AOL Settles Case Over Tactics to Keep Customers

You can only stonewall for so long…..

Averting a court battle over how it has handled the exodus from its Internet dial-up service, AOL has agreed to make it easier for its remaining customers to leave as part of a $3 million settlement with 48 states and the District of Columbia.

The resolution, announced Wednesday, was driven by a deluge of complaints from AOL customers who said they had tried to close their accounts, only to be thwarted in their attempts or discover they were still being billed for services they thought had been canceled.

The outcry led to a multistate investigation that would have culminated in a lawsuit if AOL, based in Dulles, Va., had not agreed to a settlement, said David M. Tiede, a deputy attorney general in California.

In 2005, AOL paid $1.25 million in penalties and costs to resolve a similar complaint in New York. New York and Florida were the only states that did not participate in the inquiry that led to the settlement announced Wednesday.

AOL, the Internet division of Time Warner, did not acknowledge any wrongdoing in the settlement.

A company spokeswoman, Amy Call, played down the impact of the settlement, saying AOL had already voluntarily improved the way it handled cancellations. “This just codifies those safeguards,” she said.

Subscribers who phoned AOL to cancel their service were sometimes greeted by aggressive service representatives who were paid bonuses if they found a way to keep the customer, according to the multistate settlement. Customers complained that AOL’s incentive system created an obstructive culture that made service cancellations difficult.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/technology/12aol.html?em&ex
=1184472000&en=8b152fd5133d4317&ei=5087%0A