Man tortured by AO-hell customer service when he tries to cancel

This is inexcusable, but not surprising at all. A couple of weeks ago, Vincent Ferrari tried to stop the service, and the AOL rep ("John") did everything in his power to keep him from terminating his account.

It was so bad that Ferrari recorded the conversation. The CSR actually asked to speak with his dad -- Ferrari is 30 -- to get him to change his mind.

Matt Lauer interviewed Ferrari.



A snippet of the transcript of the phone call:

AOL: Hi, this is John at AOL. How may I help you today?

Ferrari: I want to cancel my account.

AOL: OK. I mean, is there a problem with the software itself?

Ferrari: No. I don't use it. I don't need it. I don't want it.

John disputes Ferrari's claim that he never uses the account.

AOL: Last year, last month it was 545 hours of usage.

Ferrari: I don't know how to make it any clearer. So I'm just gonna say it one last time. Cancel the account.

AOL: Well, explain to me what is wrong.

Ferrari: I'm not explaining anything to you. Cancel the account.

It goes on like this for 5 minutes.

Ferrari: Cancel my account. Cancel the account. Cancel the account.

Hell, when I called to cancel my mom's account after she passed away, the rep still kept me on the phone 20 minutes to do that. It's BS "customer retention" -- though how one attempts to retain a dead customer is beyond me.