You know, as much as I dislike AOL, I really shouldn’t complain about them too much…  The wife was an indentured servant there for 4 years (she was an old timer!) which meant that they paid a lot of our bills…

But it’s hard to ignore the bad press they’ve been getting lately…  By now I’m sure you’ve heard the story (and possibly the recording) of the guy who tried mightily to cancel his AOL account…  If you’ve forgotten, or just want to hear it again, you’ll find it here on the Consumerist website.

But the folks over at CNET’s Buzz Out Loud steered me to this story also over on Consumerist, that’s almost as good.  It seems that a poor woman named Brenda lost her mother in a car accident back in February.  That was bad.  Almost as bad is what happend when she called AOL just 2 days later to try and cancel her later mother’s AOL account…

You’ll have to click below to hear the rest of the story….

So what happened you’re wondering…  How could it have been worse than the poor guy spent like 20 minutes on the phone trying to cancel his account?  Just wait…

See according to her letter, Brenda called AOL and spoke to a rep and explaned that she wanted to cancel her mother’s account because she had been killed in an accident…

The rep’s response was along the lines of “I’m sorry your mother was unhappy with the service.” Then he wanted to lower the number of hours a month in the plan in an attempt to reduce her AOL bill!

Unfortunately it just get’s worse…  After explaining that reducing the number of hours wouldn’t help because her mother had just been killed, the rep said “I understand what you are saying, I’m just trying to come up with a solution.”  Hmm…  member is no longer alive, no pulse, no brain activity, possibly buried, but heck she still is going to want to have access to her e-mail and AIM account won’t she?  I’m just trying to come up with a solution right?

Supposedly the rep told Brenda that her MOM would have to call and cancel the account, even after Brenda provided the coroner’s case number for the incident!  Hmm…  That would be an interesting feat…

Ok, I understand the point of customer retention reps… I’ve dealt with them twice from T-Mobile, and once from Sprint and the old AT&T Wireless.  Sure they can be agressive at times, but never as bad as the stories coming out of AOL lately.  Heck Sprint backed off fast when I told them that I thought their customer service stunk, their coverage was unacceptable, and that I already had a contract with another carrier that I was satisfied with and didn’t have any desire to break that contract to stay with a carrier that I was dissatisfied with…

But the stories coming from AOL are just insane…  There comes a point that you just have to let go!

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