Curtis's recent topic on paypal made me think I should give everyone a heads-up on what I went through with AOL
Basically AOL charged me for services I didn't recieve because I had tried out their "free" trial when traveling with a laptop to my daughters graduation 15 months ago. I canceled the service before even using it when the details of how the long distance charges were going to work out made it not my best option. It seems that 6 months later began charging my card again for no reason.
When I "caught" them last Nov. they refunded me about $150 they had stolen from my credit card.
What really had me piling on the icons in my 1st post was the fact that I caught them doing it again late Friday during the graveyard shift when I'm able to get some accounting work done.
In looking for a phone number to deal with the fraudulent charges on my card, I typed "AOL billing" into google & found that many others have been ripped of so often that they have had to cancel their credit cards as the only way to keep AOL from stealing their money for services never authorized or used.
In my case they acknowledged having record of my phone calls last Nov. & acknowledged that they had returned 5 months of charges because I had not used the service for one second.
Then they said that, in that same call, I had been offered 90 days free service to activate my account again & they claim I accepted, thus allowing them to start charging me again 3 months later. Of course this never occured since I had no interest in, or need for their service.
I've learned that the cancellation agents recieve a bonus for every user they can talk out of canceling. There have been agents prosecuted for voiding cancelations without authorization just to rack up more of the bonus payments.
I've also learned that AOL claims to subcontract outside (non-AOL)telemarketers to call EX-users & trade free minutes for re-activation authorization. It seems that these people do not have to submit any documentation verifying who authorized re-activation in order to be paid for the accounts they re-activate. In fact they may not even make all the calls. For all I know there may not even be any telemarketers.
AOL is involved in several lawsuits already. I got my extra $50 back after about 90 minutes of grief... but I feel like they should be shut down from the ability to keep using credit cards they have on file based on such unverifiable & suspecious claims of authorization.
The card I used is tied to my business checking account & I really don't want to have to cancel that account. I will have to see about just getting a new CC number if I can. I don't trust those sleazy money-grabbing AOL cons to keep their grubby paws out of my account anymore, & neither should anyone else.
Posted by JDuckett (Member # 4505) on :
We had a similar experience. We got billed from AOL for some other service they offered. I think it may have been some kind of insurance or something. After calling to complain about the charges, they told us we had agreed to the service, which we didn't. It finally got refunded but it was a great hassle.
Posted by Curtis hammond (Member # 2170) on :
United airlines used compuserv at one time > Yes they are the same as AOL. just a different provider.
United left compuserv because the service was so bad. Bad billing, bad service, bad customer relations. Not much choice out there. AOL will be the next class action suit. Its just a matter of time until some lawyer figures out how to get them..
but for now we must use AOL hell.
Posted by Bob Stephens (Member # 858) on :
Only last month I made the decision to dump AOL because they were blocking me from sending outgoing mail through my personal email account as I had been doing for the past two years.
When I called to cancel my account it took well over twenty minutes of my time and that was after I had a person on the phone. No matter how many times I said NO, they would come back with another angle and stall tactic to keep me from leaving.
I had been paying for $25.00 a month for unlimited use and when asked why I wanted to leave I told them about blocking my other email account and that I could get the same service from NetZero for $14.95 a month. He then said they let me stay for the same price as Netzero. I said sorry buddy, if you can give it to me now for $14.95 a month then you've been screwing me for the past two years.
I'm happy to hear that AOL is hemorrhaging customers right now. Posted by Kissymatina (Member # 2028) on :
There was a piece on our local news about a woman who AO Hell had billed for 2 seperate accounts. They took the money from her card & she fought with them for months. They kept telling her she had signed up for 2 seperate accounts (no idea why anyone would do that) and they acknowledged that she had never used the 2nd account. She didn't even know about the second account. They refused to do anything til the local news got involved, then they refunded her half her money.
Posted by Curtis hammond (Member # 2170) on :
Remember when MCI was in their dirt pile? I was billed by them for services at my address i never had MCI. They sent me to collection agency and all kinds of nonsence. Finally got the PSC on them and they still lied. Finally left me alone. But the crap with AOL sounds like the crap MCI was doing just before they got caught overbilling, and books cooking, and their boss got put into prison...
Posted by Steve Burke (Member # 2674) on :
Doug,
If you just call your card in stolen don't they send you a card with a new number? Then they couldn't do that auto-billing nonsense.
Also, I thought they had a feature whereby they had to call you to approve certain transactions...I work with a guy who has that on his bank account because of identity theft.
Posted by Curtis hammond (Member # 2170) on :
Steve been there done that with compuserve. Did the dispute thing and it was a big hassle in itself. Then the charge was sent back to me and told to resolve it with compuserve. Finally got thru to an American person and got it resleoved. By the way, there is so many problems with online services they have seperate catagory for this type of abuse.
Posted by jack wills (Member # 521) on :
Sounds Like some of the crap I dealt with from MCI. Beware and check your phone bill closely as the scammers aren,t gonna stop. I think they are hoping to reley on the young crowd for skipping over most of the fine print.
![[Mad]](mad.gif)
icons in my 1st post was the fact that I caught them doing it again late Friday during the graveyard shift when I'm able to get some accounting work done.![[Smile]](smile.gif)