It would seem that AOL reps are notorious for doing this. I had to go through something similar, except not quite as long. The lady made almost the same statements as this John dude. She didn't want to hear the fact that I'd gotten DSL from someone else. She wanted me to switch my DSL to AOL and keep the account. After her annoying antics, I asked to speak to her manager if she didn't close my account. That's when she relented.

I just love customer service "specialists". So far I haven't had any problems with my ISP, but sometimes I tend to get somewhat irritated with non-conclusive answers, for example how much I can download and they say...ummm... not as much as the business class internet service. WTF.

Furthermore, the Arnie soundboard would be hilarious here.

WHO IS YOUR FATHER AND WHAT DOES HE DO.

God, it's a wonder that anyone still does have AOL. I remember when I had to cancel a free 30 day trial thing with them. After being on the phone with the guy for about 20 minutes asking to cancle, he eventualy resorted to asking "What if I told you that you can make $5 a day if you keep AOL as your internet provider and surf the web with it? Are you going to tell me you don't want to make $5 a day?" To which I replied "No, no I don't. I'd rather lose that money and not be with AOL anymore"

I'm not living in america, so I dont know how AOL actually works. Do they monopolize over broadband service?

My country is in the worse condition than these AOL users. There is monopoly of state-owned enterprise telecommunication company here with very suck-ass customer service. They will just pingpong you everywhere if you start complaining the service. The price is also beyond nonsense. $200 for unlimited broadband.

I always avoid to deal with such companies. :(

There's plenty of providers like NetZero, local ones (I liked Harbornet), Comcast... Lot of phone companies offer net service. American Online just happens to be one of the major ones that does a lot of advertising and stuff to seem like a big deal... I dont think I'd call it a monopoly, just 'loud and annoying'.

My parents had AOL for all of 2 weeks before they decided it wasn't right for them. I think they had to deal with techs from India or something but they got it canceled and went back to MSN before they got cable last year.

We've had something similar happen during one of our free trials a while back. When we called to cancel the account because the trial was coming to an end, the guy on the other end kept questioning us. Eventually, he offered us an extra three months, I think it was, for free. Well, seeing as how three months of free internet sounded pretty nice, we agreed to stay. As the guy had promised, we got our three extra months free. Afterwards, we went to cancel the account, but we were offered MORE free months again so we could "reconsider" our decision.

In the end, I think we had a little over a year of free internet through AOL's persistence. :p

There was even an occasion when we had gotten a virus, and the representative was ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that there was NO WAY that we could have gotten one using AOL because of it's anti-virus protection add-ons. I don't even remember how that topic came up, but it did.

Still, it'd be nice if they actually cancelled an account when asked to do so.

I saw something like that on TV as well. :( Honestly--the lady's dead.

I heard the Customer Service Representative chuckling in the background of the recording. It's ridiculous none-the-less, but I don't believe that he was taking this too seriously. He should be fired. I mean, come on.

Hell. All I needed to do was just not pay my bill to get AOL off my back years ago. ^_^

Like Koneko said, AOL doesn't have a monopoly over internet providing, but it's probably one of the biggest ones and probably most well known cause of all the stupid commercials they run. I still remember when they acted like that AOL icon was the six million dollar man, "We can make him faster, we have the technology". It was a clever ad I suppose, but it got annoying after seeing it about the 20th time on tv.

I wonder how many peeps would lose interest in AOL after this debacle, which CNN also covered. That is, assuming AOL isn't the only service available in their area (and if it is, I feel sorry for them).

I saw that on tv too. Good thing that guy got fired. I still get those aol disc. I like to throw them around

I used to get them just for their tin cases a long time ago.

Wow, AOL sucks hard. I think my dad had a pretty tough time trying to deal with them too. It took 3 months for them to cancel our service. Those bitches.

oh yeah i remember the days when they used floppy disks. I'd use them as blanks, of course.

My brother and I collected their CD's and used them as drink coasters. I have to admit though, that they're useless for that now that my brother has upgraded to using Nero Express installation CD's as coasters.

I also used a free trial about 4 years ago. When I went to cancel it they harassed me for a little over 5 minutes until I just said "I DONT FUCKING WANT IT ANYMORE. CANCEL THE THING NOW."
It got through to him but he wasn't too happy. O well.

In this house, we never cancelled our AOL service. In fact, we still have the e-mail accounts and use AIM (through GAIM, though). By doing this, we've learned that AOL only charges for the use of its browser. We know this because after we stopped using the browser, we stopped being billed for AOL. So, really, no one needs to cancel AOL services. They just need to ignore them.

Heh. This reminds me of this site:
http://nomoreaolcds.com/
Seriously, who uses them? For their intended purpose, I mean. In my town, there's one road where you can see aol cds scattered all along the side of the road in the brush.

AOL needs to go away, plain and simple. Unfortunately there's the internet illiterate (read: elderly) who think they're actually getting a good deal with these scammers. There needs to be a full-on publicly-announced boycott of AOL.

Vincent Ferrari on NBC news:

http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/2751.html

Over here, AOL hasn't been that redicilious except for two or so hichups that were the result of ether matinence or my computer illiterate father who thinks changing passwords from work is a smart idea.

Then again, maybe AOL UK is just more sencible than it's American equivilant, I could buy that excuse.

Ugh, I feel all your pain. My parents used AOL for something like 10 years (even going through two accounts because I was a total fuckwad in my younger years and violated the TOS too many times), and every time I told them "Dude, AOL sucks ass. We need a different service," they'd say, "Oh, it's fine."

"No, it's not. It's a terrible browser with shitty speeds and gigantic bloat, and on top of that it's more expensive than other alternatives."
"Those other alternatives don't have multiple e-mail accounts."
"A) Lots of alternatives do, and b) if they don't, we can set up our own over the web."
"Parental controls."
"OTHER SERVICES OFFER THE SAME THING AS AOL FOR LESS. HOW CAN YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THIS."
"Well, we'll just stick with it anyway 'cause we don't wanna go through the hassle."

Repeat this conversation about 10 times through a period of 2 years or so.

Finally, when we moved to Seattle, we cancelled the account (even though we didn't need to use it any more because we had gotten Time Warner cable, and didn't need AOL's browser to use the internet)... and we went through the EXACT SAME THING that everybody else has. My dad spent a good 4-5 minutes telling the rep, "NO. I DO NOT WANT FREE MONTHS. I DO NOT USE AOL ANY MORE AND WOULD LIKE TO CANCEL NOW," before it got through his head. When he hung up, he took one look at us, and said, "God DAMN, that guy was annoying."

Damn, I heared this story before, and I bet over 50 million people have had trouble cancelling.

Anyway, after all this, I almost WISH I had AOL, just to cancel, and go through the experience myself. Boy, I would rain terror on any employees ass over the phone if they did not do as I said. I'd show them to respect my authoritah. :ninja:

But I have one of the best ISPs ever, so I won't need to. Speed, Service and Communication is lets say 99% perfect.

We still have AOL, but it's really only so I can access all the stuff on my FTPs and my mom can get to her e-mail. I don't actually "use" it anymore but every account I have on the internet goes to the AOL account and other stuff like school documents, etc. I'm fixing to move all my stuff to my own Verizon account when I get all my FTP stuff organized and figure out just how many things I need to switch e-mails for.

I was one of the very lucky few that never had problems with AOL's service, too, which is probably why I don't hate it like I should. My friends would always get booted offline while nothing ever happened to me. One of my friends hated AOL so much, but she was constantly calling them to cancel just so she could get several months of AOL free.

The only good that came out of AOL was the close friends I made, but other than that, I dread the day when we attempt to cancel our account.

Wow. I had the same experience when I tried to cancel my free trial with AOL.

I only used it because my other provider wasn't connecting and their customer service sucked. I used AOL to cancel my other provider.

So, I got cable, then went to AOL to cancel. The lady on the phone was nice, but I had to keep insisting to cancel the account. Finally, after she kept asking me why, I finally gave her the real answer:

"Because I only used AOL to cancel my other provider, and AOL has connection problems. I like to stay on the internet for more than 5 minutes, and I don't like IE. So, in short...I DON'T LIKE AOL."

My account was canceled. :)

AOL doesn't work with Mozilla or Opera or anything else? Just AOL and IE?

IE is incorporated with AOL. In order to use another browser, you connect with AOL, minimize it, then open the new browser. Unless they've changed that.

Thank god I didn't use AOL back in the days. MSN was bad then, now I got craptastic(not as bad) Alltel(when it even sprinkles a little bit, my connection goes flat on me).