The amount of ignorance on the Interwebs is…awe-inspiring. Take The Consumerist’s latest stab at AOL: AOL Has No Reason to Cancel Your Free Account. I’m all for taking a good stab at AOL, as long as it’s deserved, but in this case, it’s not.
The author of the email that brought forth The Consumerist’s wrath is misinformed, to say the least, which is AOL’s fault for not letting members know how to cancel free accounts, not his fault for being unable to find that information.
Instead of looking into the matter, The Consumerist left the email author to the whims of their snarky masses (I’d rather have a root canal than be an AOL user in that crowd). Even people who work for AOL, like AnswerTips (Hola!), couldn’t help the email author, Jim, quickly and seamlessly cancel his free account. It made me want to syndicate my blog into every tiny little corner of the world so that confusion like this will stop.
AOL does let you cancel your free (email/IM/chat only) AOL account….no problemo! But you can’t call AOL for that…you must use AOL’s online cancel form.
Ever since I found a shortcut to AOL’s cancel form that doesn’t requiring you digging through half their Help website to find it, canceling your free or paid AOL account couldn’t be much easier – just sign in, answer your security question, fill out the cancel form, place a check mark next to the “don’t want to convert” yadda yadda, press the Submit button, and that’s it, you’re done! You couldn’t make it much easier (OK, you could, but that’s another post). I have a full article on using AOL’s online form to cancel your free AOL account at the link above. It’s so easy it’s almost boring. And it works.
I could sign into The Consumerist to add my “easier version of how to cancel one’s free AOL account” to their page, but I lost my password to that site years ago, I don’t feel like signing in with my other Gawker name (since I reserve that pretty much for trolling Marissa Mayer) and I hate to steal the AOL Answertip guy’s thunder, since he thinks he’s got it all tied up. It’s rude to steal this one blazing moment of glory from him. But you can always find the best answer here. 🙂
Anti-AOL 