How Many Questions Does It Take To Cancel AOL?
I have to admit it - for the past eleven years I have had an AOL account.
When I first got the account AOL had only a million members. It offered a truly differentiated experience, with unique content, instant messaging, and a decent email system (for that time at least). And later I found that as a starting point for my kids AOL provided an easy and reasonably decent way for them to get started online.
As the other services I subscribe to (Comcast broadband service, email & web hosting for my 280 Group account, etc.) began to surpass AOL in capabilities, and my kids started using AIM and IE for browsing, I decided to shut off AOL. Over the period of a year I moved all of my email off of my old AOL email account, and set everyone up with new email through Yahoo and GMAIL. Several times I went online to try to cancel the AOL account, but of course you have to make a phone call in order to do so.
So the other day my wife called AOL to cancel. She was on the phone no less than 20 minutes with the AOL rep, and was asked question after question about why she wanted to cancel, did she know about this feature or that, etc. The sad thing for AOL was that there was nothing they could offer that made any difference to us. The only thing that had even a remote amount of interest to us was that our kids (now teenagers) could download exclusive concert footage. But you know, there is no shortage of good music video available on the net.
In the end we told the customer service rep that even if it were free we didn't want to keep our account. It just doesn't provide any value to us. The rep told us it would be turned off at the end of the month - hopefully we won't have to call again.
When I first got the account AOL had only a million members. It offered a truly differentiated experience, with unique content, instant messaging, and a decent email system (for that time at least). And later I found that as a starting point for my kids AOL provided an easy and reasonably decent way for them to get started online.
As the other services I subscribe to (Comcast broadband service, email & web hosting for my 280 Group account, etc.) began to surpass AOL in capabilities, and my kids started using AIM and IE for browsing, I decided to shut off AOL. Over the period of a year I moved all of my email off of my old AOL email account, and set everyone up with new email through Yahoo and GMAIL. Several times I went online to try to cancel the AOL account, but of course you have to make a phone call in order to do so.
So the other day my wife called AOL to cancel. She was on the phone no less than 20 minutes with the AOL rep, and was asked question after question about why she wanted to cancel, did she know about this feature or that, etc. The sad thing for AOL was that there was nothing they could offer that made any difference to us. The only thing that had even a remote amount of interest to us was that our kids (now teenagers) could download exclusive concert footage. But you know, there is no shortage of good music video available on the net.
In the end we told the customer service rep that even if it were free we didn't want to keep our account. It just doesn't provide any value to us. The rep told us it would be turned off at the end of the month - hopefully we won't have to call again.
posted by Brian Lawley at
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
1 Comments:
Sorry you had a problem with that. I actually know someone that works for AOL. And in all honesty...everything that the customer service rep says to you is required. If it were easy enough for them to say ok we'll cancel you...they would...trust me. But really all you have to do is listen to their BS...decline their offers and the call is over. It takes a lot to handle that kind of job. But hopefully you wont have any more problems with it.
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