Cancelling your AOL account? What if AOL won't let you leave! A cover story in Boardwatch depicts a roach hotel with the headline, "Customers Check In, But They Don’t Check Out." In many cases, AOL's cancellation number simply played a recorded message, then hung up. Even when an AOL operator answers, they're being paid to talk you out of cancelling -- with quotas for the number of people they need to convince!
AOL even hands these operators scripts, which several watchers consider misleading. In Iowa, the Attorney General's office called one of AOL's lines "an outright lie." A historic series of articles in the Boston Herald chronicles flaws in AOL's cancellation process -- from start to finish. Let us know if you've had trouble cancelling your AOL account; we're compiling a list! Next time AOL mails CD's, how many former subscribers will be thinking about how hard it was to end that relationship?