Sunday, July 16, 2006

How To Cancel the AOL account

after reading a few blogs from some people complaining about their ISP/Product/etc, there was one that seemed very Familiar... Cancelling an AOL account. The site is called www.insignificantthoughts.com I became astounded by the customer service in America itself.

I remember an era when my friends were cancelling our AOL accounts sometime in 2001 for Cable (or DSL) and I recall some of them telling me about the annoying nuisance they had to go throught when they had to cancel their accounts. One of them actually screamed at the representative and just told his/her life and how they were no co-operating w/ him on cancelling the account.

When my turn came to cancel the account I remember some "friendly-corporate" guy apologizing that I was no longer interested on AOL.

The conversation was rather peaceful since he asked me why I wanted to cancel the account....I didn't realize I was going to be stuck in a pointless debate of software...

I politely answered the software flaws about AOL as well as the dialing problems I was having in the town I was living at the time. He guy insisted that AOL was doing their best in making changes on their new version of AOL. I recall debating that (to me) AOL 7.0 was a faster software on my computer than the newer versions. The representative was saying why don't I write a letter to the customer dept to make the software better and I think I said I wasn't interested because I didn't have time... I didn't realize this chat would take 30-45 minutes... funny enough, the conversation was long enough for me to forget the purpose of calling AOL. But ultimately I came to my senses and said:

"Stop insisting me to keep my aol account. I'm a computer programmer and i work at the Software dept in my company stop telling me how the AOL software is good."

The customer representative said that if I cancelled my AOL account and switch to a new ISP (internet service provider) I would be exposed to viruses/hacks/ etc... I told him that I don't use "popular software" due to their inconsistencies with the O/S I use and I'm well aware of my decision.

"fine..." was all the representative said.

Then he started reading me some end of contract and after he was done I told him "no thanks" (I think he was offering new gadgets) and then got the AOL termination message. Interestingly enough I was able to use my account for 2 days free after cancelling my account.

And then I started College and the T3 connections... The end of the Kazaa era?

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How To Cancel the AOL account

- Contact Customer Service
- Search for an option to speak to a representative (if that fails keep pressing # until you're directed to a live operator and say you want to cancel your account)
- you will be fowarded to a cancel account representative
- you may or may not be exposed to questions as to why you're cancelling the account. The tone will sound friendly from the representative and if you start answering the questions you will have a long conversation until you cancel the account.. AVOID CONVERSATIONS.
- make sure the representative hears "respect my decision, do not insist"
- by then you will have your account cancelled