROCESS THE REQUEST! If the customer wants to BS me, that is his perogative!
The point isn’t to ask questions- it’s to ask the “right” questions, and once you have the answer, whether you like it or not, just move on.
I just don’t understand why you would get a “good” customer like Vincent, who was calm and concise, and then proceed to antagonize him to the point where the customer “snaps”. I’m sure “John” already gets angry customers; I just don’t understand why he would then take it upon himself to create another one. What is that all about?
I cannot tell you how many times I get customers who are ready to “kick ass”, and then I have to pacify them. Part of that involves showing understanding and… FULFILLING THEIR REQUESTS! Nothing more satisfying than actually helping a customer, especially one that comes in angry and leaves happy.
Thank you for bringing this issue to light (that they are STILL doing it). They have been stealing money out of my bank account for ONE YEAR. My claim with the New York Attorney General’s is pending. They are horrible for treating people this way. They deserve a class – action lawsuit filed against them for sure.
AOL SAYS they fired “John” but I bet they just promoted him to help train the other CSRs.
Anyone interested in contacting AOL directly, call their HQ at 703-265-1000. Address is 22000 AOL Way, Dulles, VA 20166-9302. They are owed by Time Warner. Their site has information on mgmt. including members of the Board of Directors, the Execs, etc. — very interesting (wish THEIR phone numbers were published). Be sure to read their “Values” http://www.timewarner.com). Their address is One Time Warner Center, NY, NY 10019-8016, phone 212-484-8000. Call them and keep them on the line a while . . . .
I say “kudos” to you, Vincent. It’s about time someone did what you did so that everyone in the country can see how this publicly-traded multi-million dollar company treats their customers. None of us in America have time for this sort of treatment. I’m thankful that I’ve never used them, don’t subscribe to Time Magazine or any of their other services/products.
To those folks saying, “you set them up, and blah, blah” Hey, they’ve already got a bad reputation! Vincent had already heard that it was gonna be hard to cancel! He knew that going in — that’s why he recorded it in the first place! He didn’t know he was gonna make radio and TV with this!!
I had the same thing happen to me. The way they handle their company is awful. Glad to be away from it.
The poor AOL call center worker probably would have been fired for not “upselling” or got losing a customer if he had not done what he did.
These guys face a no-win situation. Should he have gone ahead and “Lost ” the customer, would not have been his fault, and taken the blame, or should he have takern “All Appropriate Measures” toward “Customer Retention” Let’s hear from the call center workers on this!
Anyone who thinks this problem is unique to AOL is on some other planet. They may be the most egregious example, but I outgrew AOL about 7 years ago, and switched to MSN. It was not until I re-formatted the machine and re-loades the OS with an OEM version of Win 98 that I got the AOL software off my PC!
I have now had Verizon DSL for a couple of years, and I loaded Win 2000 from scratch on a brand new white box machine to get rid of their software.
Guess what– my old MSN e-mail address still works!! Apparently they have some sort of “Deal” with msn, to allow people tu “USE MSN” with verizon DSL.
Even though I finally understand what that means, at least to them, I CANNOT IMAGIN WHY ANYONE WITH 2 WORKING BRAIN CELLS WOULD DO THAT!!!
I have long since cancelled that credit card, and I hope, for their sake they’re not still billing it!! Would not surprise me if they were!!
AOL, may be the worst abuser, and this time they got caught, and someone had to lose his job for following a direct, specific order. Coupled with the threat of losing his job if he did not! But this is by no stretch of the imagination unique to AOL! It tends to happen anytime you deal with a call center, assuming you can actually get a human being to the phone!
As far as brain washing, I don’t buy that either, because my experience with call center people, especially so-called “SUPERVISORS” or managers is that there is no prospect of brain washing because it is both logically and physically impossible to “wash” something that simply does not exist!!!
I too recorded the phone conversation of closing my AOL account from last july (2005) but just never “let it out” on the chance of legality. But, it seems things went fine for you, so here is my recording for some additional fun…
http://media.putfile.com/Trying-to-Can-AOL-705
So it seems this tactic has been used for at least the past year and doesn’t look very good for the isolated incident theory
i guess “JON” was one unlucky S—-R
wht ya guyz also need to und is tht it is(sorry was)”jon’s” job to retain the customer
1) Jenn says leave registered mail to AOL. I’ve already posted that I did that 2 years ago after multiple calls failed and STILL had to cancel my credit card number to get the charge to stop.
2) “legally bound” to give a good reason? bull hockey! customer has a legal right to cancel AT ANYTIME FOR ANY REASON, if there’s no contracted time obligations, ergo a person signed up for a years service at a discounted rate and has 3 months left.
3) I worked at a different ISP for a while on customer service. They had cue sheets for most every situation, even when a customer cancells the account. The goal is to find out why and see if you can retain the customer. AOL goes about this in a very obsessive fashion though.
I do believe the one that was fired or let go or whatever was scapegoated.
I would agree that John, and the quotations are not needed, they don’t have fake names there, they are not collectors, was out of line with the way he handle the questions. But it is the job of the people that you talk to when you call to cancel to attempt to retain you as a customer. But, if Vince would have only been a pleasant person and let John do what he was paid to do then the call would have been over in the same amount of time.
As far as the rubbish that people have on here that AOL reps are trained to convince the family of the deceased to keep the account, is way off base. Company policy is to only offer things to the family of the deceased if the family member requests to keep it, then they have to change everything over to their name and call back to get the right plan and stuff that they need. It is AGAINST AOL’s policy to go out and ask someone to keep the deceased persons account. If one does so, they will no longer be employed if it is found.
As far as people not getting their accounts canceled, sure there are a few bad apples out there. But 90 percent of the problem comes from people just not listening, or not reading the confirmation letters that come to them. Everyone wants to pass the responsibility buck to AOL, when they have a part to play in it too. It’s always easier to blame someone else for something that happens. I can’t tell you how many times that I have talked to the same person that I had previously talked to and they said so many things that didn’t happen in the conversations, I am a meticulous note taker so I left information throughout the conversation in member accounts.
Fact is, people need to pay attention to the events that happen around them, especially when it can impact them financially. People consistently would accept offers, and call back claiming that they never did it. Or set up a free trial and call AOL crooks cause they didn’t read the terms of the free trial that states you have to cancel the account before the end of the free trial if you wish to not be billed. Because they failed to do that, they get billed and it is AOL’s fault in their eyes due to their own ignorance. Or even now, people sign up for a 90 day risk free trial and rather than read what they agree to, they just assume it is 90 days free, when the terms of the trial tell you that you are going to be bill from day one then if you are not satisifed, you can cancel and receive a refund for regular monthly fees as long as you cancel before day 90 and request the refund.
AOL, as well as any company is certainly not flawless, but they do not train their people to be rude, but actually demand that their CSR’s put up with being called everything but their name, every ignorant name, cuss word has been spouted to me and not once did I ever say anything to a customer, due to the customer I have a job. They fire people for rudeness, placing someone on hold when they know that they can’t save the account, or not canceling an account when the member walked away thinking that it was.
Plain and simple, let the person you talk to have their say with you, you can still cancel, but you don’t have to be a jerk about it. You get more by being kind than being rude. The saves folks are required to make saves attempts (retention attempts) on every call, just as any other company would require, it’s dumb for a company not to do that. Let the offer happen, don’t start demanding and being rude to the consultant on the phones, it makes our lives so much easier and will make your cancellation so much easier. A little common sense goes a long way people.
Loyal AOL employee.
Quoted by John Cody:
I too recorded the phone conversation of closing my AOL account from last july (2005) but just never “let it out” on the chance of legality. But, it seems things went fine for you, so here is my recording for some additional fun…
http://media.putfile.com/Trying-to-Can-AOL-705
hahahaha! Thanks for posting that, man. I think our friend Vinny here just opened a Pandora’s Box with the cancel-AOL recording. Good on both of you. I hope everyone starts doing this to keep crooked businesses in line. They have absolutely no right to harrass customers and stress them out like that.
I can only imagine how many of our elderly folk are being ripped off every day due to such invasive and high-pressure tactics by corrupt businesses.
About a month ago, I also tried to termiate my relationship with AOL. My husband overheard my conversation and was quite amused becasue I said,”We’ve had a long run and I’ve gone high speed cable. Our relationship is finished.” I believe that the AOL employee’s name was Karen. She be intimidating by saying that I would get all kinds of viruses and that I could have gone high speed with them for less. I told her that AOL was too juvenile for me. Well, it’s a done deal and I haven’t looked back on my 8 year relationship with them until now when I had an opportunity to vent! I almost felt like I needed to get a divorce attorney on the phone!
I’ve had a couple of torrid moments with phone reps… partly I think this incident and the AOL official response demonstrates a simple and ubiquitous reality in business: the formal policies are at direct odds with the demanded results. No business is going to demand in their formal policies that managers browbeat hourly employees into working unpaid overtime, but it happens all the time and the managers are not just bastards, they are getting pressured to get more work done than the employee hours they are allowed. Not that that excuses anything. But I also think that its the luck of the draw: once in a while you are going to get that employee who is ready to snap.
to: loyal aol employee for 5 years,
everytime I read one of AOL employees pathetic spin attempts, I feel the obligation to point out that AOL has been sued for (and Lost) their horrid Customer Service practices.
“AOL SETTLES WITH NY, AGREES TO CLEAN UP CANCELLATION PROCESS
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/ny_aol.html
Feel free to check out the numerous other articles on this page about all of the other lawsuits against AOL…
We all should be taping our conversation calls with AOL CSRs. Infact, I’m going to build that in cell phones and then immediately post that to a blog website. So the next website will have taped CSR calls with AOL.
I would dearly love to sue AOL for the hell they put me through when I discontinued service with them. I tell everyone I can not to sign up with them.
I hope all loyal AOL employees will ask themselves this question:
Why is retention (and extensive training in retention methods) even necessary?
Note that many businesses have neither retention departments nor retention training. They don’t need such a thing. Instead, retention of customers, in those businesses, comes from customer satisfaction. Retention of customers is a natural outcome of having a quality product or service sold at a fair price.
I’m fortunate to work for a company that fits this description. If one of our customers happens to do the equivalent of a “cancellation” (quits using us), we completely trust them and respect them and would never, ever, ever try to “talk them out of it” — it would be intrinsically rude to do so. They need what they need. It’s not appropriate for us to second-guess them.
By contrast: How many hundreds of thousands of people have AOL second-guessed, and how many hundreds of thousands of us have resented it?
I have not cancelled my aol membership yet primarily because my children seem to find it easy to use since we have had aol for about 8 years.
However, I have my share of complaints about aol. Currently, I have a dsl connection yet in May of 2006 (last month) I was billed not only for my dsl but for dial-up as well! The aol customer service rep told me that the $23.60 would be put back into my account. The dsl charge goes on my phone bill and aol is only suppose to charge me $8.95 monthly.
Well, here we are now it is June 25, 2006 and I have not been credited for the $23.60. I contacted an aol rep online tonight only to have her/him tell me that one of the users on my account (my 15 year old to be precise) activated a communication surcharge by using my aol account from somewhere out of the country or by dialing in on a 1-800 or 1-888 number! Geez, I wonder why the last CSR didn’t know this?! My daughter dosn’t even have a passport and isn’t dialing in! Where do these CSRs get this crap? Naturally, I objected to the claims!
Finally, the CSR tells me that they would be glad to offer me a buy down to be credited to my account at the rate of $8.95 monthly! Since they just took more money out of my account for this billing cycle…that means it would be almost 4 months before I got my money’s worth. Hmmm, I guess AOL thinks that customers to know about the Time Value of Money.
Lastly before blowing my lid, I suggested that “3:13:03 AM-I WOULD GLADLY ACCEPT FULL REIMBURSEMENT TO MY BANK ACCOUNT.”
The CSR AGREED…DO YOU BELIEVE IT? “3:13:55 AMMHI HaidsI have now submitted the request for a $23.60 cash credit to be reviewed for approval. Please visit us again after 24 hours to confirm the status of the credit request. 3:14:05 AMMHI HaidsA cash credit is a refund for charges made on this account that gets sent automatically to the current payment method you use for your AOL® Account.”
Now I have to check my billing info in 24 hours to see if they credited me or if I need to call them up and fight some more.
This was only one incidence with aol. One of my biggest peeves was when they went from charing me $17.95 for dial-up last August to $23.90 without notifying me. They said my contract for $17.95 had expired! Since when? The $17.95 deal was offered in lieu of me cancelling my long standing membership because I could get a better rate elsewhere…Now they wanted to sneak in and charge me more than I had ever paid for aol. However, they guaranteed me that nothing would change on my account…unlimited use, more than one user signed on at the same time…etc. This was a LIE!! The $17.95 did not allow my daughter to sign on to AOL in college and talk to me while I was signed on to the account as well! All aol did was say, “Oh, I’m sorry that you were misinformed.” They didn’t offer me squat for the inconvenience of misleading me into a limited service 1 year contract!
When I first joined aol it was only $21.95 monthly and that is what I had paid until I threatened to cancel my membership. To make a long story short, it took several months for them to credit me correctly and in the midst I upgraded to DSL and pay only a total of $17.95.
Watch your billing activity and call them up when your current contract is coming on its 1 year anniversary. Aol truly does not care if you have been a valued member or not!
If you do want out of AOL, simply notify your bank or other financial institution and tell them to not accept automatic withdrawls from aol!! If aol can’t get any money from you, they will cancel your account.
AOL Embarrassed by CNBC Report On Its Business Practices
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/06/aol_cnbc.html
June 21, 2006
AOL/America Online
• AOL Embarrassed by CNBC Report On Its Business Practices
• E-Mail Taxation Without Representation
• AOL, Yahoo Planning Postage Charges for Email
• AOL Settles With NY, Agrees to Clean Up Cancellation Process
• Ohio Settles Lawsuit With AOL
• AOL Abandons Broadband
• Ohio Latest to Sue AOL
• AOL Loses 2 Million Clients, Faces Subpoenas
• Class Action Accuses AOL of Double-Billing Scheme
• AOL Offers to Settle Federal Charges
—
Consumer Complaints
• Cancellation Difficulties
• Double-billing
• “Free” Hours
• Unauthorized Charges
• AOL Shop-Direct Complaints
Consumers are dropping AOL by the thousands. More than 800,000 people in the last quarter turned off the online service provider. But for many who would like to be former subscribers, AOL is becoming the pest that refuses to go away, even after repeatedly being told it is no longer wanted or needed.
Terri of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, is one of nearly 4,000 consumers who have written to ConsumerAffairs.Com in recent years about problems with AOL.
Listening to your telephone call with AOL brought back many memories. Three years ago, I also tried to cancel my account and talked with a lady who exhibited a similar attitude. What struck me the most was the fact that the comments and questions made during your call were verbatim to those that I received.
Since so many people have previously complained about problems with AOL, it is obvious that your experience was not a rare occurance, but rather the standard that AOL uses to train their employees. I saw the original interview you conducted with the network, and what concerns me is the fact that at the end of the segment, the interviewer states that AOL has apologized for the experience and has terminated the employee that was at fault. This gives the impression that the problem has been successfully addressed and no further incidents will occur.I believe that this is far from the case.
I would like to see a follow up segment three months from now where someone tries to cancel their AOL account and see if anything has truly changed. Of course, the phone call would be taped, so there would be no debate as to what was really said during the discussion.
Perhaps someone reading these comments will offer to test AOLs commitment to “zero tolerence to customer care incidents”.
You know, four years ago I took my car to a mechanic (Pep Boys) and they tampered with my car and told me I needed some additional work. I went to three other name brand places and they did the same. I don’t have a car anymore. THEY ALL DO THE SAME THING. I had the same experience with AOL. I thought it was a nightmare. This is their training and it is not to let you go. They only have a zero tolerance when they get caught. They are prime for a class action. I don’t have an Internet server anymore.
Brenda, excellent link, i site it also…everytime an AOL employee posts their ridiculous spin (you know AOL higherups encourage them to post there opinion about the company…hoping people might read it and say…”oh…there not so bad” )
Which is why I take great pleasure in posting the fact that AOL loses every class action suit brought against them.
Another great site.. http://www.consumersearch.com/www/internet/isp/index.html
Not only do they list the best ISP, they go out of their way (towards the bottom of the page) to talk about the failings of AOL…
And I quote
“America Online (AOL) is the most popular ISP in the United States. AOL claims 22.1% of the dial-up ISP market (almost 20.8 million users), yet AOL (*est. $24 per month for dial-up) receives lower scores in customer surveys on almost every ISP performance measure, including reliability, support and overall satisfaction. Despite the popularity of AOL, ISP reviews say it’s far from the best Internet service provider. In another review, PC World’s survey also reveals that AOL Internet service has the fewest happy customers. Only 39% of AOL users say they’re satisfied with the overall service, the lowest score of all ISPs. Users report trouble with installation, connection and support.”
And one of my personal favorites, PC world rated AOL as ” THE #1 WORST TECH PRODUCT EVER”
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,125772,pg,2,00.asp
There you go AOL, dispute that, please.
Okay, why are people siding with “Jon”? Did you listen to the same tape we did? Clearly, Vincent was polite with the guy, asking him to cancel his account. Jon kept going on and on trying to get him to stay on, and obviously not listening. Why is it that companies like this claim to have their customers’ best interest at heart, but then do not listen to the customers? Do they really care for their customers? Vincent did not want to continue his AOL account, why would Jon continue to persuade him when at least 3 times (and possibly more) Vincent said no. Are you trained to go deaf on a customer? It seems like the only time we can get companies like this to listen is when we raise our voices or get ugly with them. Learn to take no for an answer and you won’t have this problem. I know these companies (telemarketers,etc)are trying to keep customers, but honestly, harassing the very people who help to keep your company going by giving you their money is not the way to go. Jon was rude and obnoxious and he deserved what he got, plain and simple. If you are going to work in customer service, then learn how to do it the correct way; don’t belittle a customer when he/she is trying to end a service. Remember, the customer is ALWAYS right, or do they teach that anymore?
Kudos to you Vinny! You are helping to expose what is wrong with Customer Service today; companies that can’t or won’t listen to the consumer. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like it would be so much better to end a contract or service on friendly terms (with the possibility of a return in the future, or at the very least, the consumer recommending their friends to said service)than to end on very bad terms with a possible lawsuit in the works. It boils down to treating people the way you want to be treated. And in dealing with the public, you’ve got to treat them with respect. If you have an irate customer, follow the proper channels, don’t get ugly or irate with them in return. It gets you nowhere but fired in the end.
Ok, an advice to all future AOL cancellers: start the conversation with a stern:
1. PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THIS CONVERSATION IS BEING TAPED AND MIGHT BE USED IN THE FUTURE FOR LEGAL PURPOSES. This makes taping legally admissible.
2. Movement I always wanted to start, and now is the time: any time you see those piles of AOL CD’s anywhere – CVS next to the cash register, ANYWHERE!!!! take the entire box (nobody will stop you!) and JOYFULLY DESTROY. Or at least render unusable by some kid desperate to get onto the net. AOL is environmentally irresponsible with all those little metal boxes, and plastic boxes containing billions and billions of their malicious CD’s…
I had the same experience, I wound up getting like 6 months free, every time I called to cancel they would add a free month.
In my situation, I needed more then one computer user to be online at the same time. With one dial up connection, that wasnt possible. They just couldnt understand that and would argue with me every time I called.
Thanks for having the guts to tape your conversations. Kudos to you!!!
Vera Lynn
Kentucky
I think this whole story is nonsense. What loser records phone calls. This guy obviously has no life. He just wanted to get publicity for this stupid site of his. Ok the aol guy may have been a little rude but this guy vinny was ignorant to him right off the bat. This poor guy from aol is just trying to do his job. Do you think he really wants to hear people like vinny all day. I would have just hung up on him and made him call back again. Im sure the AOL company makes employees like JON try and get you to stay with AOL. I think Vinny was a real prick to this guy and now he lost his job. Just think when Jon got home and told his wife and kids that he was fired because some little nerdy guy gave him an attitude while trying to cancel his account, and he was simply just following compnay policy by trying to get the customer to stay with Aol. That is just screwed up. To Vinny I say you suck for probbally ruining some guys life. GOOD JOB
Vinny SUCKS, you are truley a DICK!!!!! You are one to talk about someone not having a life! You must have a similar job to be defending them.(or no job at all and you have nothing better to do.)
Wow… I found your audio recording at the ebaum site and I must say that was quite a trip. I remember cancelling my aol sometime in 2001 and the representative that was “helping me” said something like:
“you don’t want to cancel your account.” I thought cancelling a bloody subcription was going to be easy but I think the whole charade lasted like 40 minutes (w/ waiting of course)… I argued how their software was flawed and now that I was living the country and I wont be needing the i.s.p…
I think the letter of apology is really just for this recording that surfaced everywhere. And I’m sure someone at AOL must be reading this… CHANGE YOUR CUSTOMER approach!!! That type of Customer approach is almost like trying to get a transaction done at a mediocre University!! Why the hassle and the aggrevation?
Well.. nice post. I hope others Record their cases as well!
cheers
I canceled my AOL account almost ten years ago — with difficulty, although not with as much difficulty as V.F. encountered. Then, for several years, I received calls from AOL sales reps trying to get me to rejoin. And I still receive AOL’s damned CDs. It would not surprise me if an AOL sales rep showed up at my front door.
AOL employs these sleezy tactics because they’re profitable — and because the MBA types behind them suffer no penalty worth calling a penalty. Are they embarrassed for a moment? Sure. But then the mass news media go onto another story and the money keeps rolling in. Why stop eating when the clover is so sweet and the public is looking at something else?
Only legislation that could put wayward executives in the slammer will put a stop to AOL’s transgressions (which are not unique).
Would you please post Nicholas Graham’s email address and physical address and his phone number? I will need to cancel in a month or two and would like to contact him to cancel my account.
kenny
I am sorry for the employee. It is not his fault I am sure. He has been drilled to act like this on the phone. You know he is probably just trying to make his month to cover his living costs. I think the real “bad guy” here is the rush for more money (after the dial up > the broad band > the wider broader band > the gazillion GBs nano tech tube band > etc) that is sometimes eluding the human interaction factor… let’s be human and one initiative would be to help the guy who is now without a job. I completely understand Vincent’s way of doing in this case but was the guy on the other side of the line acting on his own or with a computer scenario to take care of such situation with a specific attitude??? just asking. cheers
The same thing happened with my sister when she tried to cancel AOL. Though she had to wait a long time to get through, the experience wasn’t as traumatic as Vinny’s.
Personally, despite the obvious issues that many people have had or are still having with AOL, there is still a soft spot in my heart for them. Their service was integral to my introduction to the ‘net and I will always be grateful to them for that. Besides, they have a great broadband, cable service section, Time Warner Cable, that I loved. I had to cancel it when I moved from one city to another that didn’t offer it. And believe me, the service was cancelled in a matter of seconds. All we had to do was return the cable box and the modem.
If AOL would just start innovating again and behaving like Time Warner, it would go a long way of preventing people from leaving en masse.
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