You've Got Blackmail: The AOL Account That Wouldn't Die | Hacker News Reader

You've Got Blackmail: The AOL Account That Wouldn't Die

blogs.wsj.com

69 pointsquoderat23 comments

Customer service is marketing. When will people learn this?

It's not smart to try to push around a Wall Street Journal journalist.

This isn't unusual actually. Companies can and do report bogus charges like this with impunity.

What is unusual is the frequency with which AOL pulls this shit. Yes, other companies have been known to hit their customers with bogus charges, but nowhere near the extent to which AOL has. It's basically their business model. You simply can't cancel an account.

yup, aol charged me for around 16 months after cancelling my account 3 times, and stupidly not paying attention thereafter, they did very reluctantly refund around a third, although they probably kept me sitting arguing for long enough on their premium phone number to get that back.

bt have also tried to charge me ~200 to install a phone line I didnt agree to (I had already got the line installed by virgin, for free).

My experiences with telcos are the lowest of the low, I dont understand how some company hasnt gone into the market, treated their customers fairly, and wiped the floor with the competition.

I dont understand how some company hasnt gone into the market, treated their customers fairly, and wiped the floor with the competition.

Any small company will be priced out of business by the big telco companies. It's a pseudo-monopoly, where a small group of huge organizations have an implicit agreement which maximizes profit for all of them, and keeps everyone else out of the running... (Actually, it kind of reminds me of the two-party political system in the US)

Here in England, we have fast.co.uk doing exactly that for DSL. You call them up and a real human being answers the phone. This person is physically located in the country, speaks English, and can actually perform the tasks you ask of him.

It's amazing. You ask about some obscure technical issue, and he digs in and fixes it. On the spot. The guy who answered the phone!

They charge about 5 pounds a month more than the big guys, which is more than worth it. I hope that more companies like this will start springing up in other areas.

heh this was in england, however looking at their site its £17 a month for 5GB bandwidth?

I have to say I have little to complain about when I went with virgin, which was ~£15 for unlimited downloads. the difference between 20GB and unlimited is quite a lot for me, even if I almost never used 20GB.

Yeah, you don't even want to get me started on Vonage, good lord.

They get away with it because the charges are low enough and the service decent enough that they can make more by playing BS games with people and taking their lumps with the BBB because by the time people care enough to take notice they have already been screwed.

Is it just me, or everyone feels the same about when someone hands over a business card with an aol.com address on it? Almost feels like, you don't want to do business with this pre-historic animal!

This comment sounds funny at first, but it's SO true.

If the business card has an AOL address on it, it's a giant red flag that says "potential problem client" all over it.

My top 8 reasons why an AOL address on a business card MAY mean "problem client".

#8 This person will probably have NO IDEA how to send an attachment. I mean NOOOOO IDEAAAAAA!

#7 Need them to upload a photo to a website? Forget it. Just forget it. "Browse button? Browse what?"

#6 You never know if your email will get through to them or if it will be filtered.

#5 The "Internet" IS the AOL icon.

#4 When on the phone with your client, you will probably hear the distinct sound of a 56.6kbps modem tone when you ask them to pull up their email or website.

#3 They'll ask what "keyword" gets them to their website.

#2 Getting them to a browser to pull up their website first requires walking them through a series of pop-up ad windows that need to be closed.

#1 While walking them through a website or how to send an email, prepare for this statement: "Hold on, AOL crashed, I have to reboot. I think I need a new computer." (no. you do not need a new computer. you are doing it wrong.)

humph.

Very funny! You just put my gut feeling to words ... thanks!

It also points clearly to a disquieting amount of stubbornness mixed with a strong dose of willful ignorance. Any project you do for them will not come out "as they had expected". You will always be wrong, they always right, even after you've both payed thousands into the legal system and had it proved otherwise. Then, you'll just be a dick who somehow managed to manipulate the legal system to screw them...

Ahh. Sorry to rant. I've been on this train all the way to its last stop...

When are these people going to learn? AOL has reached the point where their original product does NOTHING except detract value. Just drop it AOL because the fourteen 85-year-olds that are still using it are going to be dead soon anyways.

People still use AIM (still not sure why), and sometimes frequent some of your other media outlets. Focus on those, and stop charging (former) customers for services they don't use or want.

People use AIM because their friends use it. What IM protocol people use seems to vary from locale to locale (among the non-nerd types), probably just depending on which got used first.

I'd happily switch away from AIM (by that, I mean the protocol/servers, I use Bitlbee/irssi and Pidgin), except that a lot of the people I know use AIM exclusively.

I'm pretty sure iChat uses the AIM protocol. I have no idea why.

Between msn messenger, yahoo instant messenger and aim, my experience is that the connection with AIM is much more stable (meaning less dropped messages). MSN is the worst of all three since it drops messages without any indication of it...

What is interesting is that it's really segmented by countries... US is AIM and Jabber, Europe MSN, China QQ, Vietnam Yahoo Instant Messenger.... So I have to be on all five plus skype...

this is the reason we need IM federation, and NOW.

I'm assuming the fraud alert would give him the chance to fight the charges if they try to report them?

How exactly does it help?

It'll affect his credit rating if there's an unpaid balance in collections. He's reporting that the report is fraudulent in the hopes that it won't hurt his score. I don't have a lot of faith in the credit rating system though, so I'm skeptical that it'll do any good.

It should do him a lot of good if there is knowledge in the industry that this company is posting fraudulent charges and not resolving consumer complaints satisfactorily.

I have no idea how it'll help and suspect the author is confused about what a fraud alert actually does.

A fraud alert is simply a notice put on your credit files that creditors (before loaning you money, giving you a credit card, etc) will see. Creditors are supposed to call the number you listed before extending credit to make sure you actually requested it. A fraud alert's primary use to prevent identity theft and not to dispute items on your credit report.

Rule #1. Never sign up to AOL. Rule #2. Never break rule #1. Rule #3. If in doubt refer to rule #2.

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