by Moe Zilla

Created on: January 20, 2008   Last Updated: July 25, 2010

Every nine seconds someone cancels an AOL account, and over 20 million customers have left AOL in the last six years! So if you're canceling your AOL account, the first thing to remember is that you're not alone!

In theory, it's very simple to cancel your AOL account. Just call 1-888-265-8008. After AOL's voice-recognition system prompts you to say "cancellations," just enter your phone number so they can look up your account. Unfortunately, for some users canceling an AOL account can be a nightmare. They'll complete the procedure, only to discover AOL continued billing their credit card!

So here's some handy tricks that will make it even easier to cancel your account...

* Cancellations can also be mailed to AOL at PO Box 65100 / Sterling, VA 20165-8800

* Cancellations can be FAXed to 703-433-7283. (Say specifically that you're canceling your account and provide your full name, phone number and address, plus either the primary billing contact's AOL screen name or the last four digits of the current payment method.)

* And most importantly: always get a confirmation number. AOL used to let its users cancel their accounts online, but "We found that our cancellation rate was going up considerably," one member services executive complained. Now AOL pays its staffers a bonus if they can talk a caller out of cancelling. (AOL's former CEO, Steve Case, once bragged that "In many cases, 20% of the people decided not to cancel after talking to us!") And according to some news articles, there were some staffers who'd only pretend to cancel the account in order to earn their bonus. (One reporter even published an internal AOL memo that had to remind staffers that "Your integrity is worth more than $6.") Customers should insist that their representative provide an official cancellation number - and then watch their next credit card statement carefully!

This gets a little tricky, too. AOL bills a credit card on the same day of the month that the account was opened, so canceling simply means that the billing shouldn't happen the next time that day of the month arrives. (And there are no "partial refunds" for the unused portion of the month!) The next credit card statement could still include the last charge from AOL, billing for a month. But if the date of AOL's billing is after the date of the phone call, they may have "lost" your cancellation request.

Many people say AOL simply continued to bill them after they've canceled their account. In 1998, various problems with AOL even led 44 state attorneys general to restrict AOL to a 50-point agreement which included strict rules for how AOL should process cancellations. There's an important lesson to take from this piece of internet history. If a customer has an unsatisfactory experience with AOL, they can get strong results if they contact their state's attorney general!

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