AOL – Secret Billing (Police)?
Posted on 06 July 2009, at 3:30 pm, by Christopher Spera
Straight from the Cold War files comes a strange story I saw today from Boing-Boing. It seems that WSJ’s Jason Zweig is being charged $103.60 for use of a FREE AOL e-mail account he was given (again, free of charge) for being a Time-Warner employee.
It seems that AOL is “secretly” charging some users for use of their service. These users often aren’t aware of the charges, the billing activity, and aren’t informed until the account is forwarded to a collection agency. When Jason asked the agency contacting him regarding the delinquent account, dating back to 2008, for a copy of the bill so he could dispute the charges, he was politely told by the collection agency that they couldn’t do that.
Another example (jokingly called, You’ve got [Black]Mail) gives insight on how AOL quickly changes the status of an employee-based benefit account (i.e. free) to paid without notifying the employee. So NOT cool.
I know AOL is hard up for cash, but c’MON!
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July 6th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
They have been doing that for years … I tried one of their ‘try us for free again’ deals a few years ago and canceled at the end of 30 days, and didn’t notice for a bit that they *hadn’t canceled at all, and the way the charge showed up on my bank account was vague enough that it didn’t register for quite some time … and it took quite a while and load of hassle to get it all refunded.
July 6th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Under the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA) a collection agency is required to send a collections notice allowing you 30 days to dispute the validity of the debt and for you to request, in writing, proof that you owe this debt, usually in the form of billing statements.
Failure to provide proof of the validity of the debt when requested in the proper time frame, and in written form (send certified mail, with a return receipt requested) negates the ability to collect on the debt and a complaint may be filed with the FTC.
Such charges can then be contested on a credit report, and most often will be removed with accompanying documentation showing that the debt has not been proved to be valid.