RSSAOL Settles Cancellation Policy Dispute
By Ed Oswald | Published August 24, 2005, 1:39 PM
UPDATED America Online will pay $1.25 million to about 300 consumers in New York to settle a dispute over its cancellation practices. As part of the settlement, AOL has agreed to reform its customer service policies and ensure consumers have an easier time canceling its service.
The New York Attorney General's office said that AOL employees were ignoring requests to cancel and stop billing customers and the company continued to bill them. This was due to a reward program made available to AOL's customer service representatives.
"This agreement helps ensure that AOL will strive to keep its customers through quality service, not stealth retention programs," Attorney General Elliot Spitzer said on Wednesday.
Employees were eligible for a bonus if they we able to retain a set amount of customers. However, minimum retention percentages were put in place, causing some to make it difficult to cancel service or ignore the customer's request altogether.
The perks were lucrative to those who were successful. An employee could earn thousands of dollars in bonuses if they had higher than a 50 percent retention rate, according to the Attorney General's office.
AOL cooperated with the Attorney General and said it was happy with the outcome. Also, the company will provide up to four months of refunds to those who complained about AOL's cancellation practices.
"AOL is pleased to have reached an agreement with the State of New York on customer care practices that will increase quality assurance, and assist with the verification of certain member intentions online," AOL spokesperson Nicholas J. Graham told BetaNews.
The minimum-save requirement has been eliminated and all future cancellation requests will be recorded, as well as verified by a third party.
I have 4 AOL Accounts open. I tried canceling 3 of them, The automated services suck, None of them canceled and now I'm in debt up to my eyeballs. $50/a month for AOL. I don't know why They didn't cancel the 3 out of the four.
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|What a bunch of scuzzbuckets. Old ladies calling trying to cancel service, and acct reps scaring them. This company is the bottom of the barrell. Pure garbage. Their members are brain dead newbies, pedophiles or teenagers trying to hookup....exactly what the internet wasnt intended for. More lawsuits please.
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|Hey guys listen to this.
stealth retention programs
YOu know what that means? It means trick and lie to customers. Hahahahah I hate AOL so much.
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|All I have to say is "It is about D**N time. w00t!! Scam was also pulled in Kansas as well. I just cut my loses and Got RR almost 2yrs ago.
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|by the way this scam was pulled in many states - experienced it my self in Wyoming - after going through thirteen customer service reps twice I turned them into the attorney generals office. continued to bill for two more months but finally after another call (threat) from the sttorney generals office cancelled all charges. what a bunch of sleezeballs. to think they had the gall to sue MS for criminal acts. maybe the suit should have been class action to all consumers had by these wonderful family internet browsers. should we trust them to help eliminate spam when they were the ultimate spammer and identity theft perpetrator?
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|wow. good job AOL.
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|What a joke.
AOL sucks so much. After seeing this......I can only hope they have a boatload of people who actually can cancel.
AOL = bloattrashjunkwarescammersdelight
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|How can people sleep at night knowing they have ripped off customers?
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|Now....only 123,533,654,143,654 more companies to go.
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