They CyberNet Blog has a really good article today, What Was Your Experience Cancelling AOL?.  I have had my own experience and when I use to work for a credit card company have heard many of horror stories.  It took me nearly a month to cancel an account I never activated.  Several phone calls kept yielding more free months offers but never a cancellation.  I found the best way to cancel AOL is accept an offer, wait for the confirmation letter, complete the form on the back and then either FAX or mail (be sure to make a copy as it may mysteriously get lost in the US Mail).

This is what I went through a couple years back to try and cancel a ‘free-trial’ which I never used…

Call #1 — If I didn’t know any better I thought I was talking to Apu over at the Kwiki Mart (is that a Slushy Machine I hear in the background?). He basically chewed me out for wanting to cancel even though I never activate the account. He was going to send me a bunch of links to the AOL e-mail and added three free months. He went on to ’sell’ AOL even more at which point I made a critical mistake and interrupted him with “I just want to cancel” ****CLICK***

Call #2 — I don’t recall her name but she said she was in Tucson. If I didn’t know any better I say she was a UofA cheerleader working part time. No ‘normal’ person who works in a call center would be that hyper. Again was lectured about how I had not activated the account and she was going to give me 6 months free. At this point I was exhausted so I just accepted the offer. She informed me she would send me a confirmation letter.

The Letter — A week or so later I got the letter confirming my AOL service (which I had still not activated) was extended. However there was a once sentence clause that went something like this ‘If you wish to end your service, complete and return the form on the back of this letter.’ I did that and attempted to FAX it to them (long distance of course). Guess what, their FAX # didn’t work (or at least that what the machine lead me to believe) or it was over-loaded.

I was going to mail the letter but had forgotten about it. A couple weeks later a get another letter from AOL saying that per my request my service had been canceled. HOWEVER, if this was done in error or I would like to come back to AOL, just call or sign in with the scree name and my account would be active again with a free 30-days…

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