"Cancel AOL to get 3 Months Free"

05/27/2002
"Cancel AOL to get 3 Months Free"

Here's a trick you AOL users may want to try to get three months of free service.

I have an AOL account that I use for when I'm out of town. Their network of dial-up service is ubiquitous; I could probably travel to Siberia and still get 56k access. However, I don't plan on travelling anywhere in the near future so it's really not worth it to pay $23.95 per month just to have a dial-up account handy. So I decided to cancel my account last week.

Canceling is pretty easy. AOL lets its members cancel by phone, fax or mail. Phone: 1-888-265-8008. For additional information, go to Keyword: Cancel. Once you call, their representatives launch into a fast-paced script telling you why AOL is the best thing there ever was and why they really, really like you and want you to stick around. That's when they told me that they're going to give me three months of service free.

All I have to do once the three months are up is to call up and confirm my cancellation, but until then I get a free AOL account! Sweet.

Replies: 62 comments

Yanno, I don't know about AOL for Americans, but the crappy Brit version was even better. Brother-in-law was with them for about a year, and only paid for one month. They just wouldn't let him go!

Posted by anon
Monday, June 3, 2002 at 10:02 AM EST

I wish this had happened when my boyfriend had installed a "1000 hours of Aol free" disk. the account was to be cancelled within 30 days or before 1000 hours expired. a week and about 6 hours of internet use, and the aol representatives sent us a bill for the services, which were not even satisfactory.

Posted by Blair Anne
Tuesday, June 4, 2002 at 10:54 AM EST

darryl did the same thing -

Posted by mike
Saturday, June 15, 2002 at 10:44 AM EST

If I will cancel my AOL acount, and tell me how can i get more free internet access?

Posted by Andrew
Saturday, July 27, 2002 at 04:57 PM EST

Thanks for the phone number... I waste 10 minutes on the AOL site just trying to find out how to cancle the account.

When I told them that I now use broadband and yahoo for email and that I don't use their services they kept trying to tell me that I should use both...no wonder why their stock is sinking..they have idiots working there.

Posted by dave
Monday, July 29, 2002 at 10:44 AM EST

I WOULD LIKE TO CANCEL MY AOL SERVICE.

Posted by lisa lewis
Monday, July 29, 2002 at 02:36 PM EST

I want to cancel my aol account and try for the 3 months free service for 1000 minutes. screen name is cdang2

Posted by Canh Dang
Tuesday, July 30, 2002 at 02:27 PM EST

Thanks for the number .. I was looking for it everywhere too!! I did not think to use the keyword "Cancel" - duh!!!!!

Posted by KB
Wednesday, July 31, 2002 at 07:13 PM EST

no free service offer for me when i cancelled just now. oh well... it did take 16 minutes (and 23 commercials) to finally talk to a rep.

Posted by rw
Wednesday, July 31, 2002 at 11:56 PM EST

Please tell me how I can cancel this account. I have no further need for the AOL service...

Posted by PL Fries
Friday, August 2, 2002 at 08:49 PM EST

tell me how to cancel the account

Posted by sk
Monday, August 5, 2002 at 09:49 AM EST

Cancelled my aol account a week back after the extra three months of crappy service which I hardly used!

Switched to a combination of free Juno and access-4-free.

The $9.95 Juno service at http://www.juno.com comes without ads. Also try access-4-free at http://www.access-4-free.com/ They charge some 4 bucks for set-up and offer upto 10 hours/month of excellent service free. After that they charge $1/hour.

My strategy of using about 9 hours of their service and the rest on free juno works pretty well and at no cost!

Posted by Ian
Monday, August 5, 2002 at 12:32 PM EST