I had a call from a close friend this morning who has just returned from an extended trip abroad of several months. Whilst away he had closed his ISP account with AOL - or so he thought. He had not closed his bank account as he was coming back to it and as there had been no traffic in and out of the account he had not bothered to have the statements sent on.
AOL had failed to close the account as instructed and have been merrily taking a payment from his account for the last 7 months (it was a long trip).
I have heard of this several times before and getting the money back from the thieving AOL can be very difficult. The last time I recommended that they take AOL to the Small Claims Court and make sure the media heard about it. Payment of the refund was prompt.
Moral of this tale - don't trust AOL when you close your account.

Well, it’s St Patrick’s Day, so you see, he does eliminate the snakes.

I heard of another problem recently - not a client at the time - who closed his AOL account and after a long tedious conversation with the 'retention team' insisted that they close the account within 24 hours.
They closed it within 30 mins and he lost all his messages and the contents of his address book.
Moral - set up a new account with anything (Hotmail or GMail) and forward everything you want to keep to the new account before yelling at AOL - they can be and will be vindictive!

i used aol to first get on the internets in 1995.
i cancelled within tha tfirst month of 'free,' and went with netwhatever. netcaster or whatever had a name like that. great company.


aol kept billing me. i had to spend some time on the phone to get cancelled.

I had an AOL free trial as well. I called them to cancel about an hour and a half late. (@1:30 AM the morning after the trial expired). I was given a cancellation number, and a sob story from the AOL rep that I would have free internet for a month. Yeah right, I got the bill for the next month, despite not having even gone near the internet. Well, a quick call to Capital One's dispute dept ensued. I was asked if they gave me a cancellation, I said yes. They charges were removed from my card, and I haven't heard anything from AOL since. Good Riddance.

The lesson there is clearly that a threat of bad PR works wonders!