Sharp-eyed Reader Catches Big Mistake on AOL's Online Cancel Form

ETA: As of early 2011, AOL finally fixed the following error – the District of Columbia is now listed on their cancel form.

It’s not easy to cancel AOL – especially if they can’t even get your address right. Take tonight’s anonymous commenter, who lives in Washington DC, but can’t find Washington, DC on AOL’s online cancel form in the state drop-down portion of the form’s address field. I screen-capped the proof right here:

There is no way to cancel AOL with the online form if you live in Washington, DC!

The commenter wrote:

There is no listing for the District of Columbia on this form – I wrote DC but they still insisted that the state part be filled out- I checked Washington which is definitely NOT my state but I couldn’t figure out what else to do- I will see in 72 hours if that worked!

Surely it was just an oversight on some programmer’s part, but if a cancellation can go through with the address field filled in wrong, then why even bother with an address field? Why not just have members fill in their screen names, sign the form, and that’s it?

When you think about it, filling out your first name, last name, phone number and the address field is a waste of time, since AOL makes you log in and answer your security question before they will even let you see the cancel form. What’s the point of filling out the address field when your address is already on file along with all your other your account information?

That said, I have no idea how to reach the “programming department” at AOL to let them know about this – and I’m not even sure I want to reach them after what they read about themselves on this blog years ago, but at any rate, assuming you need to fill in the correct address on the form to successfully cancel your account, this error needs to be fixed.

Anyone know how to let anyone at AOL know about it?