The Quest For The AOL Customer Service Number

Although the constant rounds of improvement in technology has afforded companies greater opportunities to satisfy customer demands, the quality of customer service seems to be one area that many companies appear to neglect improving.

Sadly, this is evident in most US companies and even in long-established and well-known ones like America Online or AOL. With AOL, many people find their customer service number not worth dialing at all.

The Kind of Customer Service to Expect from AOL In 2005, the company had agreed to pay the state of New York $1.5M and reformat its customer service procedures.

This was largely brought by the numerous complaints received from consumers regarding the quality of customer service provided by AOL and most especially regarding cancellation cases.

According to NY State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the customer service representatives of the company were prone to either ignoring requests for service cancellation or acting unreasonably difficult. This peculiar attitude was later on found out to have been caused by the incentive system created by AOL for their customer service department.

Spitzer believed that the agreement would ensure improvement on the quality of customer service provided by the company and prevent AOL from employing stealth retention methods. Another condition included in the agreement was the discontinuation of rewarding employees with bonuses for reaching a minimum quota of retained customers.

In the past, the company had promised a considerable amount of money if customer service representatives were able to retain half the number of callers requesting for service cancellation.

Of course, such strategies are not that surprising considering the difficulties the company is struggling with. Dial-up usage has continued to decline with the surge of broadband service providers and consequently, the fall of subscription prices as competition heightens.

Another interesting provision included in the agreement was the involvement of a third party for monitoring calls regarding service retention when the customer had previously contacted the company for service cancellation. AOL however states that not all its calls have to be monitored or recorded. A new verification system will simply be put in place to satisfy this provision.

The company had also agreed to pay other charges and penalties. For one, AOL had consented to reimburse qualified customers in New York for the cash equivalent of up to 4 months of AOL subscription or service. Subscribers, however, were given approximately 4 months or 120 days to submit their claim form for reimbursement.

During the time the agreement had been made public, the Attorney General’s office had by then received an estimate of 300 complaints regarding the company’s customer service policies. By taking the number of calls and amount of 4 months’ worth of subscription into account, AOL is estimated to shell out at least $29,000 for refunds.

Previous to the investigation held by the state of New York, Ohio’s Attorney General had also completed their review and virtually reached the same conclusion. In its previous case, AOL had agreed to pay $25,000 and offer limited refunds.

The Quest for the AOL Customer Service Number A lot of people continue to experience trouble contacting the AOL. If you find the live or email-based technical support offered by the company inadequate, there’s still a way - albeit one that’s hard to locate - to contact the company. Access numbers can be reached through 888-265-8005 while support issues may be discussed over 800-827-6364.