

You've Got Blackmail: The AOL Account That Wouldn't Die - quoderat
http://blogs.wsj.com/wallet/2009/07/02/youve-got-blackmail-the-aol-account-that-wouldnt-die/

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joshu
Customer service is marketing. When will people learn this?

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tokenadult
It's not smart to try to push around a Wall Street Journal journalist.

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pmichaud
This isn't unusual actually. Companies can and do report bogus charges like
this with impunity.

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aberman
What is unusual is the frequency with which AOL pulls this shit. Yes, other
companies have been known to hit their customers with bogus charges, but
nowhere near the extent to which AOL has. It's basically their business model.
You simply can't cancel an account.

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daleharvey
yup, aol charged me for around 16 months after cancelling my account 3 times,
and stupidly not paying attention thereafter, they did very reluctantly refund
around a third, although they probably kept me sitting arguing for long enough
on their premium phone number to get that back.

bt have also tried to charge me ~200 to install a phone line I didnt agree to
(I had already got the line installed by virgin, for free).

My experiences with telcos are the lowest of the low, I dont understand how
some company hasnt gone into the market, treated their customers fairly, and
wiped the floor with the competition.

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jasonkester
Here in England, we have fast.co.uk doing exactly that for DSL. You call them
up and a real human being answers the phone. This person is physically located
in the country, speaks English, and can actually perform the tasks you ask of
him.

It's amazing. You ask about some obscure technical issue, and he digs in and
fixes it. On the spot. The guy who answered the phone!

They charge about 5 pounds a month more than the big guys, which is more than
worth it. I hope that more companies like this will start springing up in
other areas.

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daleharvey
heh this was in england, however looking at their site its £17 a month for 5GB
bandwidth?

I have to say I have little to complain about when I went with virgin, which
was ~£15 for unlimited downloads. the difference between 20GB and unlimited is
quite a lot for me, even if I almost never used 20GB.

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satyajit
Is it just me, or everyone feels the same about when someone hands over a
business card with an aol.com address on it? Almost feels like, you don't want
to do business with this pre-historic animal!

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dpcan
This comment sounds funny at first, but it's SO true.

If the business card has an AOL address on it, it's a giant red flag that says
"potential problem client" all over it.

My top 8 reasons why an AOL address on a business card MAY mean "problem
client".

#8 This person will probably have NO IDEA how to send an attachment. I mean
NOOOOO IDEAAAAAA!

#7 Need them to upload a photo to a website? Forget it. Just forget it.
"Browse button? Browse what?"

#6 You never know if your email will get through to them or if it will be
filtered.

#5 The "Internet" IS the AOL icon.

#4 When on the phone with your client, you will probably hear the distinct
sound of a 56.6kbps modem tone when you ask them to pull up their email or
website.

#3 They'll ask what "keyword" gets them to their website.

#2 Getting them to a browser to pull up their website first requires walking
them through a series of pop-up ad windows that need to be closed.

#1 While walking them through a website or how to send an email, prepare for
this statement: "Hold on, AOL crashed, I have to reboot. I think I need a new
computer." (no. you do not need a new computer. you are doing it wrong.)

humph.

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satyajit
Very funny! You just put my gut feeling to words ... thanks!

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aberman
When are these people going to learn? AOL has reached the point where their
original product does NOTHING except detract value. Just drop it AOL because
the fourteen 85-year-olds that are still using it are going to be dead soon
anyways.

People still use AIM (still not sure why), and sometimes frequent some of your
other media outlets. Focus on those, and stop charging (former) customers for
services they don't use or want.

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Jebdm
People use AIM because their friends use it. What IM protocol people use seems
to vary from locale to locale (among the non-nerd types), probably just
depending on which got used first.

I'd happily switch away from AIM (by that, I mean the protocol/servers, I use
Bitlbee/irssi and Pidgin), except that a lot of the people I know use AIM
exclusively.

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cubicle67
I'm pretty sure iChat uses the AIM protocol. I have no idea why.

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gommm
Between msn messenger, yahoo instant messenger and aim, my experience is that
the connection with AIM is much more stable (meaning less dropped messages).
MSN is the worst of all three since it drops messages without any indication
of it...

What is interesting is that it's really segmented by countries... US is AIM
and Jabber, Europe MSN, China QQ, Vietnam Yahoo Instant Messenger.... So I
have to be on all five plus skype...

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lief79
I'm assuming the fraud alert would give him the chance to fight the charges if
they try to report them?

How exactly does it help?

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pmichaud
It'll affect his credit rating if there's an unpaid balance in collections.
He's reporting that the report is fraudulent in the hopes that it won't hurt
his score. I don't have a lot of faith in the credit rating system though, so
I'm skeptical that it'll do any good.

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tokenadult
It should do him a lot of good if there is knowledge in the industry that this
company is posting fraudulent charges and not resolving consumer complaints
satisfactorily.

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dukeofchutney
Rule #1. Never sign up to AOL. Rule #2. Never break rule #1. Rule #3. If in
doubt refer to rule #2.

