My husband and I upgraded our internet connection to cable in mid-September; we had no more use for AOL's services and did not care for all of the spam and instant messaging anyway so my husband called to cancel the account. He was put on hold for 15 minutes, then transferred to someone who told him they would cancel it.
About 4 weeks later, we received a letter from AOL thanking us for re-opening our account! This was never authorized by us, and neither one of us had signed onto AOL since we got the cable modem working. He called again, and was put through the same scenario, where after 30 minutes on the phone, they told him they would cancel the account, but again provided no cancellation number. Two weeks later, we received another letter, thanking us again for staying on with AOL. They also posted a charge for October/November on my credit card. I called this time and finally got a cancellation number, though I have yet to receive confirmation. I also had the credit card company treat it as theft and closed the account number. I'm waiting to see if they start charging another credit card that my husband had previously used for AOL (he switched it at some point).
Interestingly, I was reading some of these consumer complaintss and noticed a few about Trilegiant Corp. I had noticed a while back that we were mysteriously having unauthorized charges from "Shoppers Advantage" (one of the names Trilegiant does business under) post to our credit card. I had no idea this was AOL-related until now. I also found out that AOL settled a suit filed by the FTC relating to their service cancellation practices - apparently not much has changed.
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