And I imagine this guy is glad he doesn't anymore, either -

http://media.putfile.com/AOL-Cancellation

And here's his blog:
http://insignificantthoughts.com/2006/0 ... lling-aol/

http://www.dc.bbb.org/report.html?natio ... ompid=2087

That is some BBB info on them. I'm damn glad I was steered away from them.

My biggest problem with them is that quite often I have a hard time contacting clients that use AOL, as it keeps blocking both of my email address'

AOL hasn't been a local call to me since I lived in Colorado Springs 15 years ago. I told them, while living in Arizona to cancel my account (I hadn't realized I had to badger them into stopping), and they tried to convince me it was a local call. I asked them if I could charge my phone bill to them to cover the cost of my account.

By that time, I was talking to a supervisor, who said, "No! Are you nuts?"

I answered, "No, but you are if you think I intend to stay with you one more day."

No more account.

I still get a bill for $60 from an AOL account I closed three years ago. I finally cancelled the card I had connected to the account so that they couldn't keep taking $$ out. After three months of not being able to charge me, they cancelled the account. I will NEVER give them that $$.

It may have been local, but with a toll charge. These guys are very specific in their verbage. Some telephone exchanges have these things called EAS (Extended Area Service) and ECC (Extended Community Calling). EAS is usually where you pay an extra 2-7 dollars to have an extended local toll free radius that includes 2 or more communities that otherwise would not be toll free. ECC is a local call that still charges you a per minute rate to call (usually 5 cents per minute). Both EAS and ECC are mandated by state and local governments and not by the respective telephone company of that exchange. So when AOL assures you that their access number is local, it may in fact be local... but with a toll charge. It's something they have deprioritized over the last 6 years or so. Since it's cheaper for them to have their customer's use a high speed connection to connect, they cut their access numbers by 2/3 starting in 2000... this means that a lot of people suddenly had to either drop AOL, get high speed or pay the toll charges to use their service.

All customer service representatives from any company are required to make one save attempt when faced with a customer who wants to disconnect (for reasons other than death), but that rep in the audio clip went way too far.