It would appear that with America Online, not even death is an excuse to escape the wrath of its customer service and collections agents. While the company has been hemorraging users for years now to higher-speed broadband competitors, customers wishing to cancel are the targets of verbal abuse by those trying to “persuade” them to stay on.
Case in point: Maxine Gauthier and her late father, and the ordeal she has been put through:
The problem? An AOL account once held by Gauthier’s late father still showed billing charges accumulating against it. The account had been dormant for months; the credit card he used for it was inactive at least as long.
Nevertheless, AOL kept charging $25.90 each month for dial-up online access. Late fees for non-payment accumulated on the credit card, too.
Gauthier even offered to send a copy of her father’s obituary as proof he truly was dead. AOL was unmoved.
“An AOL service guy told me to stop complaining and learn to use a computer,” she said. “Then he hung up.”
Isn’t it funny how they can insult people like this, and yet AOL’s bread and butter are people who don’t know how to use computers very well? Those of us with some decent level of expertise wouldn’t touch AOL with a ten foot pole; the “protection” they offer for $26 a month can be found free elsewhere, and now even DSL is cheaper, at speeds at least ten times as fast as AOL’s dialup. So it’s no surprise that as America’s computer users actually learn that they’ve been had by AOL, the company starts using pressure tactics to keep people signed up.