fwd from another list...
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/columnists.nsf/techtalk/story/A0F7
FD49EFA6565A862571BF006C005A?OpenDocument
Even dead people can't escape AOL
By David Sheets <mailto:dsheets@post-dispatch.com>
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
08/04/2006
Maxine Gauthier doesn't own a computer. She doesn't know the first thing
about Web browsing or sending e-mail. She's not even sure where to find
a
computer's "on" button, as she describes it.
Yet for the past nine months, she has been fighting one of the most
persistent and some say irritating institutions in cyberspace: AOL,
formerly
known as America Online.
"They just haven't wanted to let go," the 55-year-old St. Louisan said.
"I
don't think they'll ever really let go."
Her struggle has involved about a dozen phone calls often ending with an
AOL
customer service representative or manager hanging up on her. She even
tried
impersonating someone else in a couple of the calls. The giant online
service provider wouldn't budge.
The problem? An AOL account once held by Gauthier's late father still
showed
billing charges accumulating against it. The account had been dormant
for
months; the credit card he used for it was inactive at least as long.
Nevertheless, AOL kept charging $25.90 each month for dial-up online
access.
Late fees for non-payment accumulated on the credit card, too.
Gauthier even offered to send a copy of her father's obituary as proof
he
truly was dead. AOL was unmoved.
"An AOL service guy told me to stop complaining and learn to use a
computer," she said. "Then he hung up."
Customer service hell
Gauthier's experience with AOL mirrors that of millions who have tried
to
discontinue their dial-up or other service, only to encounter
stonewalling
or outright verbal abuse from the company's customer service agents.
The Dulles, Va.-based company, with more than 17 million customers, was
once
the leading online service provider. But it has bled customers in recent
years -- it lost almost 1 million customers between May and June
alone -- as
more people have moved away from dial-up service toward faster, more
dependable broadband Internet connections.
Most of AOL's $1 billion in profits continues to come from subscriptions
to
dial-up service, a market it still dominates.
Another factor in AOL's decline has been the increase in free services
elsewhere online, such as e-mail and ad blocking, that AOL provided at a
cost. The company announced Wednesday that it was dropping many of these
charges but would continue charging fees for dial-up service.
Yet, neither the Internet's transition to broadband nor the increase in
Web-based freebies has damaged AOL's bottom line in recent weeks quite
as
much as its lamentable customer service, now a punch line on late-night
television and in cyberspace.
Thank Vincent Ferrari for that.
The New York blogger and former AOL loyalist used to spend his time
online
exclusively at AOL's Web portal. He even met his wife there. But
broadband
beckoned and Ferrari's AOL usage declined to nearly zero. He decided to
end
the relationship.
Ferrari had heard that breaking up with AOL was difficult to do --
customer
service agents allegedly employed every trick short of threats to keep
people from dropping out -- so he recorded his call to customer service
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIVZ9b0RgmY> and posted it on his Web
site.
The acrimonious result made huge news online and on television, and
inspired
a flood of responses. Immediately, AOL clients everywhere recounted
their
own bad experiences on blogs, TV and radio.
Gauthier saw all this and was inspired. She nearly had given up her own
fight.
"I saw that I wasn't the only one with trouble. So, that's why I called
you," she told Tech Talk.
"Shut up and listen"
When Gauthier's father, Melvin Berkowitz, died last summer, he was
living in
Florida and had one credit card. Its only charges were to AOL.
Gauthier's
mother, Marion Berkowitz, now 80, and still living in Florida, had her
name
on the account but never used it.
Gauthier discovered the continuing dial-up service charge as she was
settling her father's estate. She first called to cancel the AOL account
last November.
"They told me I didn't have the answer to his 'security question'," a
query
many shopping Web sites once employed to assure themselves they were
talking
to the account holder, "so they said 'Thank you' and hung up," Gauthier
said.
She turned to the credit card company and asked that it stop accepting
the
charges.
"They told me they needed a letter first from AOL saying the account was
inactive," Gauthier said.
Another call to AOL, which promised Gauthier it would send the letter
immediately. That was in December.
"But I never heard any word," she said. "And these charges kept
appearing on
the credit card statement."
She kept calling AOL, trying to find out more about the letter. AOL
countered by saying it never received a request to send it.
With each subsequent call, AOL became more curt with Gauthier. During
one
exchange, "the guy - I think it was a manager - just told me to 'shut up
and
listen to what I have to say or don't bother calling.'
Then he hung up on me," she said.
Gauthier even resorted to pretending she was her mother, because her
mother's name also was on the credit card statement. "No luck. They just
kept asking me for the answer to the security question," Gauthier said.
A nice guy named Ben
Through the spring and early summer, Gauthier made no progress. The
charges
-- and now, credit card late fees -- kept mounting, totaling at least
$200.
After Ferrari's experience with AOL became public, she pressed harder,
thinking the bad publicity might loosen AOL's grip.
In June, she called again. This time, AOL insisted that her father's
account
had not been active since January, and AOL had not charged Melvin
Berkowitz's credit card since.
The credit card statements since January, however, said otherwise.
Gauthier again called the credit card company. In early July, she
received
two letters from it. The first said the charges were fraudulent. The
second
said they weren't.
"That's when I gave up and called your Tech Talk column," she said.
We tried contacting AOL using all the customer service numbers Gauthier
had
used. Initially, AOL's headquarters in Virginia didn't answer our
messages,
so we tried the general customer service number. Within seven minutes,
Tech
Talk was speaking to Ben, based at an AOL customer service center in
Albuquerque, N.M.
Ben, in fact, was very nice.
"A few bad apples"
"If (a customer calls) and gets an AOL rep such as myself, we have to
cancel
that account at their request," Ben said, explaining procedure. "We have
to
honor that request. So, there is no ulterior motive or agenda on us to
not
cancel, really.
"It changed recently where, you know, we have to cancel immediately,"
Ben continued. "We can offer them a better price; that's our job. But if
they're adamant, then you cancel the account."
Gauthier had given Tech Talk her father's account information, and we in
turn passed it along to Ben, who couldn't give his last name because AOL
disallowed it.
"I see here that on May 28, there was a form filled out that this person
was
deceased. ... That account is cancelled out, right now," Ben said.
He explained that, for whatever reason, the form didn't get back to
Melvin
Berkowitz's file until mid-June, "so that month was our last bill. There
won't be any more bills; I can assure you of that."
Not long after Tech Talk spoke to Ben, we received a call from Sarah
Matin,
AOL corporate communications manager, in Dulles, Va. She denied that AOL
condoned hard selling among its customer service workers.
"We have a huge volume of customer service, millions of customers, so
within
that scale, of course, there are going to be a few bad apples," Matin
said.
"Obviously, we have to do much better."
Resolution, or not?
Finally, this month, Gauthier was able to cancel her father's credit
card.
The AOL charges, going back to last summer, were wiped away, and she was
reimbursed for both the charges and late fees.
But the story apparently isn't over. It turns out that Gauthier also has
an
AOL account, established more than a decade ago when her two daughters
were
pre-teens first learning to surf the Internet. She has no idea what has
become of the account; it has been dormant for years.
She never used it. She's hesitant to find out its status.
"After going through all that trouble over my father, I'm not sure I
could
handle that again," she said.
Plus, there's this: A few days ago, Gauthier obtained a letter from AOL
that
was sent to her mother in Florida. The letter was addressed to Melvin
Berkowitz.
"Dear Mr. Berkowitz," it said. "We hope you'll come back to AOL."
Once an AOL customer, always an AOL customer.
dsheets@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8389 ?FPRIVATE
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