Jason Zweig of the Wall Street Journal writes about how America Online is trying to screw him out of $103. It's a pretty outrageous story. I've been on AOL since 1994, when it was a cool new thing to have. It seems like eons ago that AOL ceased to be cool, and in fact having an AOL address was considered the height of uncool. I never changed, simply because I didn't want to deal with the hassle of having to inform everybody I'd given my e-mail address to over the years that I had a new one. When AOL ceased charging for an e-mail account, that seemed like a smart thing to have done.
I'm wondering, though, if AOL stuck me with a hidden $103 charge as they did Zweig. Julie pays our bills, and she hasn't had an AOL account in ages, so she probably wouldn't have thought to have questioned an AOL charge on the credit card last year. I'll have to check my credit-card bills from the last few months of 2008 to see. If AOL did pull something like this, then whether or not I can get them to refund my money, that's going to be the thing that causes me to leave AOL, whatever the hassle. And I will do whatever I can to make this a public relations nightmare for the company. Nothing gets me wound up like corporate mistreatment of customers, as you may recall.
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You (or Julie) need to check your bills more closely. It's very easy for companies and even outright scam artists to slide charges in on people who are inattentive. I've had issues with issues with Time Warner, Verizon and even a bank sneaking in mysterious little fees on me. And in Michigan some years back there was a widespread fraud whereby some "company" was charging 20$ against peoeple's phone bills. If you called them to complain (which I did) they apologized very politely and immediately reversed the charge-- but enough people failed to notice it that they must have made a small fortune. The customer service rep at Ameritech (whom I had called first) implored me to go to the state authorities on this since the phone company itself, not being a victim, was powerless to lodge a complaint, but she was geting a dozen calls a week about this scam.
I was just doing our finances yesterday and noticed a charge from late last year that I believe to be in error. I don't even remember buying something from this company either. It is a lesson learned for sure. I will be keeping a closer eye when things come through on my debit/credit cards.
I was just doing our finances yesterday and noticed a charge from late last year that I believe to be in error. I don't even remember buying something from this company either. It is a lesson learned for sure. I will be keeping a closer eye when things come through on my debit/credit cards.
Dishonest, scummy company. We spent hours on the phone trying to quit. We quit, but then they charged us anyway. We tried to get AOL to reverse the charge, but to no avail. So our credit card company reversed it for us. Then, AOL turned it over to debt collectors.
Scumbag company. Dishonest company. I will never do business with them, any company that owns them, or any company they own.
It took us several tries to get out from under AOL. when they threatened to send bill collectors after us, my husband informed the customer service representative that he would get a lawyer. he was so ticked that we could hear him all the way on the second floor - he was in the basement.
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