AOL IS THE DEVIL

[wwmoon85 0]

Seriously, these customer representatives at AOL should be shot. Just thinking about them makes me so angry. My dad has had the AOL service for a while and decided to switch to comcast cable internet so he asked me to cancel AOL for him (because his english is pretty bad). So i call them up and ask to cancel the account, and of course i have to go through the 10 minutes of hell where they ask me all these questions on why i want to cancel it. Then the guy starts blabbing about some stupid promotion thing, not to mention he's talking incredibly fast and has a deep hindu accent so i can't understand a word he's saying. So i just say, "I JUST WANT TO CANCEL THE ACCOUNT." So then he gives me the impression that he's going to cancel the account but i will be able to still use it for a couple months. So im like whatever. Then just recently my dad tells me he's getting charged by AOL. So i call them up again and start bitching at the person about it and I literally talked to her for about 45 minutes saying the same thing over and over again. This is what the conversation was like:

--All the beginning stuff where she gets my info

ME: I cancelled this account a couple months ago but I'm still getting charged.

REP: Well i see on my records here that you did not cancel the account.

ME: What is this? I called you guys up 2 months ago and cancelled it.

REP: Do you have a cancellation number?

ME: Yes but i didn't keep it because i didn't think there would be a problem

REP: Well, then i have no way of knowing if you cancelled it.

ME: Well I DID cancel this account

REP: I see that you haven't used this account for the past couple of months, in which time we've added some new features, I would suggest you try those features out and see if you want to continue the service.

ME: OF COURSE I HAVEN'T USED IT IN THE PAST COUPLE OF MONTHS, I THOUGHT I CANCELLED IT. SO NO I DO NOT WANT TO CONTINUE IT, I WANT TO CANCEL IT IMMEDIATELY!

REP: I understand that, however, you have already paid for the month so it would be pointless to let it waste.

ME: NO I WANT TO CANCEL IT NOW.

-THEN she goes on about the new features for like 5 minutes

ME: NO CANCEL THE ACCOUNT

REP: Well since you have the account for the month ill let you try out the new features and if you still don't like it then you can call this number and -

ME: NO CANCEL THE ACCOUNT

But she still doesn't get the idea and keeps blabbing away so at this point im getting sick and tired of it so i just tell her cancel the account one last time and hang up.

I still don't think its cancelled so i have to call back later and confirm it. Man what kind of BS is this, they throw so much garbage at you and dont let you do something really simple. I know its their job but its ridiculous, they just try to confuse the hell out of you to the point where you're just like screw it. Aren't customer representatives SUPPOSED TO HELP YOU? ARRRGGG. And this isn't the first time my family's had trouble with them. My uncle and my sister has had tons of problems with them about the exact same issue.

[fatwabbit 93]

remember the cancellation number. It happens with most ISP, even phone providers, and credit card companies. I was charge SGD$150 for an account that i didnt remember signing up for, and never even used for a year!

if its one thing i've learnt dealing with these companies, its to get the person's name you are talking to, and the time you called. They should at least have a record of when you called, and who you spoke to, but do it just to be sure.

Citibank in Singapore is rumoured to be the best in customer service, but what they didnt mention is that after going thru the many 'press 1 to have this, press 2 to hear about our special promotions', you have to wait another 5-10 minutes before you speak to a CSO... I was using my wife's mobile phone, and put the speaker function on while i was watching TV. After 10 minutes of watching CSI, they still didnt pick up...

[wwmoon85 0]

Ya no kidding, live and learn. From now on I'm getting down everything and making sure that they're clear on what I WANT, so i dont get duped into some stupid promotion again.

AOL is by far the worst in customer service. I've dealt with a lot of customer service reps from companies such as comcast, alienware, qwest, capital one, and etc. And I've never had this much trouble. Its like pulling teeth.

[all-star 0]

same thing happened when i went to cancel xbox live. i called them back a month later. and yelled at them for a good 45 minutes. then they finally cancelled it.

[enukis 0]

yeah i had the same experience with AOL. i used to use AOL about 10-12 years ago, back when it wasn't filled with so much crap that you couldn't do anything without running into tons of ads, pop-ups, and other crap.

so about 3 months ago i tried a free sample of AOL and after about 2 days i decided to cancel it. first off, they don't let you cancel online so you have to spend atleast 20 minutes on the phone.

when i finally got to a real person, he pulled the same shit with me. he didn't want to accept my decision and wanted to know why i wanted to cancel it. so i listed some of my complaints and then he started telling me that i was wrong (i guess i was imagining the aspects of AOL that i hate). so after being polite for a couple of minutes, i eventually started getting pissed and telling him that AOL is shit and the only people who can enjoy the current version of AOL are those who don't know shit about their computers or the internet. and i also told him that the fact that i had to spend a half hour just to cancel was also bullshit. his response to this was that if it wasn't for that process, he wouldn't have a job.

so while AOL was a good service about 10 years ago and AIM is good, current AOL sucks.

[MDE3 0]

Actually from my perspective 10 years ago, AOL was still worthless...I send a lot of equipment photos (constructuion equipment in case someone wants to get smug... ) over the net as part of my business,,,10 years ago, I would refuse to send them to anyone using AOL, because it was a waste of time..the photos would almost never arrive....they limited the doc size to like 50kb or something ridiculous....when a group of say 10 photos even jpeg'd, were usually abot 500 - 750 kb. Anything that came in as a larger file would simply vanish into space for about a week, and then only sometimes you would get notified that the file was "undeliverable".....after umpteen calls to a client to explain that you had sent the file out at least 4 times....

That part got better, but from the comments I see here I guess everything else got worse....

[EBondo 232]

Hey, at least you went with comcast. Hopefully the same thing won't happen to me, we got comcast for christmas, and we had aol before, and i despised it, but now comcast is soooo much better, soooo much faster. Hopefully we won't get any of that crap from them, it would suck...but overall, sorry it had to happen, aol does have crappy custo. service

[Cavs019 708]

The worst is when you install any AOL affiliated program and they put about 95 icons all over your desktop, start menu, etc.

[Chadd 916]

I quit AOL when they didn't upgrade from 9600bps to 14400bps modems quickly enough for me. Just dispute the charge with the credit card company, tell them the account is cancelled and it was a bogus charge.

[Miserable 6]

Don't expect anything better from Comcast. Their customer service is awful as well. I've had nothing but problems with them on all my accounts.

My favorite was the time that my cable modem got hit by lightning and burned out. I called them and told the girl that I work in IT and my modem got burned out in the storm tonight. She then went on for 30 minutes reading the stupid script they have to resolve the issues. I told her I did all of that before I called since I know computers but she still went on with it and I had to correct her several time on the network settings needed. Finally she transfers me to a tech and he goes through the same stupid script even though I told him I was in IT and I just went through the settings with the other girl. 20 minutes of BS later the tech says he'll have to send someone out to look at the modem and that I can't just drop it off and pick up a new one since it's not clear to him that the modem was the problem even though all the lights are dead on it. Then he tells me that due to the storm I have to wait 5-7 days for the tech to come out. The tech comes out, I show him the modem is dead and he says it must have got zapped; I'll grab a new one from the truck. It literally took two minutes to get him in and out but I had no internet for about 7 days because people are idiots. I refused to pay my modem bill that month and they gave me a hard time at first but I yelled enough to get it done.

[Chadd 916]

I never had a problem with my DSL when it was through GTE, Verizon has been pretty good with only a couple of minor problems.

[LegoDoom 0]

I've had no problems with Verizon. Maybe only a handful of times that the service hasn't worked in the 4 years that I've had them.

[RadioGaGa 162]

I've got High Speed DSL here. I've had a few times where I can't connect...so rather than being the dummy and calling going ..."uh, I can't get on my e-mail"

I try to narrow down the problem by going "Hi, Are you having any issues with your authentication server, becasue I am not able to connect right now"

Hopefully by doing that they skip through the "are the green lights flashing or blinking" type questions.

[Chadd 916]

I've got High Speed DSL here. I've had a few times where I can't connect...so rather than being the dummy and calling going ..."uh, I can't get on my e-mail"

I try to narrow down the problem by going "Hi, Are you having any issues with your authentication server, becasue I am not able to connect right now"

Hopefully by doing that they skip through the "are the green lights flashing or blinking" type questions.

That's assuming they're smart enough to go off the resolution matrix and think for themselves.

[LetsGoWings13 0]

my mom yelled at the msn people. we got comcast and they didnt cancel it for like 4 months intill she called again and it took her a good half an hour to get them to do it

[Eazy_b97 1]

That's rough eh. I had a similar situation with Premier Fitness for a summer membership, we cancelled at the "end of summer" as soon as we got the membership, but they continued to take the money from our account with a numbered account from a void check we had to give them in order to sign up.