AOL Sucks - VIDEO ENHANCED STORY

Fraud, Bad Customer Service, Lies: All SOP, it seems.

By Marc J. Rauch, Exec. Vice President & Co-Publisher

Auto Central – June 23, 2006: If you’ve ever been an AOL customer, or know someone who was, then you may have had some less than satisfying dealings with them. And if you ever thought that you alone suffered from their mistreatment, then you’ll love hearing the story of Vincent Ferrari and his efforts to cancel his account. This is one of those stories that qualify as being “so funny, if it wasn’t true.”

To get the big picture, start by visiting http://www.break.com/index/aolhell.html. Here, you’ll hear the entire unabridged telephone call that Mr. Ferrari made to AOL.

Then, visit the MSNBC website (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13447232/) to read and/or watch the story that MSNBC’s reporter Jane Wells did about the incident, plus their own experience in trying to cancel AOL service.

And finally, on the same MSNBC website, you can launch the video story that the TODAY SHOW and Matt Lauer did with Vincent Ferrari.

Now, at this point, you might be saying to yourself, “Hey, great story, I hope those AOL SOBs get what’s coming to them; but what does this have to do with The Auto Channel?”

Well, a couple of things: First, AOL’s questionable activities don’t begin and end with just phone call run-arounds. They’ve long infringed on other peoples’ intellectual property rights and have utilized online techniques to block and/or hinder the free-flow of user traffic to websites not affiliated with AOL. Based on our estimate of lost advertising revenue (as a result of this tactic), we estimate that they’re probably responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue to thousands of websites since 1996. We’ve been of victim of these illicit AOL actions for years, and if you think Mr. Ferrari had difficulty with the AOL phone representative, I can tell you that it was a picnic compared to dealing with their legal representatives.

Second, my lady had been the victim of AOL fraud for nearly four years, before finally getting her situation settled. About four years ago, Debbie called to cancel her AOL account (I’ll call her Debbie since it is her actual name). Although the AOL representative stated that the account would be cancelled, AOL continued to charge her credit card. At several times over the years Debbie made additional calls to cancel and request a refund of the improper charges. At each point, the charges were never stopped by AOL, and they never refunded any money, although they always said that they would.

At one point, after a particularly heated demand that AOL stop the charges and refund past debits, AOL sent Debbie a letter thanking her for re-enrolling. Whenever Debbie tried complaining to her bank (B of A) about the charges, they said that they were powerless to stop them – short of her cancelling her account and credit cards – and that the problem was an epidemic, requiring B of A to have a fraud division that does nothing but deal with AOL problems.

Just recently, one of Debbie’s calls to AOL (their call center in India, actually), was successful. The account has finally been cancelled, new charges stopped, and she received a portion of her money back.

So, if you’ve been of victim of AOL HELL, you might want to strike while the iron is hot and take advantage of the opportunity to get your refund (if you’re due a refund), or to get your service situation straightened out, if it requires some straightening. Who knows, with a little bit of luck we may collectively be able to enron them out of business.