AOL Cancellation Charges & Reported Unauthorized Use of My AOL Acct.

About the Cancellation Fee

AOL charged $50 for cancellation charges against my

credit card on 1/09/06. In speaking with the AOL

Billing Department, they say I was on a trial offer and

would have been explained the terms both verbally

and in my email, that if I choose to cancel, I would

be charged either a $23 or $50 cancellation fee. But

I did not receive any such email, nor did the person

who spoke with me tell me of such terms or I would have

never agreed to these terms whatsoever. I have had service with

AOL off and on for about 12 years or so depending

upon if their service improved or declined during those

years.

About the unauthorized use of my AOL Account.

During this past year with AOL my account had been

compromised by unauthorized use. A person or

person(s) would somehow gain access to my AOL password.

This was reported to their Billing, Customer Service,

and their Fraud Department, not once, but several times

during this year. The results to me of this unauthorized

use was that I received a letter from AOL telling me that

I had SENT OUT OVER 400 pieces of EMAIL as SPAM

to 400 people. They said the letter was a WARNING TO

ME, not to do this again. In just the past few days I

received a notice from a credit card company that someone

attempted to use my credit card on the internet. This

card account was closed at the time the attempt was made.

I am not a geek, I do not have a job moonlighting sending

spam over the internet. I explained this to them. They

still began to limit the amount of email that I could open

using my own account.

Also during this year I began to experience unusual charges

made to various of my credit cards, some of which I was not

able to detect because I very ill and flat on my back for about

7 months time.

I fought this by calling the various cards, yet

eventually to no avail, as one

of my cards was used to the tune of nearly $20,000 all

within less than a 30 day period, and there were many OTHER

charges on other cards that have now resulted in my

eventual decision for bankruptcy.

In my last report to AOL of this strange activity on AOL and

my credit cards, I talked to an older AOL employee who was not

familiar with hackers and how they are knowledgeable

enough to gain access to AOL passwords and use

accounts. This AOL employee's question to me was:

"Who did you let into your house to use your computer?"

His extreme lack of knowledge made me very afraid. If

this is what they hire to work for AOL in any department,

I do not need to do business with them and should

NEVER have done business with them

The truth is folks, AOL has no SECURITY features that will

work to protect you from fraudulent use of your cards. They

have no options or suggestions for you when you are hit

by hackers. They are trained to keep giving you excuses

and small remedies so that you will keep signed on with them.

I was using their security edition upgrade at the time that

all my security breaches happened to me and as you

can tell by what I have told, their software did not

protect me in any way. Their employees, throughout my

reports of this abuse, were not knowledgeable enough to

know what to do and some were reluctant to document

my call because there was nothing that they could do,

some of them said. Other employees would put me through

small software drills to reset and peak out their AoL

software options. Time would drift along and I would think

that I was okay.

But periodically I would check email and find strangers

names on my AOL Buddy List, as though I knew these

people or had been talking with them. This alerted me

that my account was being used more and more. I

would delete these buddy names, and more would later

appear.

The only regret I have is that I did not leave AOL sooner.

I never dreamed that a security leak within AOL would be

responsible for me losing my good credit and my life.

Please take heed from my experience and do not use AOL

if you are thinking their security features and software will

protect you from hackers or that their employees will know

exactly what to do to protect you.

Use a purchased credit line card (like a credit gift card for

AOL) but NEVER USE YOUR CREDIT CARD. I would

have rather lost a purchased $80 credit gift card than lost

the many thousands of dollars that I did.

J. Keck

Email User

Do you think of yourself as a size?

I hope if dogs ever take over the world, and

they choose king, they don't just go by size,

because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with

some good ideas.

--Jack Handy

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