nothing gets me riled up more than aol. i hate them and everything about them. i hate their fawning, passive aggressive method for trying to rope unsuspecting people into emptying their pockets. if aol truly had a product to sell, rather than what they're currently peddling which is fear of the big bad internet and an instant remedy for it (snake oil), if they truly had something people wanted and needed, they wouldn't have to resort to sneaky, manipulative, and downright immoral ways to get people's money.

my aol story is probably the same as everyone's aol story: i left college, suddenly had no internet access, picked up one of those "8 million hours free!" cd's that promised you could log on without even giving a credit card number, and got internet access long enough to download NetZero. then the problems began. first of all, while i didn't give them my credit card number, they remembered my screenname from when i was living at home with my parents, and recalled their credit card number (which, in all likelihood, isn't in use anymore). so when i tried to cancel the account, they used the fact that i couldn't recite my parents' credit card number to deny my request to flee from aol. "but," they said, "we're giving you one extra month of free access to give you time to get it!!!!!!" nevermind that i had already uninstalled aol in my eagerness to remove that disk space blackhole from my life.

i won't go through all the many, many subsequent times i tried to cancel the account, because you all know the story. i won't recount the begging - nay, groveling - that various operators were forced to resort to to keep my business, and all the promises of wonderful, wonderful services and content that i won't find anywhere else in the world, but that would all be at my fingertips if i just said "yes" at that moment to keeping aol. i won't subject you to the contents of a letter - addressed to my mother, but sent to my current address - that basically got down on its knees and licked my toes to try to get me back.

but today i was checking my credit card balance, and lo and behold, there's a charge on there for $14.95 from none other than aol. somewhere in the process of trying to remove myself from their clutches i gave them my real, working credit card information. but i have long since uninstalled aol for the 2nd time so there's no way i could have incurred any charges, unless i subconsciously thought about some of aol's special content. so i gave them a call. the lady i talked to didn't explain why it had been put there, but quickly credited it back to me.

that's almost more infuriating to me than if they're just made a mistake and charged me for something i hadn't used. are they so desperate for money that they'll make up an excuse to charge someone $14.95 and just hope it goes unnoticed? or is it some kind of matter of principle, that they must get some money from anyone who uses their "free" trial period? in either case, in my book when you take money from someone for no reason and hope they don't notice, that's stealing.

in any case the $14.95 finally got cleared up and as i was about to get off the phone, the operator said, "one last thing - aol has given you $50 to spend on the aol marketplace! isn't that wonderful?"

i said, "no thank you, i am never going to use aol again."

or at least, i won't intentionally. my feeling is that while i may have won the battle, this isn't the last i'll see of aol.