AOL Gets Fined For "Retentive Customer Care"
Thursday August 25, 2005
Anyone had this experience with AOL? You take advantage of the whatever-free-hours they're offering, and then decide you want to cancel at the end of the thirty days, and you call, and you get Miss Perky McPerkystein on the other end who will not let you cancel until you summon the assembled forces of darkness, or at least threaten to. (perhaps that's just my experience?)
Anyway, this via the Washinton Post:
"America Online Inc. agreed to pay a $1.25 million fine and change its practice of discouraging consumers from canceling service, after New York Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer started an investigation into the company's behavior.Spitzer's office received about 300 customer complaints since 2000 and found that AOL's customer service personnel were given a financial incentive to prevent subscribers from leaving the service."
Related: If you'd like to learn more about AOL, you can with AOL Search 101.
Comments
I think it is pretty messed up that aol high speed is not available to all their customers. They are basically telling us to go to comcast and pay almost double for their service. We are getting experiencing slower internet service and aol is increasing the prices. Maybe it is time that we find another ISP considering all the problems we are and have had with aol in the past and present. I got onto live help and the person that helped me was not helpful and you could tell she wasn’t very pleasent just in the things she was typing and questions she avoided. What kind of person is that?
you think that stinks so does there customer service , when you are chatting with a customer billing rep and they hang up on you. shame on aol … they suck
Three months later I”m being charged for AOL service after I thought it was cancelled. I called customer service and they can’t find my account yet every month I see money deducted from my account.
They took an anual subscription from me in March 08, , they said they would refund the balance of £98:28, when I cancelled in July,when I yet again rung the customer care, they said the cancelation had never been completed. Now October and no refund to my bank account,so I can see their game, as every month on enquiring it would be the same reply until there is no money left in the pot. What worries me what is there to stop them from taking another full year from me in March next year,, Change my bank account ??????
They have chosen to ignore two emails from me in the last week.