Sue the s-o-b’s!

(through their automated phone service to cancel your account) yes they actually have this feature.

found out that it didn’t actually cancel my account.. even the number it had generated was not legit. i called very angry and wanted my money for 2 months they had billed me for. they told me they would refund the account but could not CLOSE my account until the money was refunded. i told her that was the stupidest thing i had ever heard. 2 weeks later the money was refunded. i called and cancelled the service AGAIN. still waiting for next month to see what happens.

So, I ordered Sprint (and to this day do not fully understand why I let them screw me out of $180.00 for the “free gift” I was supposed to receive for signing up). In the meantime, my next bill from AOL, which I had used less than miserly (spending no more than ten minutes per day – which would have been five minutes per day except for their lengthy login rigmarole!!) was for $35.00!!!!!

Leave out the grisly details, but they never did drop that bill, and in fact continued to bill me at the usual $21.95/month fee for six months afterwards! Like many, I asked my bank to change my credit card number. Failing to do so, they lost my business to a different bank, where I heaped all my credit card debt into one monthly bill, with a NEW CREDIT CARD number!

All of that was about seven or eight years ago. It’s amazing what lessons of life will be force-fed down the throats of generally unsuspecting, honest, law-abiding citizens by the avaricious denizens of cyber-space — supposedly upright, honest, legitimate American companies. I have tried to tell everyone I know of my AOL and Sprint experiences, but it’s amazing how many people still use them! My poor sister still believes that it was her daughter and son-in-law that drove her AOL bill so high every month!

The software is bloatware, I agree. But if you say install using the disks through the mail, and be sure to cancel four or five days before the ‘trial’ is up, you’re free.

I think if you choose to sign up, use the small print. AOL feeds of peoples laziness or the fact that often you forget.

I think, in total, I probably got nine months free dial up from them. A couple of times when I phoned up to cancel, they’d chuck in a month or two to keep me going!

But this is the UK experience talking here.

The very worse thing you can do is provide such a company your credit card info to either prove you are 21 or to get service from them. They are just short of being as bad as spyware and malware and once they get their hooks in your credit account, they leech as long as possible.

The old scam of terminating your account with a credit in user time wore thin long ago. Also the one of giving you a free month of service if you bitch, doesn’t fix the problem of rogue operations and methods.

There is one thing I would thank AOL for and it is about the only thing I can think of where I would credit them with anything. That is proving that cd’s don’t cost that much. Doesn’t take a wizard to figure out if you see them everywhere and get them in the mail to boot, they aren’t very expensive to make. Up till that point the cartels had that new shiny disc and no one could say it what cost that to make the disc. Now everyone and their brother knows they aren’t expensive. Very hard to justify the price of paid for music when looking at it that way.

They also tell the customer that the account is canceled then give them six months free. the customer thinks it’s over with then six months later finds the charges reacurring on their credit card statement.