moonpuppy
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD | One way or another.......
.....companies will pay for bad customer service.
Holding onto unhappy customers will cost you more in the long run than if you just let them go. |
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EliteTimeWas
join:2004-02-19
Zephyrhills, FL | Of course, the three million is a drop in the bucket compared to the money AOL probably made by making cancellation a living hell, |
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pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
 ·Comcast
|  Old News?
AOL has been screwing people over in the billing department since the early 1990s at least. Time and again I keep hearing about them being sued or action being taken against them by some government agency but it seems they still make cancellation a living hell.
The only "lesson" that this teaches Vonage is to hope for a class action lawsuit where they can simply pay the lawyers some cash and give coupons to customers who were defrauded.
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Only SHATNER is Kirk. |
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Slidetbone
Mazin Go
Premium
join:2002-11-10
Land O Lakes, FL
| reply to EliteTimeWas
Re: One way or another.......
AOL isn't the only company doing this. Many service and wireless providers are using this tactic. AOL just so happens to be in the sights of so many that booed their service. But little do people know is that we owe what the internet is today due to the strategies of AOL. It gave many folks an easy way to get online.
Bash me all you want, but look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself "I never used AOL" and watch your nose grow!  |
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Siryak
join:2005-11-26
 ·WildBlue
| reply to pnh102
Re: Old News?
I think it should be MANDATORY for a company to have easy online cancellation. I have been through the AOL cancellation bit and that has to be the worst experience with customer service I have EVER had and believe me I have talked to a lot of CS. 
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Wildblue Pro Pack / Beam 40 / Laredo NOC / Windows MCE SP2 |
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pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
·Comcast
| reply to Slidetbone
Re: One way or another.......
said by Slidetbone  :Many service and wireless providers are using this tactic. This practice is prevalent in the credit card industry as well. The last credit card that I cancelled over the phone, back in 2002, took 3 hours of my time (thank goodness for speakerphones). For credit cards at least, I have had to change my tactics. I simply mail a letter instructing the credit card company to cancel my account to the account's service (not billing) address. This has worked both times that I have tried it.
Perhaps this method might also work with ISPs, especially if such a letter is sent via Certified Mail with some sort of delivery confirmation.
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Only SHATNER is Kirk. |
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Noah Vail
Premium
join:2004-12-10
Lorton, VA
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to pnh102
VERY Old News
Back when people were just catching on to dial up, I used to play clean-up to AOL's Marketing Strategy. AOL would heavily CD Spam some areas, knowing that there was no local dial up number for those users.
AOL's software would choose a dial up number for the customer, and if there was no local number, it would choose some outlying exchange. That is, AOL would connect to a Long Distance Number without notifying the user.
If a user were computer savvy enough, they would go into the connection properties and discover what AOL had done. But in nearly all cases, a savvy user wouldn't sign up with AOL at all.
The end result was huge and unexpected phone bills. If the billing timed out right, those bills would reach $400+ before the customer found out. I would get the service calls and have to explain to the customer what kind of company AOL was.
Since then, it's been a goal with me to remove every customer I can from AOL. Also to let as many people know, what a deplorable entity they are, one that probably shouldn't exist.
My best guess is that I've effected a few hundred customers or potential customers in the last 15 years.
If we all do our part......
NV
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The More Alike 2 Religions are, the Stronger the Hate between them. |
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TheWickerMan
join:2002-04-09
Enola, PA
| reply to Slidetbone
Re: One way or another.......
said by Slidetbone :Bash me all you want, but look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself "I never used AOL" and watch your nose grow! I never used AOL.
(Waits for it...)
Nope. My nose is still the same size. |
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MrMoody
But the Grinch ... did Not.
join:2002-09-03
Smithfield, NC | reply to Slidetbone
I never used AOL, not even once. I had heard too many horror stories. I went straight from BBSs to dialup direct internet and Mosaic. |
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Mactron
el camino Real
Premium
join:2001-12-16
CM94sv
| reply to moonpuppy
"three million is a drop in the bucket compared to the money AOL probably made by making cancellation a living hell"
A slap on the hand, nothing more. 
The AOL Lawyers earned their pay big time. 
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If only the Verizon CSRs worked this well.  |
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markrubi
join:2004-08-11
Edmond, OK
| reply to Noah Vail
Re: VERY Old News
One had to choose an access number from the very beginning. It was the customers fault for not checking if the number was LD or not. It was this way from the very beginning. There even was a warning about the access number might be long distance and to check with the phone co if you were not sure. If AOL would have chosen a number for you and picked a LD number there would have been lawsuits long ago. AOL has done some shady things but what you posted is not one of them. |
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markrubi
join:2004-08-11
Edmond, OK
| reply to Siryak
Re: Old News?
Back in the early days of AOL one could cancel online. A screen at KW: cancel had a button. IF you clicked it you heard GOODBYE and you were canceled. This didn't hang around long as you can imagine the birth of the saves department came. Give em a free month or two instead of canceling. Being able to say we have XXXXXXX members meant better stock prices etc.. |
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pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
·Comcast
| reply to Noah Vail
Re: VERY Old News
said by Noah Vail :AOL would heavily CD Spam some areas, knowing that there was no local dial up number for those users. That seems quite odd. AOL would gain nothing by having people dial long distance numbers or intra-LATA numbers.
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Only SHATNER is Kirk. |
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MrMoody
But the Grinch ... did Not.
join:2002-09-03
Smithfield, NC | reply to pnh102
Re: Old News?
Seriously old. How many of you still have these laying around? Never installed. Maybe I should eBay it.
 |
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Noah Vail
Premium
join:2004-12-10
Lorton, VA
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to markrubi
Re: VERY Old News
Not true, at least not always. The Software Changed. Having to choose an access number came after the Class Action Suit filed in California that included, among other things, deceptive account inceptions (people signed up who had never heard of AOL) and (sound familiar) account termination problems.
In a release of the software, there would be an option to see the number choices, but it wasn't displayed by default. Having the dial up numbers displayed openly is something that came after the class action suit.
Afterward, they still CD Spammed the long distance areas, counting on people who couldn't tell where the extended calling termination lines were. The extended calling areas were confusing enough that even the phone co execs couldn't always tell where they were.
AOL DID always research their market targets carefully.
NV
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The More Alike 2 Religions are, the Stronger the Hate between them. |
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Noah Vail
Premium
join:2004-12-10
Lorton, VA
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to pnh102
Well it's not a business model I would have chosen, however I serviced dozens of customers that endured this. I heard stories (directly and not) of maybe one or two hundred more. Nearly every customer I had, had a story to tell, of a friend or relative.
If my anecdotal experience is represtative, it was VERY successful for them. $20 - $60, plus termination issues that brought months more of unwanted service, plus there there those people who kept the service, added up to something.
NV
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The More Alike 2 Religions are, the Stronger the Hate between them. |
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reub2000
Premium
join:2001-12-28
Evanston, IL | reply to MrMoody
Re: Old News?
Or better yet, reformat it and put it to good use! |
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RARPSL
join:1999-12-08
Suffern, NY
| reply to Slidetbone
Re: One way or another.......
said by Slidetbone :But little do people know is that we owe what the internet is today due to the strategies of AOL. While that is true, I'd be happier if AOL at least did not treat the Internet (and its users) as second class citizens compared to ITS users and provided the same email functionality to email sent to and/or received from the Internet as that which is created on the AOL side of the Email gateway and sent to another AOL user.
Examples of the failure to support Internet Email correctly include:
1) An attempt to request a RR gets silently ignored for mail addressed to an Internet address as opposed to inserting RRT and DNT headers into the created RFC2822 format email.
2) An Internet Email that has a RRT and/or DNT header has it ignored as it passes into the AOL Email system and does not have the AOL Email RR flag set (so a RR can be sent back to the sender as would occur if the Email was created on the AOL side in the first place).
3) An Internet Email that has more than one attachment gets converted into a MIME Format attachment file of the full RFC2822 message and attached to a Boilerplate message saying (in effect) "We refuse to handing multiple attachments correctly and it is your job to unMIME the data in this attachment which contains the message as it was delivered to our Gateway". A message created on the AOL side would have an Archive attachment containing all the files. The gateway is just DELIBERATELY configured/designed to not create this archive (the Internet User must do it for AOL to get it delivered/converted correctly).
4) Talking about an Archive attachment, if a message is created on the AOL side and sent to the Internet, the Gateway does not pass the attachment as-is but expands it and appends it to the message body (at least if it is Text or HTML).
5) Trying to fetch a message with attachment via IMAP gets the same mangling as 4 above.
6) Trying to submit a multi-attachment message via AOL's SMTP MSA Servers addressed to an AOL address gets the same malformed AOL message as in 3 above.
I could go on but this type of DELIBERATE mishandling of Internet Email is par for the course with AOL. |
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pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
·Comcast
| reply to Noah Vail
Re: VERY Old News
said by Noah Vail :If my anecdotal experience is represtative, it was VERY successful for them. $20 - $60, plus termination issues that brought months more of unwanted service, plus there there those people who kept the service, added up to something. Hmm... I suppose another way to look at it then is that since these people are dialing long distance or intra-LATA to reach AOL, it saves AOL from having to set up a POP in these customers' local calling areas.
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Only SHATNER is Kirk. |
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