AOL Users Will Need to Pay $2 a Month For Phone Support 202
destinyland writes "8.7 million AOL subscribers face a new 20% fee increase next month — unless they agree to never call AOL's technical support lines. They'll have to use AOL chat for support or the online help "portal" unless their issue is a failed connection — and they're being enrolled in the program by default unless they opt out. Ominously, AOL used the exact same wording as when they quietly changed their terms of service to allow them to sell subscribers' home phone numbers to telemarketers. 'Your continued subscription to the AOL service constitutes your acceptance of this change.'"
Using even after broadband (Score:4, Interesting)
What's astonishing to me is the number of AOL users I encounter who continue to use AOL even after switching to broadband, not because they like AOL's features, but because they think that's the only way to the internet.
"You mean I don't have to use AOL to browse the intarwebs? I don't understand!"
Continued Subscription? (Score:4, Interesting)
'Your continued subscription to the AOL service constitutes your acceptance of this change.'"
You mean the continued subscription because AOL has a retention pool designed to endlessly throw offers and incentives (including months of free service, if necessary) to keep their customers?
I've known people who have had to report their Credit Card as lost to get out of paying for AOL.
Re:Keep getting billed (Score:1, Interesting)
I had clients who tried for literally months to abandon AOL to no avail.
They disputed the charges, and got threatening letters from AOL.
it turned out that AOL was rewarding employees for NOT canceling subscribers.
http://www.betanews.com/article/AOL_Settles_Cancellation_Policy_Dispute/1124905172
NY fined them, but to the best of my knowledge, AOL is still doing it.
Re:Keep getting billed (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I had a situation where a dating website suddenly billed me almost a year after I had cancelled my subscription. It was probably the yearly premium for highlighting the profile or somesuch (the actual subscription fee was monthly, which had stopped when I cancelled), and since I did not actually have an active account at the time, there was no profile for them to highlight for this premium charge. I told VISA the situation, and they did a chargeback to the company that billed me. I was not required to show them any proof, in fact I barely even described it to the level of meagre detail above. I simply told them that I had cancelled awhile back and that I did not authorize this new charge. I didn't even try to contact the company first to get them to correct it, just VISA, who gave me my money back and then presumably sent the dating site a bill. Nice and tidy.
Re:Get a consumer watchdog!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the philosophy of "the customer is always right" went out the door with "congressmen listen to their constituents."
The good corporate citizens started screwing the system at the same time they learned use lobbyists have congressmen look the other way. Legislation made it harder for new companies to compete and the existing corporations said fuck you customers, there is no where else for you to go.
There are still a few good companies out there but they are unfortunately hard to find in this day and age.
Re:AOL "scam" e-mails (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in the UK I got a final demand, big red letters and everything, for about £12 from N-Power, a electricity supplier. Strangely, I didn't have an account with them. Reading the small print (very carefully) revealed that it was in fact a "final chance" to pay a £12 fee and have your power supply *switched* to N-Power. It's a despicable way to operate, and seemingly becoming more common.
Re:Wow, 8.7 million still (Score:2, Interesting)
my wife had aohell before we moved in and i addicted her to broadband. at the time they were still charging $2.95 a month for the email address, which we tried fruitlessly to cancel, and they perpetually billed her credit card $2.95 a month for the next few months after which the card expired.
needless to say she received paper bills for about 3 months threatening to cancel her account. they never did and subsequently decided to pass out @aim.com email addresses for free. there really is a bunch of nuts at the helm of aol.
Not really. (Score:3, Interesting)
Paying for a utility that you aren't using 90% of the time is just money down the drain, whereas property almost always increases in value, usually by enough to offset taxes and maintanance.
Furthermore, depending on how trendy of a vacation spot the cabin is, it may not be all that expensive (ie much less than their main house in the city).
Besides, having dialup on the road is really useful. Motel internet service is a complete rip-off and many of them don't have free wireless.
Re:AOL? users? who would have thunk it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh, even if AOL raised their rates to $30/month for dial-up they will still have 8.7 million dial-up users.
As P. T. Barnum used to say "There is a sucker born every minute." and to rephrase that "There is an AOL user born every minute."
The one thing that AOL has going for them, is that even computer illiterate users can use it, just pop in the AOL CD and let Autorun install the software they need. Most computer literate users have moved on to broadband and installed their own NIC card and broadband DSL or Cable or Satellite modems. Plus AOL has dial-up phone access from anywhere in the USA, you could be in some unknown town in the Mideast and AOL will have a dial-up number there to dial into. Like Branson, Missouri, any other ISP you would have to pay long distance to connect to their dial-up account in that city, but AOL has local Branson dial-up numbers and you don't have to dial into Joplin or Springfield numbers. But I heard that Juno and Netzero started to get a lot of dial-up number coverage in most of the USA now, so their $9.99/month dial-up accounts might start to get better than AOL's. But anyone smart enough will know that Branson resorts have Wifi access in their lounges and cafes. Just not the cheap *** motels. :)
Wow (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Using even after broadband (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to do tech support for an ISP who lost a few customers due to AOL, too. It was for a different reason, though.
They had both AOL and us (I don't remember why... probably just testing the waters of a normal ISP as they still had to dial into AOL to use it, if I remember right). Unfortunately, AOL was modifying the tcp stack so that DNS only worked when connected to them. If you uninstalled TCP/IP and reinstalled it, everything would work perfectly while connected to us. That is, until they connected to AOL again, it downloaded a forced update, and that forced updated caused DNS to only work when connected to AOL dial-up. Naturally, the customers then thought our service didn't work right and would stick with AOL.
I thought the first one was a fluke. Unfortunately, this continued to be seen by myself and others there on a regular basis for quite some time.
Re:Using even after broadband (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes.
You and AOL are in a contract. Contractual law states that any one party cannot unilaterally change the material terms of the contract without concurrence in writing of ALL parties of the contract.
Since AOL does not ask for your permission to change, the contract is void.
You can send AOL a bill for breaking terms of the contract plus costs. Sue them in a small-claims court and get your money back.
Alternately if they fail to pay you can ask the court declare them bankrupt.