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Interesting Late Breaking News
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AOL to reform customer service in Spitzer pact. August 24, 2005. NEW YORK (Reuters) - America Online has agreed to reform the way it handles customers who want to cancel service, effectively ending "stealth retention programs," New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said on Wednesday.

Breaking News Alerts Spitzer, announcing settlement of a lawsuit, said AOL is also required to provide fee refunds for up to four months of service to all New York consumers who claim harm based on improper cancellation requests and pay New York state $1.25 million in penalties and costs. "This agreement helps ensure that AOL will strive to keep its customers through quality service, not stealth retention programs," Spitzer said in a statement.

Spitzer's office, responding to about 300 New York customer complaints, conducted a probe into AOL's customer service policies and procedures. AOL, owned by media conglomerate Time Warner Inc., serves about 21 million subscribers, of which 1.9 million customers reside in the region. With the settlement, AOL, the world's largest Internet service provider, agreed to alter incentives it offers customer representatives who try to dissuade customers from canceling their subscriptions.

It also agreed to eliminate customer service quotas on the number of subscribers dissuaded from canceling before paying a bonus, and to record all cancellation requests. Actions taken on cancellation requests will need to be verified by a third party monitor by June 2006. Customers seeking refunds will need to submit claims to either AOL or the attorney general's office within 120 days.

"AOL is pleased to have reached an agreement with the state of New York on customer care practices that we believe will increase quality assurance and assist with the verification of certain member intentions online," an AOL spokesman said. Time Warner shares fell 10 cents to $17.71 on the New York Stock Exchange.

© Copyright 2005 Reuters. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Reuters or its third-party content providers. Any copying, republication, or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

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Theft From My Account :(
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I have had AOL as my internet provider for more than two years. And I have never had a problem with them until recently. I had unlimited dial-up for more than a year, at $14.95 for unlimited use. Then I added a high speed modem from my local cable provider.

In May I bought a house and no longer could use my modem, the cable company does not serve this area. I called AOL and told them. They told me that by cancelling only my Broadband connection I would still have unlimited access to dial-up for $14.95 a month. More or less that my bill would pick up where it had left off... $14.95.

So in June I found on my checking statement that AOL had taken $50 from my account. So, I call AOL and get the issue resolved, they refund my money 10 days later (it didn't take them 10 days to take it). My July bill was okay, $14.95. Now suddenly I get my checking statement for the month of August, and they take another $50. And the unexpected $35.00 they took, caused me to bounce a check... $25.00 to the bank, $25 to the company I wrote the check to. So I call and get a lady that I can't understand and who obviously does not understand me. But she finally got tired of me talking slow for her and decided to give me my money back.

So today I get online w/ AOL support and tell them I no longer want them to take auto withdrawals from my account and I want to be billed to my home (as I have before). The support person then tells me that I have to keep letting them take money from my account because they no longer allow payments from any other source.
What crock!!

So now they say they are willing to give me back my $35.00, but that now doesn't cover the other $50 that I have been charged for that bounced check. And AOL sure didn't want to pay that! I have already talked to my credit union and will have to file an affidavit stating that I've told them. I printed the IM correspondence between myself and the tech, and will be going to my credit union first thing tomorrow.

I know of at least one other person they have done this to recently and she never received her $95 back that they scammed her out of. They have done this to so many people for too long. Somebody needs to file a class action lawsuit against these jerks and make them pay for the damage they are causing people.

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I Tried to Cancel AOL for Six Months
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LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY -- I write regarding the recent attempts to close an AOL account. This account was the account of my elderly father who is age eighty-six and has not been able to use the Internet for nearly one year now. I, as his estate manager, have been trying to close his account and stop the monthly billing ($23.90 + $2.90) from his debit card for about six months now. My sister and I have been calling AOL Customer Service during these six months only to encounter various excuses for disconnecting this account. Four of our calls were "hang-ups" when we mentioned our reason for calling.

I was finally able to supposedly close this AOL account on Sunday, August 14, 2005. I am only hoping it was a valid cancel request. My complaint, I have been trying to cancel this account for six months and encountered endless excuses. Examples: "We can't find his account under that screen name." "You must call from his home number to cancel the account."

AOL customer service department must understand that not every customer has just one home. My father owns several homes in various regions of the country. It was impossible for me to call from each of his homes. When he leaves each home for extended time the home phone is inactivated to vacation mode.

It amazed me that AOL couldn't find his account during the many times I called but found his account each month to bill him during his final year of service. His account was inactive for nearly one year. I regret that I did not document all the calls and time I spent over six months in trying to close this account.

I've since reviewed AOL complaints on the Better Business Bureau site (www.bbb.org) and see that my complaint is common & that AOL settled a class-action suit over this matter. I've filed my own complaint. What I find a bit odd/funny is that an Internet service provider (AOL) seems to request a member cancel via postal or fax. I'm repeatedly told by AOL Customer Service Reps. that it's not possible to cancel via e-mail. Thanks for your time.

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AOL fails to cancel online service
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Please whoever reads this, take note! When dealing with America Online be very careful and make sure to follow up any cancellation phone call or email with a second one. I had a free trial with AOL for several months after I purchased my Dell computer. After the free trial I continued to use AOL until I decided to switch to Road Runner in March 2003 due to my lack of overall satisfaction with AOL and its services. At the time I activated Road Runner I called AOL and told the agent that I wished to cancel my services with AOL. AOL failed to cancel my service, and it wasn't until several months later that I realized that AOL was still billing my bank account.

Unfortunately I did not monitor my banking statements as diligently as I should have, hence I would have noticed the $23.90 charge to my account for those months. Make sure you follow up any cancellation you make with AOL or you could find yourself in my situation with service you did not want, as well as a bit less money in your account. From what I have read on other sites, this does not seem to be a rare occurrence. Be careful who you do business with. I called and cancelled it again. I'll just have to wait and see if this time they actually do what I requested.

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AOL Cancelled My Account of Over 7 Years (a Paying User) With No Reason
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STERLING, VIRGINIA -- I have been a PAYING user of AOL for a good 7 years plus. I used AOL just fine - last night and then this morning I tried logging in and it wouldn't let me. I also spent a lot of time on the phone with getting no where or no one that would give me a reason other than I "may have violated terms of use" even though I have done nothing different than I have the last 7 years. I was told to write a letter to ** in Sterling VA to have my account reactivated. So I did and went to the post office to overnight it $20.00. Once I left he post office the more I thought about it the more it pissed me off that I had been a paying customer for that long and no phone call or email as to why.

So I called back again to get the same response and they couldn't give me a phone number for the people that choose to delete your accounts and she told me I needed to write a letter, but this time I got a different address and she said she had no clue why the 1st lady told me the wrong place to mail it. So I mail the 2nd letter (another $20.00). I could have sent it regular mail but all my banking, credit card statements, notifications, etc. are emailed to my AOL account. Guess that does me no good now!!!

What a joke that someone can delete your account of over 7 years. I mean if you were sending out spam, etc wouldn't you have been doing it the 1st part of the 7 years?? Funny you can write a letter but no way to contact them directly. AOL should realize you can get online and email for free, they should treat the people that pay a little better!!

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Services
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Have been with AOL 20 years... should have left long ago. They are automatically charging me every January over $200. It is my fault, I have been too busy to change, but I will. It would be unthinkable for AOL to say "You are overpaying"... Because I am busy (I am thankful considering what a mess this country is in and soooo many people are hurting) I wish to get online and do the needed things, especially stock-wise, and get on with business. Well as most people know, that is not the case with AOL and many times need to go elsewhere to get my info.

This week AOL has taken another step backwards on their finance page... Get someone with a portfolio to design this page, please - at least the last page I was able to set up and follow. It seems that the case is when "we" get settled in, it's time to change for the sake of changing. Why is the chart for % change to S&P locked in??? Chart - today or any period - price, vol, time is important.

Quit asking me for update on id... that's an excuse for inability to get through. People are telling me to get away from AOL, I'm always complaining about it. I am babbling... I need to get back to work, but will get time to change. I hope for a response. You should be able to get something out of this complaint. I hope.

Update: I just complained about AOL finance page and a couple other things that frustrate me almost daily about AOL. I left and came back to office to check something and again they needed to put me through that regime of checking the id thing... just like a slap on the hands for complaining. When are the prices going to change on the stocks on this new page? That's alright, I went to another source... will get rid of AOL soon, I hope. I know people out there are saying "Just get rid of them then you don't have to complain." Problem is I need to find out how to do it. Call - got to go.

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AOL Customer Service
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For most of July, I have been having trouble with AOL service kicking me off. I finally was able to locate a phone number so I could contact them. On July 15th, I spoke with tech support because I kept getting a 1502 error. Tech support had me uninstall AOL, and we were going to reinstall it. I would have never uninstalled myself. Anyway, we were going to reinstall it but something was missing so AOL couldn't be reinstalled. The tech person said that there was nothing we could do until I received a disk from AOL to reinstall it. There used to be AOL disks everywhere but not now. He told me it would take 7-10 days for the disk to arrive.

I then called back because I was going to be unable to access AOL until that disk arrived. The customer representative told me to call back when I got the disk and get a partial credit. Now here is where my complaint begins. I got reinstalled on the 24th of July, unable to get online from July 16th to July 23rd. I called on Monday July 24th to get my account uncancelled and to get a partial credit. I tried to explain to the representative that I was unable to get online for 8 days and I would like a partial credit. She told me they didn't do that. I tried to explain that I couldn't get online.

She asked if I was able to access tech support, I said yes but, she said that I couldn't get a credit. I tried again to say I was waiting on the disk, she again asked if I could access tech support, I said yes. She didn't listen, didn't understand, or just didn't care. I could call tech support all day long and they weren't going to be able to get me back online. The cust serv representative just wouldn't give me a chance to explain that. Just because I could "access tech support" didn't mean that they could help. I tried explaining that I wasn't able to get online the 16th through the 23rd.

She told me that she was showing activity. It was unauthorized if there was because I couldn't get online. I only pay $11.99 a month, so that is about 40 cents a day. I guess a credit of about $3.20 would just break the bank. It is not even about the money to me, it is about the fact that I feel like without actually saying it that she inferred that I was a liar and stupid because I could access tech support so I should be able to get online.

What is the point of having customer service if the representative is not going to listen or UNDERSTAND the customer? To me that is customer disservice. I am researching other internet providers, I just don't want one like AOL with bad service and bad cust service.

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Unexpected Cancellation Without Notice
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TUCSON, ARIZONA -- This is twice in 10 years these people have done this to me, cancel my account without any notice whatsoever. Possibly before I might have deserved it even though it was seriously provoked as I would click on a story about something legal and was always sent to a room full of the most despicable people on this planet, mean, angry, vicious, just bullies that would attack anyone that came into the room that wasn't a regular and I finally told them what I thought of them and then of course they reported me.

This time though I have been quite boisterous about this election and even though I have posted many times I never used the N word, I never physically threatened anyone particular person, I might have wished the worse for those that voted for a man who could sit comfortably in church while some godless individual **, but I threatened no one. However I went into my computer this a.m. with no thought whatsoever of being unable to get online and I found that AOL had canceled my account due to a complaint.

If you know anything about the internet then you know you have a large number of very childish people who act just like they did in grade school when they ran to the teacher, "teacher, teacher, Johnny pulled my hair, Tommy pushed me". At this point in my life these people could cancel my account and I would not flinch except for the almost 4 years of emails, backlog of phone numbers, various documents in my AOL file where I will save important emails, jokes, stories, and all this gone without warning.

If these jerks want to cancel an account - fine, BUT, someone needs to step in and help make sure that they give a person a warning and the ability to remove their personal information. I have people that I have been corresponding with, not lovers, not anything but just friends and now I haven't the faintest idea how to get in touch with them. Some I can remember their IM name but just recently any number of people have responded to some ads I had online on Craig's list about exotic birds I'm selling, we've talked back and forth without swapping phone numbers, GONE! Everything, GONE!

I have been on the phone today with everyone from the ACLU to my Attorney General and all of this could have been avoided had they just notified me my account was to be cancelled. When they cancelled me before I lost phone numbers of ex-schoolmates in Georgia. I am in Tucson, I'm 65 and I have no way of getting in touch with those people. As I have tried I find no listing for them, again, everything gone!

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All Canceled And Yet Still Billed, "Trouble On Their End"
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I've had AOL as my ISP for years and years with a dial up connection (yeah, I was roaming with the dinosaurs)... Well we finally got high speed around March of this year (and it's amazing!!!)...so we didn't have a need to keep AOL since we were going through Cox Cable. We had three separate accounts going so that more than one person could be online at a time. One of the accounts was closed in 2006 actually (we'll call this one A1 - like the steak sauce). The other two accounts (A2 and A3) were canceled on the phone. Everything sounds OK so far until I received my credit card bill. I was charged for it still.

I called them up and after explaining and re-explaining the situation, and telling them information that really don't need in order to solve the problem BTW (like, why do you have high speed? why didn't you have it before? etc) the lady said that one of the accounts was still showing open and the charge was for that. I told her I wanted it canceled and credited back to my account. She finally agreed and supposedly everything was fine. Got my credit card statement the other day, no credit to my account, but was instead charged again.

Called them again and had to do the same run around. The guy basically was calling me a liar and that I was still using the account and it was open...and A1 was still open (the one closed in 2006). I told him to look again at his files and he finally goes "Oh, OK, I see now, it was closed in 2006". Took him forever to understand what was going on (he didn't speak very good English). I tried my best to be patient I really did but it was very frustrating. He finally tells me that the accounts were indeed closed and canceled. I demanded to know why I was still being charged then. He said "there must be trouble on our end". No ** sherlock!

I then ask to speak to a supervisor to get everything financially straight. He puts me on hold (so I thought). I was on hold for 30 minutes, I finally realized that he must've disconnected me. I called them back and spoke to someone and they told me that I shouldn't have been on hold any longer than 2 minutes to speak to a supervisor... Hmmm... 2 minutes vs. 30... what do you think happened? Anyway, things finally got solved and supposedly I'll see a credit in a few days. I've heard horror stories about cancellation with AOL, just hoped it would never happen to me...and it did. Beware trying to cancel an account with them.

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Finally I MAYBE get the best of AOL!
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AOL's gotten me before. "Hi, I'd like to cancel my account, which I signed up for with a 30-day free trial disk only yesterday." "Oh goshgollygee, don't cancel! Why would you want to goshgolly cancel? Let us give you thirty more days of our awful service for free!" "Nope, cancel." [Repeat a dozen times or so.] "Okay, you're canceled!"

Fast forward one year and two months later I'm billed. Unfortunately, I'm billed at a very very bad time - a time when other minor emergencies have caused my bank account to be low, a time when a $25.90 fee is going to cause an overdraft fee. Aw **! I borrow a few bucks from a family member to cover the difference so I don't overdraft, then I call AOL.

"I figure you guys owe me sixty bucks." "Oh, okay, maam, you are saying we have billed you for sixty dollars?" "Nope, you've billed me fraudulently for 25, but you're also going to cover the overdraft fee that your fraudulent charge caused me." "Just a minute maam. Oh, no, you have an account you never canceled!" "Nope. Not possible. I'd never keep an AOL account. The disk is good for getting online when my real ISP is down, and the next day, I cancel." "Okay maam, I will fix you right up! You are canceled! Have a nice-"

"No, no no. That is NOT 'fixed up'. 'Fixed up' is when you refund my twenty-five bucks and cover the overdraft fee your company caused." "Okay, let me see...ah, I have now refunded your twenty-five dollars and ninety cents! So thank you for doing business with-" "Wait, wait wait. What about my thirty-five?" "Oh, maam, there is nothing I can do about that." "Okay, give me someone higher up." "You want to talk to my supervisor?" (He sounds utterly shocked.) "Sure do." tick tock tick tock tick tock.

"Hi, how can I help you?" Repeat much of previous conversation. She says, "Tell you what. I'll refund you double, so instead of 25.90 it will be [long pause] 51.80." "Okay. I can accept that." And AOL doesn't win just for once!! (Of course, I'm still watching my bank account to make sure they follow up on this!)

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America Online Rating:
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1.0 out of 5, based on 4 ratings and
115 reviews & complaints.
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