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Julieboo
| Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 1:21 pm
Has anyone had any problems with AOL charging you when you don't even use them? My husband is finding out we are not the only ones this has happened to. And AOL is NOT being very helpful at all. Anyone know how to prove that a service has not been used/asked for. All I know is 29.80 (or 28.90) has been debied from my husband's checking account for several months now and AOL will not even "cancel" our service that we don't even have. It is so aggravating. ANy advice would be appreciated.
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Sasman
| Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 1:27 pm
I had a similar problem with AOL. We signed up for their long distance calling plan but after a year we decided to drop them. A few months later I noticed that they were still billing us $4.95/month. They just wouldn't understand that I had switched plans even though they admitted that we had not used them in quite a while. I finally had to give up talking to them and instead called Discover Card every month to have the charge taken off. Finally, after about 6 months, they stopped the billing. I have no love for them or their stupid web site!
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Maris
| Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 1:44 pm
I got an $800 bill one month from AOL. Needless to say I told them I wasn't paying it.
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Zachsmom
| Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 1:45 pm
Julie, you can go to your bank and stop any type of debit from them. Tell your bank that you do NOT authorize any debits for that account (the bank should have AOLs account number)
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Solifelike
| Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 1:54 pm
I know on AOL they have a means of tracking exactly how much time you spend on there. So they have a way to know if you actually have used it. Do you ave a screen name associated with this debiting? They have to have that info. It may be the case of someone else getting hold of your information and doing this to you. (Though I would never give AOL the benefit of the doubt.)
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Julieboo
| Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 3:14 pm
Well my husband doesn't even have a debit card with his checking. They are just taking it automatically. It is so confusing. He does have a few things that automatically come out of his account (Mortgage, life insurance and maybe paypal) so I don't know why the bank shouldn't be held responsible (as there is no papaerwork authorizing the aol payments). He closed the account and is opening a new one at another bank. But still that dammm bank should not just let money be taken out w/out approval. I feel very screwed. And the bank is LaSalle, a pretty big one here in the Chicago area.
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Ladybug007
| Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 4:53 pm
i am happy to say..i have had aol since day 1 of aol and never had a problem.
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Zachsmom
| Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 5:36 pm
That's because you've never had to cancel Ladybug.
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Sillycalimomma
| Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 5:44 pm
AOL was great until I cancelled. I had gotten a year of free service when I purchased my laptop. I kept track of the ending date and began calling two months ahead of time to set it up to cancel before I would get charged the outragious $23 a month they were going to charge. I was told that I could not set it up to cancel that soon. I just don't have the energy to make a long story here, but to make a short onw- after repeated phone calls I was finally able to cancel, but not before they charged my credit card for a months service. The last conversation I had with a "customer service" rep was the worst. I honeslty had to say at least 20 times "I want to close this account as of today" It was horrible.It was one of the worst experiences I have ever had with any company. I will never use AOL again... oh and just as a side note I myself worked customer service for over 2 years so I am well aware of how things "should" work!
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Juju2bigdog
| Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 7:02 pm
Same here, Sillycalimomma, with cancelling the free service that came with a laptop I purchased. I went through holy hell cancelling it. They finally got snotty and I got snottier. Sheesh! That seems to be a nasty phase American business if going through right now. I cancelled an American Express credit card, and it was a HUGE ordeal. Well, actually, it is still not cancelled, and I have called them THREE times. Same thing when I cancelled a Discover card we have not used in over a year. They just don't want to take no for an answer anymore, just keep selling and selling, until they hope to break you down.
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Cinder
| Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 9:30 pm
When you call (or fax) AOL- they want specific info. If you are not asked to provide this info- the person is probably no cancelling your service. You need your screen name, a number you can be reached at (I hated to provide this- but did) maybe ss#, and the city in which you were born (or whatever you chose for a secret question) Alos- you need to ask for proff of cancellation in writing- though you may never get it. My mother and I had the same problem at the same time with AOL, I was writing and faxing them- and she was calling them. They would tell her they were cancelling it- but didn't. It took me 3 faxes and her 3 phone calls.My next step would have been to cancel with the bank- but I was trying to avoid paying any fee that may have been associated.
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Apriljo
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 1:34 am
i keep trying to cancel my aol account that i got with one of those free discs they send you in the mail..everytime i try to call and cancel it..they give me more free months...as of now they say im free until may 04..wierd how that is..
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Whoami
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 2:59 am
I've heard of this happening with Earthlink too. I'll have to be very careful if I ever change ISP's. I once bought a "weekend only" subscription to a Denver newspaper (so I could get the Sunday want ads). I purchased something like 3 months worth. A month into the subscription, someone called and offered a free "rest of the year." I said OK. Then a month later someone else called and said they were giving me the rest of the week free too. I specified I had no real use for the rest of the week, but as long as it was free, OK. A few months later, I got a bill for all those "extra" issues. I said, "I don't THINK so!" The fellow I talked to said that the people who called me made a mistake and didn't realize I had a whole year's subscription. I said too bad, not my mistake, and I never even asked for it to start with. Then he said the person who called wasn't really an employee of the Rocky Mountain News, it was just an independent telemarketer the calls were farmed out too. Again, NOT MY PROBLEM! You contracted them to make the calls for you....YOU suffer the consequences. I think he finally got it. Cause I never got another bill from them! I wonder how many people they did that too, and those people paid the bill?
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Sasman
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 6:41 am
I think we're on to something that has puzzled me - why do so many people use AOL???? Because it is like the roach motel!!!!
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Faerygdds
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 7:41 am
LOL @ sasman! You said it.. once you check in... You can NEVER get out!
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Ohiomobprincess
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 8:17 am
LOL I had so many problems with AOL. It took 2 months for them to stop taking money out of my checking account! My advice, never sign up with them in the first place.
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Juju2bigdog
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 10:06 am
Apriljo, they did that with me too. What they are hoping is that you will let it slip and forget to cancel when the free period ends, and then they can sock a payment to you, and then maybe you will either get addicted and can't live without it, or will get used to paying.
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Danzdol
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 12:31 pm
I got DSL a couple of months ago and just cancelled my AOL one month ago. I sent them ALL the info they requested and they sent me a postcard saying that I did not send enough info. When I looked at the card vs the fax I had sent. It was all there. So I took a heavy black marker, and circled really big # 1, # 2, etc... of all the items they asked for and wrote "Exactly which information did I not send in the first time with my fax?" and refaxed it. I am still waiting for them to cancel. I am going to call our credit card and tell them to stop taking payment from them.
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Dahli
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 2:35 pm
ohhh I thought those discs they keep sending were for a wall treatment! That's all they're good for - but I've started sending everything back...return to sender and it's fun to stuff all the garbage that arrives in the mail back into their postage paid envelopes and write a big NO THANKS - they have to pay to get their own garbage back.
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Faerygdds
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 3:12 pm
coasters... they make great coasters!
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Crossfire
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 3:42 pm
Wow. Just wow.
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Lostintheglades
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 5:09 pm
What Crossfire said! 
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Colordeagua
| Friday, December 19, 2003 - 8:10 pm
I get infuriated when I read about customer service problems like this. It scares me. As far as ISPs go, I have had Earthlink for a number of years and been satisfied. Previous though, I had AT&TWorldnet. Bad service when you needed help. Couldn't get to live person on the phone. But when you want to cancel service, some-live-body was right there to talk to you. "You want to cancel? Why would you want to do that?" I wouldn't go near AOL with a ten-foot pole. Utilities, etc. here in Chicago area want to automatically deduct payment from your checking account. You've got to be kidding with the errors they make in billing!!! I was in an order desk / customer service position for 13 years during late '60s and '70s. Biz would not have survived if customers had received such bad service.
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Not1worry
| Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 12:15 pm
I'm with Ladybug. I've had AOL for 6 years and I love it. I have tried other ISPs and there's always something I don't like about them. We had some major problems with our screennames at one point and rearranging that took several phone calls. But I wouldn't say it was a hassle, not anything like the hours and hours I spent trying to deal with Earthlink.
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Tabbyking
| Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 1:21 pm
i will never have AOL (or any company that even hints they will be merging with earthlink--my personal nightmare company!). we had nightmares with both...but i know many people who have had AOL forever and have not one problem...maybe it IS that you have trouble when trying to end your service with them. so, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! we never had AOL, but somehow they contacted my husband last year and promised him the moon if he would just try something for 3 months FREE. i guess he said, 'okay' at one point. he never used anything with the AOL and all of a sudden 4 or 5 months had gone by and we started getting AOL bills. now, hubby had never told me he had even said he'd do a trial period with AOL...because, as he put it, 'i only said okay to get them off my back and i never used anything and forgot about it.' well, AOL had never contacted him to say 'your 3-month trial-period is up.' they just started billing. and my husband emailed and called and i don't know what all because i was mad at him for saying yes to something we didn't even need. (he can't pass up a bargain. 'hay? only 100 bucks a bale? sure, i'll take 3. oh, i can save 10% more if i get a minimum of 25 bales? well, gimme the 25, then.' not that we have a horse or cow or elephant or any walls that need 'hildying'. he just likes a good deal, sigh.......) instead of AOL agreeing to cancel, they would try to add more features to those we already didn't want or use...it took 4 or 5 months to get out of anything to do with AOL. i started pronouncing their acronym "A-ole", rather than "A-OH-ELL",but now that i see it in print, "Ah, hell" would work, too! again, though, people we know who have AOL and intend to stay with them forever have no problems at all. so for some it's good and some it's not. we each just get to choose who we want to deal with, and that's a good thing!
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Tabbyking
| Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 1:24 pm
and the AOL discs they send also make nice little 'mirrors' to set pretty perfume bottles and other vanity items on. shiny side up......
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Twiggyish
| Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 2:28 pm
If you were someone like Hildi (on Trading Spaces) you could use them as a wall treatment.
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Juju2bigdog
| Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 3:00 pm
Twiggs, that is what Hildi is doing on tonight's show.
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Tabbyking
| Saturday, December 20, 2003 - 3:30 pm
if you were a gopher with hemorrhoids, you could use them as donuts when you were driving. okay, probably not an overwhelming demand for those!
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Watching2
| Monday, December 22, 2003 - 10:59 am
I've had AOL for quite some time, too. I had it FREE for a long time when I first got a computer, since they always gave me extra months on two different accounts whenever I canceled. They would actually cancel out one account after giving me a free month or two and then I'd go to the other one and they'd give me a free month or two and then by the time the 2nd was canceled, they called and gave me more free on the first one. LOL Talk about working the freebie route. I also do that with REAL ONE and didn't pay at all for BB this past summer, thanks to two daughters who also took the free trials. I did have a problem a few months ago when I saw an additional charge for 3.95 on my bill. Turned out I was supposed to cancel the free McAfee they offered as a free trial. They did credit it to my account the next month. The only thing is, I'm thinking I should dump it because I do have DSL w/a local ISP, but it's such a pain to change all my email addresses, esp. for my bills. I know.. I'm lazy.
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Shelb724
| Friday, January 02, 2004 - 12:33 pm
something else interesting with aol--we already have one account with them, but its a bring your own access account. but at one point, we were having trouble with our ISP, so we got another aol disc and downloaded that so we could at least use a dialup. well, we never really used it because the ISP issue resolved itself (knock on wood). anyway, this was one of those deals that they say you don't need a credit card. however, since we were trying to use dialup, they used our phone number to bill to. my husband resolved this issue (i had to work that day, figured it would give him something to do). anyway, we have a cancellation number, and when i feel like it, next week, i will call our telephone company to let them know that its not to be billed to us. we really haven't had that many bad things happen with aol, but sometimes you really have to explore your options with them. just my opinion .
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Julieboo
| Friday, January 02, 2004 - 4:32 pm
Can you belive they called this morning to offer us an additional 2 months free? How can they offer to continue service that is not even there??!!?? Uggh... How did they even get our phone number?
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Juju2bigdog
| Friday, January 02, 2004 - 6:15 pm
I can believe it, Julieboo. They are marketing ghouls.
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