AOL Dinged For Making It Hard To Quit
from the customer-dis-service dept
In the mid-nineties, AOL used to love putting out press releases for every new million customers they signed up. They were much quieter when they started losing customers just as rapidly a few years back. While they've tried things like TV commercials designed to convince current subscribers to stay, they also went one step further: telling their customer service people that they need to talk canceling customers out of canceling on a regular basis if they wanted any kind of bonus. The program offered bonuses for every "save" that a customer service rep had -- and that kind of incentive meant that the customer service folks would make it quite difficult to cancel. Now, obviously, there's a fine line between offering incentives for retention and making it difficult to cancel -- but, if someone just wants to cancel, they should be able to cancel. Apparently, Eliot Spitzer thinks AOL crossed that line, and now AOL is paying a $1.25 million fine and killing the incentive program. So, if you weren't able to quite AOL last time you tried, try again now.
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Just get TOSd
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Re: Just get TOSd
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They're not the only one
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No Subject Given
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cancel call from Hell
I want some of that money for my pain and anguish.
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No Subject Given
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Re: No Subject Given
I tried to cancel my cable company service (tv only..I still wanted their internet) because for the previous 4-5 months (and for the forseeable future) we never EVER watched TV...just net, or DVDs, so my wife and I wanted to save 80 bucks a month (I had all the channels). Had NO qualms with their service.
Well, I was transfered SIX times...EACH time I had (HAD to mind you...each transfer to yet another dept had me repeat it, saying he could do NOTHING until he noted the reason for cancelling).
1 hour (yes, a full hour) into the call, I get transfered again, and that's where the goodies get thrown at me...insane...the main argument was that if I cancelled my cable, I'd pay 10$ more a month for internet (big deal...)
After another 20 mins arguing, here's what I ended up getting:
- Both the set top digital cable machine and the cable modem free (I was renting them before..a 10$ charge)
- ALL my channels (minus the movie networks which I never watched) for the total price of 10 bucks...
- Internet at the current discounted price.
So basically, it took 1h20mins to get my cable free essentially since I was willing to cancel it and pay 10 bucks more for the net. Saves me 70 bucks or so every month and while I still don't watch it...its there if I feel like it.
These people are friggin INSANE.
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