Ohio Sues AOL

Ha! It's about time AOL is horrible. I want in on this

Compuserv is just two miles down the road. This made the papers in Columbus this AM.

As a long time resident of Columbus and a user of Compuserv more than 30 years ago, it troubles me to see this leader of time sharing, then bulletin boards, then internet connectivity besmudged by AOL's incompetency.

p.s. The new spell check needs some help!
[text was edited by author 2003-10-28 15:19:45]

just think.. if they give you a hard time or any problems, you get 25K. sweet!:)

Years ago when my family tried to cancel Aol, they told us that they would give us I think it was 90days free before the service would end. And when that time period was up they had charged my mom's credit card for more then 3 months of Aol. When we called Aol to complain we got no where and we where told some bs about why we got charged for the time that should have been free. Aol is a joke

I am lighting the torches so we can go storm the castle ... LOL!

That's providing the state will give that money to those customers. Which is most likely not going to be the case. $25,000 for paying let's pretend...$25.00/month for 3 months? That's more then just extreme.

they did this to my grandmother
she bought a Gateway PC in 2000, it came with 1 year of free AOL
she used the service for a while, but switched to another dial service a few months before the AOL free time ran out
she called them and tried to cancel then...they reluctantly said that it would be cancelled the next month at the end of the free trial
a couple weeks before the end of the trial she called again and was told that it would be closed and she would never see a bill
well, the month after that her credit/debit card was billed the $20+ standard AOL fee
she called them several times complaining, but was told that the account was never cancelled and there was nothing she could do to get the money back

Nothing would make me happier than to see AOL go away.

for AOHell to try to charge me after my account has been cancelled.
If they do, they will hear about a butt-load of trouble.
They can try to blow me off, but they will not be able to blow off my attorney, who will bypass the consumer channels of customer (dis)service.
I recently tried them again, but cancelled the same day and got a confirmation number.
I hope it doesn't come to that, but I am ready.
Pre-Paid Legal might just have to come in handy.
I feel for the Ohio residents who are dealing with AOHell now, and wish them success in their suit.

This happened to me too, years ago, when I was young and foolish. I signed up for AOL for a while, then called them to cancel it. I said I didn't want any more free time, just cancel the account. They didn't cancel it, and I was charged for the next month. I called again and the second time they did cancel it.

So glad to see they're still up to their old tricks.

Same here Stealth, years ago when I left AOL they billed me like 3 more times even after I called and cancelled.

Die Aol die.

Back when they first came out with the [rim] mobile communicator I bought one, after 6 months I cancelled the service for it, they didn't bill me for 1 month than started billing me again, ,when i called they told me it was my fault, although they couldn't explain how it was my fault. after numerous voicemails to a supervisor, they cancelled the service again, but refused to give me credit for that 1 month. I even offered in the end to take credit for other aol stuff instead of cash, they declined, so i was out the money.

my mom still has a 72 dollar bill with aol meanwhile she never had it in her name. lol go aohell

This happened to me a couple years ago with CompuServe, after CompuServe was bought by AOL. I'd had a CompuServe account for eons (since early 80s), but I hadn't needed it in recent years. I called and cancelled the service. They tried to up-sell me on another package. I declined and they said they cancelled my service.

The bills kept coming on my credit card. I called and complained, but they said I had accepted their other offer. They refused to admit they were wrong and refused to credit me the monthly fee. After having a good experience with CompuServe for years, they ruined it at the end. I spoke to a supervisor who told me there was no way they could credit me the fee. Bastards! I made the supervisor give me his supervisor's name and I had to write a nasty letter to them and my credit card company, all to dispute a $10 charge. In the end, they credited my card, but they did it kicking and screaming the entire way.

I have no doubt they're up to no good.

Lets all get together and storm the AOL TW building, the AOL portion of course, and destroy everything in sight. Then to Virginia and destroy all of AOL's equipment. The sweet sounds of revenge!

This is the one thing that really upset me about AOHell. I canceled it then a month later there was another charge to my bank account. (not a good thing when trying to balance the checkbook)

I called again and the customer services rep asked me why and I told him that I didn't want it and he got an attitude about it. I had a few choice words for him, something like BBB, Attorney General, Flamethrower, Lawsuit...

Couple years latter when I worked at a bank, this was one of the most aggravating things for the bank to do - stop AOL from auto debiting accounts when customers didn't want AOL to take money.

AOL doesn't care... Hope they go down in big flames...

Glad to see that Ohio is standing up to them.

It's about time! Everyone I know, including myself, has had almost a carbon-copy experience with quitting AOL as is detailed in news and forum accounts. I suppose it may have taken this long for the abominable practices to catch up with AOL because only recently have large numbers of people been trying to quit AOL, presumably for broadband or one of the much less expensive dial-up carriers. Nothing like the clamoring masses to get government action! Or was it that some Ohio lawmaker/regulator got a taste of the AOL-quitting experience himself when switching to broadband?

In any case, it shows there is hope!

said by Apophis:

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Nothing would make me happier than to see AOL go away.

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You and me BOTH.

AOL must die!

I got billed for four months after cancelling their service. And worse off was the fact that I was in high school, and they were withdrawing it directly from my checking account, because I did not have a credit card. I couldn't tell you how pissed I was when the bounced checks came back because of them.

puritan

Wow!

Proud to be an Ohioian. I hope they get lots of money from AOL.

Another interesting note, I bet this thread will have one of the highest precentage of ohioians posting.

How hard is it to get someone off the billing system? This whole mess stinks like a big lie. I think AOL purposely billed these people.

*Compuserve

said by Mr_Stealth:

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a couple weeks before the end of the trial she called again and was told that it would be closed and she would never see a bill
well, the month after that her credit/debit card was billed the $20+ standard AOL fee
she called them several times complaining, but was told that the account was never cancelled and there was nothing she could do to get the money back

---

If she had contacted the credit card company within 60 days of getting that credit card statement, the credit card company would have investigated the charge and then reversed it which would have given her the money back. Credit Card companies have a lot of power when it comes to these types of improper charges. They log too many of these types of complaints about a merchant and the merchant finds their fees for accepting credit cards goes up or merchant finds their authority to accept credit cards is cancelled! The details are explained on the back of each monthly credit card statement.

I have had to go this route several times over the past few years, it does work!

Sounds good! OVERTHROW AOL!!!!!!

My neighbor tried to cancel his AOL and instead of canceling, they added another account so they were paying double. they called and tried to cancel it, but AOL said that they were only being billed for 1 account. that got them pretty mad.

I gave them up years ago when it was still 19.99 per month. Its the same old con when you call to cancel. We will give you 30 or 60 days free etc... etc.... I got fed up and cancelled my credit card only to have aol send me to a collection agency. When I threatened to file a complaint with the new york attorney general they apologized and cancelled the account. They should make this a nationwide class action suit and I guarentee that AOL will be history. They are even running deceptive ads on tv saying if you have a broadband connection you really need aol 9.0 or the whole world can look into your computer.... What a crock.

I remember the phone call to AOL clearly try to cancel their service after I was "temporarily using them" to get internet access. I was switching to SBC DSL then.

The AOL rep was probably a native from Asia, or the call must have been routed to India, or something like that. Now mind you this was a call to just cancel AOL that should have taken about less than 5 minutes to do. Instead, I heard the AOL barrage "Do you use the internet just a little bit? We offer an hourly plan...NO..I can credit your account for another month if you decide to stay with us..NO..Can I ask why you are canceling AOL service??...NO..What provider are you switching to?.."

That went on for maybe 10-20 minutes or so, and then finally we (my sister had the account) just asked them to cancel the account. The rep finally did (with a hint of annoyance after we cut her off during a sentence), and then we asked to speak to a supervisor. Another ~10 minute wait.

Supervisor picks up. Same accent as the rep above..Random apologies in a very incisively stupid tone, and confirms that the account has been closed. Says some more crap and then and says "This will be looked into further" and hangs up.

Never heard from them again, thank god.
[text was edited by author 2003-10-28 20:38:14]

While it would be nice if AOL got smacked with the penalties, I don't think $25,000 for 250 incidents ($6,250,000 total) will put them out of business. If the suit were expanded, they might really feel the burn.

Don't forget me! don't know who i hate more AOL or microsoft? It's so hard to pick between the two (not flaming just having some fun) lol

I was an AOL 1.0 user. It was great at the time, but sucked as soon as the service got bogged down with too many users and too frequent disconnects.

Canceling, I mean trying to cancel was flocked with outrageous hold times and counteroffers like they refer to.

Also here is a little dark secret. A company I worked for had about 30 inactive AOL accounts from fired employees. Try to cancel an AOL account with them when you are not on the account. Took at least 6 months and cost thousands in man-time to get rid of those accounts while they just kept billing us.