AOL UK = Sneaky Swines (I would call them worse but this is a family board)

I felt i had to post this to not only get the opinions of the computer experts on this forum but to hopefully warn other AOL members too. On the first of may i phoned up AOL cancel department and said i wanted to cancel my AOL broadband and get my MAC code which they gave me. I asked and i was told i would not be billed again for broadband at the end of my billing period. I also asked and they said you can use your broadband until the end of your billing period.
My uk online who i signed with was delayed to start up as they had stock problems with their modems so i kept using AOL broadband until it expired. on the 17th may my broadband stopped working so i phoned them up to confirm it was cancelled and they said yes your AOL broadband account has been cancelled but you can still use dialup for free until 6th june. I had never used dialup before so i asked and said i do not really want to use Dialup as its not good enough for my needs so i do not want to be charged if i was to use it, they said no its free until june 6th. At the time i thought that was a very nice gesture by AOL so i used it about an hour or two a day for about a week.

Yesterday my monthly Bank statement came through, i was shocked to find a monthly charge for AOL. I immediately phoned and i was flabbergasted. As they had the gall to say that as i phoned and only said i wished to cancel my AOL broadband, and not my AOL account they decided to put me over and start charging me for dialup without my knowlege or permission and charged me for dialup on the 13th. I said i did not want dialup and have never wanted dialup and if you had of offered it to me i would have said i did not want it. To which they said but you have been using it for the last week and we will not refund you as you have been using it. I said i have been using it as the operator told me on the 17th i could use it for free until the 6th. To which they said "yes its free as you had already paid for it on the 13th and your bulling month ends on the 6th". With this they simply would not refund me this money as apparently because i said i wanted to cancel my AOL broadband and not my AOL account they just decided to automatically switch me over and started charging me for dialup without my knowlege or permission.

Now i have never been a dialup user, i originally signed up as a AOL broadband user. so why if i say i wish to cancel my AOL broadband would they think to automatically switch my over to dialup and start charging me for that. Especially as i got my MAC code from them and they knew i had signed up with another broadband company.

I went into barcleys to try to get my money back and the personal banker said there is no way i will get my money back and he said they actually get one or two people a month from AOL who have had the same thing happen to them, i.e them signing them up to dialup from broadband without their knowlege.

When i got home i phoned up AOL furious and irate and gave them one hell of a piece of my mind, after a 70 minute non stop abusive phone call from me (im amazed they didnt hang up) they said as a good will gesture theyd refund my months dialup money.

I came home i saw a message that AOL have phoned me this afternoon, i do not know or care what for.

Hope this is some help, But like i say when you wish to cancel AOL say you wish to cancel your AOL account and do not say i wish to cancel my AOL (what ever you have).

Thanks (also i am curious but do any of the computer experts on the forum think this situation was my fault or not. I.e should i have known they would do this in this situation, i.e is this a normal occurance with broadband ISP's to switch over to dialup when you ask to cancel broadband)

Thanks
Anthony

 

I do not believe that this is general practice among the broadband suppliers. I do believe that your AOL supplier was very deveious in their practice and probably close to fraud if it was persued in court.

 

My parents had a similar experience. We used to have AOL dialup and I finally convinced them to switch to broadband (not AOL another provider). So my Mom called them and canceled our subscription, and they kept trying to push giving us another month for free. My Mom refused and told them to just cancel the current subscription and if I remember correctly she actually had to hang up on him as he would not stop going on about free offers and other junk. Anyway we got broadband shortly after canceling and about a month after we got billed from AOL for a mouths internet that we never used. I don’t know what happened; maybe they never actually canceled it but my Mom never paid for it, I think she called the credit card company and told them about it.

AOL gets bashed a lot but I think they deserve all of it, they are a despicable company and I cringe when I see their “security” commercials, how can you pitch security when your chat program contains weather-bug (known spyware) as well as viewpoint and some other toolbar junk? In fact if you scan the AIM installer some AV’s flag it is a spyware because of weather-bug, I know for a fact bitdefender does. Anyway I un-installed AIM a long time ago and switched to Trillian and it was a very good move. No crap from AOL is ever going on my computer ever again.

 

AOL is bloatware. I do not understand why people like it. I have a friend who has AOL on a 1.6 gig Pentium with 256 megs of RAM. AOL slows his system to a crawl.

 

It was a nightmare when we tried to cancel our aol dial up account. They started asking all these personal questions like, what sites do we visit? Do we have the privacy controls turned on? All sorts it took my mum a whole alf and hour on thw to finally canvcel the account.

My uckle who switched to aol boradband recently had provblems with aol. when he ordered it without consulting me they told him in our area we could get a meg connection and they assured him our area could. hich however is not true. We have only recieved that capacity in the last month or so. So he gets the pack throuhg and everything. Then i notice that he is not getting the meg connection he is paying for and tell him hes being ripped off.

So he calls up to have his ackage changed to the silver accoutn or what ever the cheapest one is called. anyway they say it has been changed. However a few days later the connection to his home was stopped. For a whole 2 weeks this. was the case. I finally rang up for him and its turns out they had cancelled his account instea dof changing it. We finally got it re connected. Then a few weeks later without warning and with my unckle requesting so they change his account to the above type thus meaning he is paying more. It was a whole week later that i noticed how it ha changed.

Any way my point is im glad I got rid of AOL one of the best things I ever did.