Chepooka

Cancelling AOL is not hard

For the love of Christ I win the idiot of the day award.

I’ve been paying for AOL for eight. years.

Since the invention of broadband many moons ago, I haven’t used it to access the internet. But, I had billions of things tied to my longstanding email account so that was the main reason I just turned a blind eye to that recurring bill each month.

A couple of years ago I began the process of pointing everything important to my business/permanent email account, and to train people (who to this DAY still email me on that old account despite repeated warnings) to email me at one of my active addresses.

Anyway. Skip to AOL announcing that you can keep your email FO’ FREE (yeah I know, that was eons ago) and I was all about putting ‘cancel AOL’ on my to-do list. Where it remained. It slipped, and slipped, and slipped down to the bottom of every day’s to-do list.

You see, also? I heard and read about all these HORROR STORIES about people having a hell of a time freeing themselves from the clutches of the evil empire. Supposedly it took one guy like 5 hours, FIVE. I am not good with the phone for five minutes. And then the “seventeen steps to canceling AOL” or something. Reading the manual to my cell phone never happened, I can barely figure out how to make an outgoing call. Think I’m going to read STEPS for THAT?

A cursory investigation suggested that it probably WAS going to be a big huge pain in the ass, I couldn’t find phone numbers or contact information (hint, keyword: cancel ... HELLO?!!!)

And so it stayed.

On my to-do list.

Until today.

I felt the need to break out my RED PEN OF ACCOMPLISHMENT and strike something off my list. I called AOL. It took approximately five minutes to not only cancel my account, but to find out that I can still use AOL for absolutely positively everything that I was using it for all these years.

YEARS.

For.

FREE.

I counted up exactly how much my idiocracy cost me, lets just say those shoes I’m always telling myself I can’t afford? Or that designer purse? Or that weekend in Seattle?

I am blogging this not to convince you that I’m a moron, you already know that. But so that somebody can climb the ranks of google and skip over the stupid, stupid lies about needing to cash in a sick day to deal with AOL to get them to cancel an account. Just not true.

They were courteous, efficient, not too pushy, and it wasn’t painful in the slightest.

Oh and if I hadn’t made it clear? I KNOW, realize, am aware ... that I am an idiot.

Posted by chepooka on 06/19 at 06:56 PM

Comments

Way to go girl!! Too bad you can’t get $$ back from them for all that time they charged you for stuff they were giving away for free.

My mom just returned the phone she rented from Bellsouth back in 1980! She was paying rental on it all that time and it’s just a crap corded phone that you could get a the dollar store nowadays. She contacted them to cancel it and they actually wanted the dinosaur back!

Congrats on being free of the AOL dragon!

Posted by on 06/20 at 08:43 AM

OMG that’s just CRAZY! 1980? Holy cow. Glad to know I’m not the only one though, heehee.

Posted by chepooka on 06/20 at 10:14 AM

I have often wondered what kind of crazy my mom is for keeping the phone so long but she reads so many true crime novels I have been afraid to ask :p

Posted by on 06/20 at 10:53 AM

Well… I have been paying for wal-mart connect (which is a $9/month version of AOL) for 3 years. Haven’t used it. I used to, then I got hi-speed, kept it just in case hi-speed went down. Then for some reason my new computers don’t LIKE this wal-mart connect thingy and I can’t use it anyway. And still?

Autobilled from my card every month. Because I am a dork, because I know it is part of AOL and it will be such a bitch to remove. MY hubby is one of “tjose people” who spent 5 hours on the phone removing it for his mother years ago.

Hence why, I still put it off.

Posted by on 06/25 at 09:31 AM