I HATE AOL

I guess I should thank my lucky stars.
I never knew so many people had problems with AOL.

Funny I see one of the founders of AOL all the time at Caps hockey games. He owns the Caps. Ted Leonsis. He still works there.
The little AOL figure doll is always running around the games, next time I see him I will trip him for you guys :)

AOL tried this crapola on us too. Silly me actually allowed that horrible company to do direct monthly withdrawal from our personal bank account. I wasn't happy with all the junk that came with our AOL account and problems with their browser so I cancelled. They specifically stated "no balance due" and I got a cancellation number (thank goodness). Fast forward to the next month. I pay some bills by check and get a call from the electric company that my check to them has bounced! I about freaked, checked with my bank and dear old AOL had taken $600.00 from our account without permission and for something I never ordered nor agreed to a year long contract for!!!

Lucky for me that I had that cancellation number plus my bank manager had just the day before been to a conference where AOL and their bad business practises had been a topic of discussion. He advised me to contact AOL, tell them that I had a cancellation number and they had exactly 36 hours to get that money back to my account or we were sitting down with our bank manager to file fraud charges against them.

I got the money back, my bank manager contacted the electric company to confirm that it was not my fault my account was suddenly without sufficient funds for their check and kindly reversed all NSF charges. I refuse to do business with AOL again.

I also learned a valuable lesson and no longer allow ANY company access to either our personal bank account or bank credit cards. We have a prepaid Mastercard https://www.greendotonline.com/Contents/Products.aspx that we use exclusively for online purchasing, utility bills or suchlike. It never carries more than the exact balance we need and the service charges are well worth our piece of mind.