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| WebHostingFinds.com | Blog | News | Guide | Submit | Subscribe | March 12, 2010 |
Vincent Ferrari talks to Matt Lauer about Cancelling AOL Video. Mr. Ferrari appeared on NBC today to talk about his amazing experience with a rude and persistent AOL rep who tried to convince him not to cancel his account. The AOL customer service rep was reported fired and AOL apologized.
[...] Recently we blogged about the Vincent Ferrari AOL video, a hilarious but true demonstration of Mr. Ferrari’s attempt to cancel his AOL account that was met with a sadistic response by an AOL customer service rep. Since then, the story has received more publicity. Art and video parodies are springing up all over the Inernet. Why does a blog about web hosting care about this video, you might ask? We think there is room for improved customer service in the web hosting industry and love the don’t mess with the customer philosphy. [...]
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This is one sad customer service phone call. We have all experienced similar, but perhaps not this blatant. I was pulling for Vincent the whole way through.
Cancel the account… Cancel the account… Cancel the account… I love it!
I had a similar experience. It took me two phone calls ( a pretend disconnection so I would have to call back and wait again) and about 20 minutes before I could actually cancel the AOL. I told the rep it should not be this hard to cancel my AOL and all of sudden the phone was dead! I called back and was told I was not on the account so I couldn’t cancel. But I was on the account everytime they took the money out of my checking account each month. I finally was able to cancel after I had to resort to screaming and she charged me $31.00 for cancelling! Unbelievable!
Ok ok, so I work in the service industry, and I understand you have a spill you have to do, but MY GOODNESS, when the customer resorts to “cancel the account..cancel the account”…you need to get a new job because you OBVIOUSLY don’t have a clue!
My Cancel the Account PARODY on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbjUnz64ywc
the deeper picture is that MSNBC which is owned by General Electric and Microsoft are in direct competition and conflict with AOL/Time Warner….its a total shot against Time Warner….there are so many people who have crap times with reps…why this then? its a total PR sham….
well, obviously this is no individual case. In fact most of all AOL-account cancellations are going like this or similar. The guy on the service line was just instructed to behave like this.
So this poor AOL employee was just the pawn to sacrifice.
That’s nothing. When I tried to cancel, I was on the phone for a solid 20 minutes arguing with the guy. I kept saying “Cancel it” but he wouldn’t listen, telling me how it was a bad idea to cancel. Although I have to say that Mr. Ferrari was nice to not mention how difficult it is to find an AOL phone number to cancel accounts.
I’m SO glad AOL is losing business. I hope everyone that works for them loses their jobs. AOL is full of [edited].
Hello: I have never used AOL, but I have heard several horror stories about trying to cancel with them. Once, on a train, I noticed a headline in a newspaper being read by another passenger. It said “Want to cancel AOL, offer them your first born”
I worked at AOL in Tucson, AZ from 1998-2001. This company encourages this [edited]. They have INCENTIVES to keep people on the phone and have them keep the account. They will TURN on their employees at the drop of a dime, because their service is completely [edited] and nobody wants to use it. Their business depends on people who know the system and don’t want to hassle with calling in and having to wait 2 hours to get their accounts cancelled.
I have one word of advice for all who have problems with AOL. THE INTERNET IS FREE. You don’t need AOL or NETZERO or whatever. Just call your local phone company and get their high speed service. You’ll be more satisfied.
Tom
It’s definately not an isolated incident. The reason he recorded in the first place is because of what he’d heard. I remember when we went to cancel our aol account, I had to relieve my mother because she was getting really frustrated and not getting anywhere. After managing to cancel our account without too much trouble (though it did take time) I explained to her that you had to treat it like a dating relationship and give them the “it’s not you, it’s me” line, show that you’re perfectly happy with something else, there’s nothing they can do to fix things, and you’ll still consider them in the future. I was actually only able to pull that off because I could quote specs from our new high-speed and BSed what I didn’t know, so that I sounded really knowledgeable and made it clear that I didn’t need any “help”. I count myself lucky in this instance that I managed to pull this off and that I got a guy who sounded like he was still fairly young and knew better than to argue with or “teach” me, a tech-savvy male teenager. My mother was unlucky in that she a) got a lady with a much less charming personality, b)gets frustrated much more easily than I do, c) made the mistake of being a bit too casual and d) had the lady think she was stupid because she resorted to using “r as in ‘ralph’” to get her to spell our address correctly. The conversation was downhill from there and we both knew she had blown her chances and that we needed to hang up, call again, and hope that we got someone else.
Lucky to find you, keep on the good work guys! Best of luck.
Thanks so very much for taking your time to create this very useful and informative site. I have learned a lot from web hosting finds.
I had a much similar experience with AOL about 10 yrs ago.I switched to DSL when it first arrived in my area and tried to cancel the “free” trial I had signed up on with AOL.they FINALLY agreed to cut off my service but refused to refund the 2 months of charges they billed me for AFTER I canceled in the first place.I stated I was NOT gonna pay them a dime and was condescendingly told I had no choice in the matter and I WOULD pay or else.Needless to say, the phone company had a different interpretation of the situation and canceled those charges with no fuss as AOL billed through southwestern bell on the phone bill.AOL has ALWAYS been the equivalent of a loan shark in the ISP business.They prey on the weak,ignorant and gullible.