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I'm a 32-year old Bronx livin' sarcastic bastard. If you cross me, I'll shred you. I have no problems sharing my opinion whether you want to hear it or not, so get used to it. There's a lot of it going on here. Hang around if you'd like and comment if you dare.
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AOL Apologizes, Officially.

Nicholas Graham, Executive Vice President of AOL Corporate Communications contacted me to officially apologize for the infamous “Jon” call. Here’s the full text of the e-mail:

Vincent, thank you for returning my phone call. I appreciate hearing from you and being able to talk to you - and to personally apologize for your experience. At AOL, we have zero-tolerance for customer care incidents like this - which is deeply regrettable and also absolutely inexcusable. The employee in question violated our customer service guidelines and practices, and everything that AOL believes to be important in customer care - chief among them being respect for the member, and swiftly honoring their requests. This matter was dealt with immediately and appropriately, and the employee cited here is no longer with the Company.

Vincent - please get in touch with me again in the future I can be of help at all. And good luck to you and to “Insignificant Thoughts”.

Sincerely,
Nicholas

I’ll take it. Thank you very much to both Nicholas Graham and Zach Katzaris of AOL, both of whom contacted me to apologize on behalf of the company. I don’t doubt the sincerity of either, and both of them have promised to make efforts to improve this situation for others.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Cool. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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    I had a terribly difficult time at AOL as well. I called to cancel due to going cable, and was disturbingly kept on the line for over half an hour by, unfortunately, I don't know who. First he tried to subvert my every reason for cancelling, then offered me not one, not two, but three different rate reduction and access plans. Eventually, my attitude became one of obvious but controlled hostility, and it still took me at least 5 more minutes before I was transferred to a completely different individual (after holding several more minutes) who handled the actual cancellation. It is quite obvious from this latter situation that AOL has specialists trained in keeping you on the line until you capitulate. This is one of the worst experiences I have ever had with this type of correspondence. I hope for others' sake that management is serious about cleaning up this annoying act. I will never even think about doing business with AOL again.
    HRN
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    He only apologized because of the publicity.

    It was not sincere.

    They have been fined for this ad-nauseum and everyone at AOL is well-aware of the practice. When you get sued by 3 different states, then you become very aware of the problem.

    He apologized for PR reasons.

    The same thing is happening to 1,000 people as I type this, but they just don't have the forethought to tape it, or a website on which to post it.

    AOL was sorry. Sorry they get caught.

    Then know that this will die down in a week, and it will be business as usual.
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    I agree. They apologized because of the publicity. I cancelled my account last week after 30 minute of arguing with a foreign woman that kept insisting that my email on AOL, which only receives spam will be kept active. She insisted I needed it. I insisted that I didn't. We went through a few rounds of that until she argued with me that I use AOL all of the time. I have DSL and really don't. She insisted that I use the messenger all of the time - I really don't. It was one of the most ridiculous conversations that I've ever had. My only guess is that people just get so frustrated that they give up and pay the cash each month only to avoid the customer service issue.
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    I too had problems canceling my account, after I signed up for a "free" 90 day membership. Well to make a long story short, I then recieved an e-mail from AOL saying my bank account was going to be charged the next day. I called AOL, to cancel and was told that they would issue a credit to my payment method, and would give me 3 months for free, isn't that what I had in the first place.

    No credit ever appeared in my bank account, but they did charge my account again. When I called and spoke to the cancelation department, I was told that the 1st credit was denied, but that it would be coming in 30 days. (yes, I typed that correctly). I was also told that they would credit my bank account for the second charge, and that it would take up to seven days. After seven days, when I called, to ask about the credit, I was told it could take up to 30 days for the credit be issued. I told them to cancel my account, and after an hour and a half; resulting in my having to scream and ask for a supervisor, my account was cancelled.

    I then called my bank, and contested the charges, provided the bank with the e-mails and letters verifying my claim, and they reversed the charges. I should have dealt with my bank, not AOL.
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    Perhaps you can pass my name and email on to Nicholas Graham. He said in his note to you "Vincent - please get in touch with me again in the future I can be of help at all. And good luck to you and to “Insignificant Thoughts”. I had an account that was next to impossible to cancel - took multiple attempts over the course of 8 months. Each time I thought it was cancelled, charges would show up on my credit card. And, I never got all my money back.

    Kudos to you. You were able to accomplish what I was unable to do for eight months.
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    • v
    Dude, your acceptance of that bullshit 'apology' from AOL is really stanky. You think these 'Johns' act like this on their freaking OWN?

    What world do you live in? I mean, you from NYC! Don't let these AOL virus aholes get away with 'we so sorry. we immoliated the 'John' that used to work for us. That will solve the problem. Hope you is happy'.

    Unbelievable. Hopefully you are very young, in your 20's or so. You've got an edge to you that I understand. But you have this 15 minutes of fame. If you sell out, twenty years from now, you will seriously regret it. The way to handle this is to do what that *edge* tells you to do!

    Explain how AOL is a virus, how they track every move you make on the internet; how it is *OBVIOUS* company policy to train the 'Johns', since I ditched my AOL account in 1996, and got pretty much the same BS that you got. Just a different day, my man.

    So do the right thing. Tell the EVP or whatever the f he is that he's full of s. That the person he needs to fire is himself. Since he and his ilk promote that policy.

    And, oh, BTW, don't forget to put in a word or two about the freaking cable and baby bell monopoly/oligopoly we got going on here. I've been where you are right now dude. I did the wrong thing. You are primpin' on the 'Today show' thing and all, and you'll go in there and they'll tell you what little, very small, window of things they want to say.

    And if you just KA and do that, you're just another 'John' who just ain't working for AOL just now...
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    I had the same experience. The only thing I can compare to my conversation with the AOL rep is trying to shake a Sun Myung-Moon cult member on the UC Berkeley campus back in the 70s.
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    No selling out here, man. Had they offered me anything to shut me up, it woulda been all over the news (as it is, I'm going to be on CNBC and the Today Show today).

    I can only take people on their word. I'm a good Catholic boy from the Bronx and that's the way I live. That doesn't mean I'm naive or crazy either, but I don't doubt the sincerity of the letter, despite its impersonality (most of it was a statement that was previously issued).

    We'll see if things change. Something tells me this story isn't going away as easily as they would like it to.
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    Hi,

    I appreciate your publishing the call and talking about it. I had a very similar experience last night with AOL though. Unfortunately, I just read the article about your experience this morning, or I would have also recorded the call. Reading this makes me feel kind of sorry for the guy who you talked to who got fired. What he did (at least judging by all the response to your article) was clearly in accordance with AOL policy and he seems to have been made a scapegoat because of the publicity. In the meantime, AOL just continues to harass people who want to cancel their accounts. Too bad that they apparently haven't really learned anything from this.
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    Vinnie
    Saw you on cnbc this am
    had THE SAME EXPERIENCE
    no longer use the service and will never recommend it
    Scott
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    I guess it is desperation from AOL that is making them do anything and go so far not to do lose a customer in their rapidly shrinking market size.
    I was working with Netzero internet formerly, in the technology sector though, and am pretty confident that no customer would ever have to go through 45 minutes to just cancel an account.
    I'm not sure if they have it automated such that the user can cancel it online himself through simple steps, but definitely friendlier than AOL.

    I wonder what others think or if they've faced such problems with Netzero too. With the whole dial-up internet market's pie decreasing in size, these ISP's better increase their retention rate through better customer satisfaction, not this way.
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    Hey Vinny,

    Saw you on CNBC today, man. I liked your response when you were asked if your next mission was to take on Sprint and others listed!
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    Yup, That was my experience also with AOL. I got a woman who wouldn't let it go. John, the guy you got, was trained to do so, so they sould retrain or fire them all!!! Thanks Vincent, for exposing AOL for what they really are.
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    Reading Lee's comments convinces me that I am unlikely to receive the credit AOL promised me.
    After she graduated from college, my daughter (with my permission) used my credit card to take advantage of the "free" trial -- only so she could download Juno's software. (She's Very frugal!)
    She never had any intention of paying for AOL service. At the end of the trial she cancelled, but, after a lapse of about a year, charges began appearing on my credit card statement.
    When she contacted AOL to complain, she was told that a telemarketer they employ had told them that my daughter had consented to have the account re-opened!

    Lies, lies, lies!

    Good luck to you, Vincent. Just be sure to check your credit card statements for years to come.

    Randy
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    If you go into any place of business and want to return or cancel anything, they're going to ask you why. All you had to do was let the poor guy speak and you would've gotten what you wanted either way, it's the way service works and always has been. Have you even ever been outside of your house? You have a blog so you probably don't leave like must other people who have blogs. I'm surprised you changed out of your feetie pj's for the interview. Anywho, I just can't believe how rude your were to that poor guy...and then HE gets fired. Sure, he crossed the line eventually, but only when provoked. The worse thing is that this if so obviously orchestrated to publize your blog. Shame on you. On the other hand, Aol sucks, so smart move on that front.
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    Vinny
    Just saw you on CNBC. Great interview. I would appreciate getting from you the info on Nicholas Graham as I would like to tell him about my own absolutely dreadful experince with AOL. IT is absolutely NOT true that your experience was a fluke. It took me months, yes months to cancel my account and even so, I was being charged incredibly high monthly charges (sometimes $145.00) without anyone being able to tell me why! Of course I never got my money back. Now mind you, I had other internet service from my own cable provider so used the AOL account rarely- I was the main subscriber to AOL, with three email addresses and one son with his. Bills were absolutely preposterous- when I called to cancel (probably more than 25 times, it was ABSOLUTELY impossible to do so- either you got cut off, talked non stop to stop me from talking, asked incdredibly unprofessional questions... was never, ever connected to a supervisor, or they just kept going on and on, bringing up another subject as it happened to you- pass the phone to your MOm.... Hey, I'm a 60 year old mom myself, I"M the mom! Well, to no avail until finally after a 45 minute screaming session with a guy, I was able to get the word in. CANCEL. I received a letter confirming the closure of the account but not until January (21st I think) which still gave me according to AOL, a few weeks in which to "think it over".
    My middle son, who lives on his own and is an actor, also had exactly the same problem cancelling- I was with him in the apartment and said, wait for this to happen today! It did not happen, he had to call again and again. He also was in the most incredible screaming matches for almost an hour. No supervisors available, ever.
    Forgot to mention, AFTER I was finally able to cancel, I received several phone calls at my home, from AOL, trying to convince me to reinstate the account, even saying that they were keeping my email addresses for a time in order to allow the changing of mind!!!!
    Anyway, I would very much like to speak to Nicholas Graham and would appreciate you emailing me his information. This cannot stop here- it is a total problem and just as it happened to me that I had to absorb these ridiculous amounts of moneys charged because nobody would clarify the situation with me, plus the canceling problems which were positively horrendous, I do not believe that AOL should get away with this.
    What hurts me the most is the fact that they had the gall to fire ONE guy when their entire crew is trained to handle customers exactly this way.
    Thanks Vinny for your effort. It is greatly appreciated. Please let's not stop here.
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    Vinny I saw the clip on the Today show. It’s not yet done with AOL. I had AOL for years till I decided like you to get rid of it. Your 15 min call was a short one. I had to call them back a few times before they got it threw there thick heads I don't want it anymore. I finally got so feed up with the AOL employees I in a loud voice told them I want to talk to your boss now. I was transferred and started the whole loop over again. I was told “No Mr. $#$@ you don’t want to cancel really“. I told whomever I was talking to yes and if you don’t I will seek legal counsel. Finally, they canceled BUT the end wasn’t anywhere near soon enough for me. They canceled my account but for some reason still were trying to get the monthly fee. I kept a close eye on my account, I was told by friends AOL sometimes doesn’t stop taking there monthly fee. I went down to my bank to put a stop payment for AOL on my checking account. You would think it’s over right. I haven’t had AOL for 2-3 years. I just called AOL a month or so ago, I was told I owe them for past payment. I wasn’t very nice to whomever I was talking to. AOL never really truly goes away. I’m not even going to get started on there tech area. Do they speak English?
    Good Luck Mike
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    Vinny I saw the clip on the Today show. It’s not yet done with AOL. I had AOL for years till I decided like you to get rid of it. Your 15 min call was a short one. I had to call them back a few times before they got it threw there thick heads I don't want it anymore. I finally got so feed up with the AOL employees I in a loud voice told them I want to talk to your boss now. I was transferred and started the whole loop over again. I was told “No Mr. $#$@ you don’t want to cancel really“. I told whomever I was talking to yes and if you don’t I will seek legal counsel. Finally, they canceled BUT the end wasn’t anywhere near soon enough for me. They canceled my account but for some reason still were trying to get the monthly fee. I kept a close eye on my account, I was told by friends AOL sometimes doesn’t stop taking there monthly fee. I went down to my bank to put a stop payment for AOL on my checking account. You would think it’s over right. I haven’t had AOL for 2-3 years. I just called AOL a month or so ago, I was told I owe them for past payment. I wasn’t very nice to whomever I was talking to. AOL never really truly goes away. I’m not even going to get started on there tech area. Do they speak English? I now have High Speed Cable.
    Good Luck, Mike
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    I just wanted you to know that I had the SAME experience. Thanks for bringing it out. They made it a miserable experience, but at the end of the day, there is no use for AOL anymore.
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