Patterico's Pontifications

6/22/2006

AOL Cretin Won’t Let Guy Cancel Account

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 10:27 am



Here’s an amusing story about a guy trying to cancel his AOL account. Surprise! they didn’t want him to, and tried for over 3 minutes to talk him out of it. Unfortunately for AOL, the caller was recording the conversation and has posted it on the Web.

Hat tip to Ace, who has a good parody.

The linked story has an edited recording of the call. I think you get a better flavor from the whole call, which you can listen to here. I especially like the bit at the end, where the customer service rep gets on a power trip, and tells the account holder that unless the account holder listens to the paragraph the rep is supposed to read (about some free services the company will continue to offer), he won’t cancel the account:

CUSTOMER SERVICE REP: If you want to cancel this account, you’re gonna let me speak, and give this paragraph. ‘Cause if not, we can star you all day, okay? I really don’t care, to be honest with you. But, you’re gonna listen to me, if you want this turned off. So, can I speak now?

CANCELLING CUSTOMER: [with frustration] Go right ahead.

CUSTOMER SERVICE REP: [with sarcasm] Thank you! I appreciate that.

Can I post this all over the Web and make you sound like a cretin? Thank you! I appreciate that.

16 Responses to “AOL Cretin Won’t Let Guy Cancel Account”

  1. Here’s my favorite part of the story:

    AOL sent him an apology and said the customer service rep was no longer with the company.

    Neat. What about all the other customer service reps who do the same thing every day? Every time I’ve had an AOL account and later attempted to cancel it, I’ve gotten exactly the same treatment. OK, not exactly the same – they didn’t ask me if my daddy was home, but that’s about it.

    It would be nice if more people would tape their attempted cancellations with AOL – assuming they live in states that allow one-party taping. If you don’t, you could always start by telling the guy that his call “may be recorded for quality assurance, or otherwise,” which he’ll ignore as a wise-ass remark.

    Xrlq (f52b4f)

  2. AOL sent him an apology and said the customer service rep was no longer with the company.

    Smart call on AOL’s part, sounds like …

    Petty power trips are one of the worst features of human nature. Airport security, anyone?

    Anwyn (164e26)

  3. Someone should expose these Comcast CableTV bozos. Sure, salesmanship is a right and good fun for these guys. But when every single request triggers a new plan with a cheap 3 month introductory price (so don’t worry), this is just infuriating. In the end, I think I ended up paying $8 for each Sopranos episode, when you include the other packages required to purchase HBO. Just let me pay for what shows up on my TV – nothing more, nothing less.

    AOL’s apology is priceless. As if they didn’t know this was going on, or actively encouraging this.

    Wesson (c20d28)

  4. Wrote mine while Xrlq was posting his. Just too naive, I guess, to realize that the guy was just doing his standard AOL-instructed job to the letter and that hundreds of others follow the same script every day. This is the part where I’m glad I never got involved with AOL at all.

    Anwyn (164e26)

  5. XRLQ — I would not be at all surprised to find out that resisting cancellation and attempting to persuade the customer not to cancel are actions demanded by middle-management and required of the phone staff.

    aphrael (e0cdc9)

  6. My own experience cancelling my AOL service made this guy’s problems look like a Sunday School Picnic. It took me approximately 75 minutes on the phone before I could get my AOL account cancelled. I couldn’t cancel it by directions to my credit card company—had to talk with AOL directly. Okay–15 minutes on voice mail hell to get to a live person; said I wanted to cancel–was asked why, given various offers/spiels to stay on–still waiting for the magic words “when are you going to say I’m cancelled”. Each time I pressed the issue, I was passed off to the speaker’s “supervisor” and we went through the same roundelay. I actually got up through 4 levels of supervision–at about 15 minutes a pop before I got one of these clowns to utter the magic words “Your account has been cancelled”.

    The strangest thing about the entire experience was that these bozos kept asking “Why do you want to cancel?” Any company that treats its customers with such disrespect deserves to lose its customers by the big boat load.

    There are lots of folks who read this blog who bill their time or services by the hour; whether you are a tree surgeon, a lawyer, a consultant of some kind, multiply your hourly billing rate by 1.25–and that’s how much it will cost you to cancel your AOL account. May they burn in customer purgatory for the rest of their corporate life!!!!!

    Mike Myers (28fa0a)

  7. Wesson — have you seen someone’s little video of the Comcast technician asleep on their couch, while waiting on hold?

    http://sayanythingblog.com/2006/06/21/thank_you_comcast/

    Haven’t seen any sort of response for this, though.

    dave (6001a6)

  8. I am constantly amazed at how many companies that must obviously depend on happy customers treat them like this. Three of the big chain stores I buy from try to hook me into ‘free trial’ magazine subscriptions. They aren’t free; they cost you time and energy to keep track of, otherwise you start to get a bill when you pass the ‘trial’ period – and if you try to cancel before the trial is up, be prepared for an argument.

    It took me far too long to browbeat a credit card company into closing my account. They kept arguing that they wanted to keep it open to deal with any outstanding charges. When, after six months, a fraudulent charge showed up I blew my top and told them that they could void the charge and the account, or they could expect to support me in style for the rest of my life.

    I worked for SUNCOAST up until they went bankrupt. Right until the vary last day they were still selling ‘frequent buyers’ discount club cards. Making promises they KNEW they weren’t going to be able to keep!

    Thanks to the Death Tax nearly every Company in the US is run by a board of directors for the benefit of the stockholders. Oh, each generation sees a number of start-ups with an institutional interest in providing a Christian Workplace, or Helping the Poor get Affordable Care, or some such. These almost always disappear when the original owner goes public to avoid losing half to the tax man on his death.

    Now inherited wealth CAN be a social problem. A young man who inherits something the size of Ford may dedicate himself to providing for his workers, or for building better cars, or he may dedicate the company to painting the moon blue. But with boards of directors and bean-counters in charge of almost all companies, the companies all have the same personality; greedy and brain damaged.

    C. S. P. Schofield (c1cf21)

  9. Excuse me if I don’t buy that AOL fired the rep.

    Darleen (81f712)

  10. achtung bozos (particularly mike myers in #6) these companies are your enemy. you can call your bank and ask it to change the number on your visa debit/credit card. once you do that, the old number will no longer be subject to abuse by anyone. why do i want to cancel this account? because you won’t give me an anal rim job while humming the ode to joy “freunde schoner gotterfunken, tochter aus eleeeeesium…”, that’s why!

    assistant devil's advocate (375260)

  11. It’s too bad AOL fired that rep, who was high pressure in an annoying, but relatively friendly way.

    Why do I say it was too bad?

    Because he was doing what he was trained to do. The real villain is AOL. They took it out on innocent victims:

    the man who called in to cancel his account
    the man who was fired for doing what he was tacitly, and probably explicitly with corporate pressure ordered to do (corporate as in his managers, the ones who can make his work life hell and take bread off him and his families’ table)

    The bastards at AOL with their consistently crappy company and overpriced service: “Internet for people who don’t know any better” should be ashamed.

    And they should have some bread taken off their table, not just this customer service rep.

    Chris from Victoria, BC (9824e6)

  12. I wouldn’t say he was friendly at the end of the call. He was getting off on his little power trip.

    Patterico (50c3cd)

  13. He was by the end of the call, Patterico. But… let’s not kid ourselves.

    He is still doing what AOL asks him to do, indeed, pressures him to do.

    I’m not saying the CSR is a great guy… he may be a little bit of a jerk… but he’s employed by AOL partly for that reason. AOL is bleeding customers to better companies and their managers pressure call center reps to do whatever it takes to keep customers from cancelling.

    This guy may have taken it to what seems like an extreme, however, the broader point is that Mr. Ferrari taped this call precisely because he heard just how common these high-pressure tactics are when calling AOL call centers.

    That ain’t a coincidence. That’s the leadership and direction these reps are given by people who earn far more money than they do and trust me, they need their job and their paycheck.

    I’m sensitive to this because I’ve had his job before for different companies and was above average at saving customers.

    I was able to do this by admitting fault where it existed, gaining trust accordingly, and building value in the positive parts of my company’s offerings… but I have way above average skills due largely to self-education and I have been fortunate in that I have only worked for companies for any length of time with a commitment to customer service and to honoring customer requests.

    It galls me professionally to hear just how poor this representative is and how unprofessional he was in the end. But I’m not a fool. This isn’t just his personality and ignorance. It’s the company he works for.

    Does anyone anywhere not believe AOL sucks?

    Chris from Victoria, BC (9824e6)

  14. The call center rep wasn’t fired. That I’d bet money on. AOL’s been famous for years and years for how impossible it is to cancel service. Legendary in many Net forums. Reps are graded on how many people they can “keep”. “Free” months will be handed out. I recall a few years ago, someone who said they’d been on AOL for free for like 2 years, they kept calling to cancel, and getting three free months added.

    No, this is SOP. AOL, being a rather extreme example of a company who’s product isn’t quite what they’ve promised (going back to the early-90s when the sold themselves first as a alternative to the internet, later, as a “better internet”, is hardly surprisingly lacking in “customer” focus.
    The rep probably got reprimanded for losing his temper – but the only reason this is news is he recorded it, and people who didn’t pay attention to the story before now have multimedia.

    Addison (651a1b)

  15. […] Apparently AOL customer support has deteriorated a great deal. Here’s the short version, and here’s the long version, of some poor schmoe who was attempting to cancel his account. (h/t Patterico) […]

    OT at Pursuing Holiness (bc33d8)

  16. And now, the inevitable parody video

    Cancel my Playboy account

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbjUnz64ywc

    MarkDayComedy (9ddd87)


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