p2pnet - rss feed: AOL haunts the dead
p2pnet.net News:- With details of AOL’s horrifying privacy balls-up still ringing loudly on- and offline, news of yet another major AOL mess is beginning to circulate.
An account once held by Maxine Gauthier’s late father had billing charges accumulating against it, even thought it’d been dormant for months and the credit card used for it had also been inactived.
“Nevertheless, AOL kept charging $25.90 each month for dial-up online access,” says the St Louis Post-Dispatch. “Late fees for non-payment accumulated on the credit card, too.’
Gauthier doesn’t own a computer, she doesn’t know the first thing about Web browsing or sending e-mail and she’s not even sure where to find a computer’s “on” button, says the story, but for the past nine months, she’s been, “fighting one of the most persistent and some say irritating institutions in cyberspace: AOL, formerly known as America Online.
“They just haven’t wanted to let go,” she’s quoted as saying.
So far, “Her struggle has involved about a dozen phone calls often ending with an AOL customer service representative or manager hanging up on her,” the story continues. “She even tried impersonating someone else in a couple of the calls.”
And Gauthier’s experience with AOL mirrors that of millions who’ve tried to discontinue their dial-up or other service, “only to encounter stonewalling or outright verbal abuse from the company’s customer service agents, emphasises the St Louis Post-Dispatch.
New York blogger and former AOL loyalist Vincent Ferrari decided to go broadband, but had heard, “breaking up with AOL was difficult to do - customer service agents allegedly employed every trick short of threats to keep people from dropping out - so he recorded his call to customer service and posted it on his Web site. The acrimonious result made huge news online and on television, and inspired a flood of responses. Immediately, AOL clients everywhere recounted their own bad experiences on blogs, TV and radio.”
Gauthier, thus inspired, didn’t given up and, “Finally, this month, Gauthier was able to cancel her father’s credit card,” says the story adding, “The AOL charges, going back to last summer, were wiped away, and she was reimbursed for both the charges and late fees.
“But the story apparently isn’t over. It turns out that Gauthier also has an AOL account, established more than a decade ago when her two daughters were pre-teens first learning to surf the Internet. She has no idea what has become of the account; it has been dormant for years. She never used it. She’s hesitant to find out its status. ‘After going through all that trouble over my father, I’m not sure I could handle that again,”‘ she said.
“Plus, there’s this: A few days ago, Gauthier obtained a letter from AOL that was sent to her mother in Florida. The letter was addressed to Melvin Berkowitz. ‘Dear Mr. Berkowitz,’ it said.
” ‘We hope you’ll come back to AOL’.”
;p
Also See:
horrifying privacy balls-up - AOL data release debacle, August 8, 2006
St Louis Post-Dispatch - Even dead people can’t escape AOL, August 8, 2006
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August 9th, 2006 at 12:12 am
Wow! I can’t believe their still at it.
I went through this some years ago. The only way to get rid of them was to cancel my credit card. Greedy idiots.
August 10th, 2006 at 12:00 am
What the widow of Melvin Berkowitz needs to do is send AOL a certified copy of Melvin’s Death Certificate. I had send every one of my late spouse’s creditors, the IRS and other governmental agencies, copies of their Death Certificate. The only one that’s still giving me problems is a hospital bill from about a year before their death. The hospital refuses to quash the $600+ bill, has had it transferred into my name and reported it to a collection agency which calls me every single day to harrass me about it. My spouse’s death has left me completely destitute as they had no life insurance, we had no assets…not even burial arrangements or plots! I had to literally bury my spouse’s ashes myself in plots left by their parents when they [the parents] moved out of state, died and were buried there. My spouse’s brother-in-law paid for the cremation. I’m disabled and unable to work. A friend of mine has taken me in and is supporting me to keep me off the streets…with my disabilities I wouldn’t last 18 hours.