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AOL E-Mail

AOL E-Mail review: Fraudulent use of AOL email account 30

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7:41 am EST
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This review was chosen algorithmically as the most valued customer feedback.

After paying AOL for 12 years I come home from a trip to find that someone had fraudulently used my email account to send spam. I called AOL to notify them of this, deleted the over 300 returned unknown address messages and a few days later find that AOL has suspended our account with no recourse. Hours of phone calls to tell them that we did nothing wrong have served no purpose. We are both in the medical community and access to our account is imperative, yet we have been punished with no prior notice. I even sent the AOL "Community Action Team" a letter as they asked and was told this morning by a technician that "There is no one at AOL that can reactivate your account" ... wow. Wonderful customer service. Thanks AOL for treating us like criminals.

30 comments
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Monica Wright
Sep 08, 2007 12:00 am EDT

I want my aol account deleted! I cant even do it from the computer! What kind of company is this. Who ever made up the idea to make customers unhappy because they cant delete their account from the computer was a big mistake! They all should be fired.

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M S
Nov 14, 2008 3:26 pm EST

I had the same thing happen to me this week. I am a police detective and my wife has been on her job over 25 years...we had our account suspended on 11-11-08...I sent my letter to CAT as well and waiting for a response...I don't like the fact that AOL will not tell you why your account is suspended...my wife and oldest dauhgter live by AOL.. i had yahoo for the last year. I can care less if they reconnect it.

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daniel
Nov 19, 2008 1:53 am EST

same thing happened to me, account suspended with no explanation, no recourse, nothing. i have had it for 10 years, i do not bother anyone on the 'net - just mind my ownbusiness. happened 24 hours ago, and i cannot find anyone to bring this issue to who can resolve it. maddening!

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Dave
Nov 26, 2008 7:50 am EST

I have a similar experience. After being a member of AOL for 15 years.
Some one used one of my accounts to send spam. AOL Notified me that was a violation of there terms of agreement. I replyed to both E-mail from AOL to inform them I did not send the spam and I would like them to find out who was using my account and stop them but never received a response.

AOL shut off all of my accounts and I am unable to access my E-mails. This has had a devastating effect for my business and personal life as I depend on my ISP for service to communicate.

To add insult to injury when calling AOL they told me I could not talk to anyone about this but needed to send a "Paper Letter" to the CAT Team. I sent a letter two weeks ago and have not heard from anyone.

To recap.

AOL: is unable to protect my account and differentiate from someone hacking my account and what I have sent. They shut down my account and tell me I can Not talk with ANYONE to resolve this issue.

It's no wonder this company is loosing money. In this instance they have been completely incompetent!

On a scale to 1-10 AOL gets a Zero as an ISP provider.

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Charles Goodrich
Dec 04, 2008 7:44 pm EST

We've been with AOL for almost 8 years and have had no real problems. Four days ago we were blocked from our AOL account. I called AOL customer service three times, even talking to a supervisor. We have no idea as to why and AOL says they can't get into our account to find out why and told me to send a letter to the Community Action Team in VA. Why a damn letter, why not a phone number to call to get information. So we have to wait for several weeks to find anything out. In this, the Electronic Age, we have to depend on and wait for the "pony express". Needless to say, we are not happy.

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Allen
Hoboken, US
Feb 18, 2009 4:21 pm EST
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

The same thing just happened to me. Has anyone had any successful resolution to the problem? I have been an AOL member for more than 13 years and find it incredible that they have such an indifferent attitudde toward their long-term customers.

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Tom
US
Mar 17, 2009 7:12 pm EDT
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

I the latest victim of cancellation of 7 accounts without notice. All I knew was that I could not log on to our family's accounts and wasted several hours try to fix the problem. Then I call and am told our accounts were cancelled and to write the letter. This is devestating to someone who uses AOL for business matters.

Surely there must be a fax or phone number for the Community Action Team.

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Barnack Leica
Broomall, US
Apr 04, 2009 6:18 pm EDT
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

I have been a member of aol too for years and was summarily terminated for threats made to a chat room bot who came and said "i love to talk about sex" and i replied "well if you like fisting open wide and ill shove mine down your throat"

What irritates me is that aol does nothing to prevent them from bothering members and when we report them nothing happens

I have spent so far hours on the phone with non native english speaking lackeys in god knows where and i can not even get a number out of them for the main corporate offices of aol in dulles nor the name of who to write to in their Community action team.

I told them that i only write to people so i can make sure it gets to the right person and not the cleaning lady. When i further pushed for names i asked who was the head of that department and they replied they didnt know. I then told them to look in their aol company telephone directory and give me the name of the head of the department.

They refused. I hate to give up aol but, with shoddy service failure to respond to repeated requests for the proper people to deal with directly i am being stonewalled. Today thanks to their cavalier enforcement of their farce known as TOS they have cost me a several thousand dollar job. I am not a happy camper

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Peace
US
Apr 28, 2009 5:52 pm EDT

I too have been with AOL for 12 years and years ago they enforced their no more than 100 email or its spam policy - unless you get permission to send newsletters, which I had. Until last week that is. I have 1500 email addresses that belong to me that I can not get access to and this has been very hurtful to my business. Sure, I should have backed them onto my hard drive but...I am calling an attorney because I paid my bill and they should be able to block me from sending emails if they feel I have violated some policy, but I don't think they have a right to steal my email addresses from me. Not being able to talk to someone is ridiculous and I'm afraid this is carrying the big brother control thing way to far. I wouldn't use AOL again if they gave it to me for FREE (yes, I was paying) I don't know if the email addresses get stored on my hard drive somehow, but if they do-I would love someone sharing the info as to how to get them out.

Peace All - and to a better world

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teri
van nuys, US
May 12, 2009 3:33 pm EDT
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

I am having the same problem. After 11 years I was kicked off and no one will tell me why. When you call their number they answer it community action team but when you ask any questions they say oh we are only the billing dept and there is no phone number for CAT. They give you an address to write and you never get a response. I have 11 years worth of business contacts on there and no way to get them!

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JCA
Windermere, US
May 18, 2009 11:02 am EDT

I'm glad to see all these postes, I was wondering if I was the only one, I too, am a victim of this AOL ridiculous issue, They should be shut down. In this day and age, to only be able to contact someone for assistance via a letter is insane. Not only the fact the you have to send them a letter (which I did) but the fact that no one gets back to you with a reason or explanation is simply unacceptable, I hope someone takes some legal action and shuts them down for good. All I wanted was to just go back one time to get my contacts out. But looks like that's not going to happen.

aol clearly does not know what good customer service is.
Sincerly,
Pissed off JC
I now have a gmail account and am loving it.
feel free to email me with any comments
jcandrade2000@gmail.com
Thank you!

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Cassie
East Bend, US
May 23, 2009 12:43 pm EDT

I am trying to report this problem before they shut me down. I have been getting spam from myself! Can someone give me the address or the number to call to get the address to write.

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Steve
Brooklyn, US
May 24, 2009 5:37 pm EDT

I had the same thing happen to me last week. At first I didnt know what was going on when I was checking my emails and saw hundreds of MESSAGE UNDELIVERABLE messages coming to my screen name. Finally it stopped and I thought things would be ok after that but of course it wasnt going to be. This happened late at night and when I tried to sign on to AOL the next morning I was unable to access my account. I finally decided to call AOL when everything else wasnt a possibility. It was an AOL issue. I got the billing dept who of course gave me the routine about the Community Action Team not taking any phone calls and you have to write them a letter. I cannot believe this policy and have never heard of such a thing with a major company, not offering customer service by phone. Several times I called back requesting supervisors but I ended up hearing the same story. I sent my letter out to AOL yesterday and hopefully it will not be another one that is ignored and my account is never restored. I did nothing wrong. Why cant they investigate the situations and reinstate peoples account who innocently had their accounts broken into and the SPAM mail sent out. It is a disgrace that AOL has this policy. For the moment I have an alternate email account. I am not happy about it but if AOL never restores my account I will have to live with it. Hopefully the people at AOL can sleep at night with this kind of customer service.

Let me know how your situation turned out.

Thanks.

Steve

Jerry - www.Multi-ProductsPlus.com
Jerry - www.Multi-ProductsPlus.com
Richmond, US
May 26, 2009 7:02 pm EDT

Same thing just happened to me. I am sending them a letter as requested but I dont anticipate a response. I just went ahead and created another account. This to my suprise was no problem to do. Just make a new sc reen name and put the proper info in and your back on. I did nothing wrong to start with and I really don't understand what their deal is.

Oh and this is to CASSIE from her comment above. Make sure you don't have youreself on your buddy list. I had this happen to me and someone told me to remove myself from my buddy list and it stopped the spam.

CAT address below

AOL LLC Community Action Team
22270 Pacific Boulivard
Dulles, VA. 20166

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parkiel13
Dallas, US
Jun 29, 2009 10:38 pm EDT

[protected]
michael murray VP FOR AOL

mmurray1@aol.com

This is what I found with a computer smart boyfriend...call, email, do what you need to do. I had my acct cancelled with NO warning or explanation, I sent in my freaking letter by MAIL (even thought this is an INTERNET company) and my business and animal rescue suffered because I lost all emails for over a WEEK

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Eddie2467
Cleveland, US
Jun 30, 2009 3:11 pm EDT

I also had my AOL account terminated suddenly at the beginning of June. I went to log on and and couldn't . I called AOL customer service and asked about the problem, and, they told me that AOL had terminated my account due to TOS violations, but, the rep. told me that she had no specific information on what those alleged violations were and gave me an address for the Community Action Team (CAT) and told me that I had to inquire by writing a letter and send to them by "snail mail". I immediately wrote them and it has been exactly 4 weeks and absolutely no response. I know that I couldn't possibly have done anything wrong. I very rarely used AOL and when I did, it was just to chat with friends that I 've known for a long time and used the email, but never sent anything to anyone that I didn't know. I've since given up on AOL and would not recommend it to anyone.

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susgat
San Francisco, US
Jun 30, 2009 4:05 pm EDT

is there anybody out there, who have had there AOL account re instated after suspension.? I have been waiting 3 weeks after I sent a letter certified.
Would just like to know if there is any hope at all

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Barnack Leica
Broomall, US
Jun 30, 2009 4:40 pm EDT
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

Acutally, I had my account rest0red for an alleged TOS violation after being waltzed around like a cheap date by aol, their agents, supervisors and the rest of the ones in other nations who only parroted back from thier canned script of non responses.

I refused to write to a department of any company unless i know to whom in that department i am addressing my letter to. Once i demanded a name and was told to adress it to "mr john Smith" and i retorted why not mr Ben Mussolini? They said i could adress it to him as well. Needless to say i snapped at the ###

I went around the back door after calls to aol corporate office in va and being passed back to the standard phone rooms i had called in the first place.

However..i was rather annoyed at not being able to retrieve what i consider my intellectual property and fired off an email with my name, aol acct, and contact info to ddress i found quoted below.

Much to my surrpise one of them actually DID contact me within a couple days and agreed to restore my account

this is what i pulled up as an alternate way thur the hoops of aol:

"If you have a legal matter concerning AOL, or a problem with tis site, please contact the Legal Department at AOLLegal@corp.aol.com. "

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Barnack Leica
Broomall, US
Jun 30, 2009 4:41 pm EDT
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

Hmm has anyone sent a certified return reciept requested letter? Anyone have a name of the yutz who signs the usps receipt?

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heathero617
Lothian, US
Jul 28, 2009 1:47 pm EDT
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

For Barnack Leica,
I sent my letter via return reciept and its been months. No corrispondance. My account is still not active and i now have someone harassing me to no end on the message boards and yet hitting notify aol and sending the posts to tosgeneral are doing no good Anyone have any other suggestions? I just used that email above to the VP of AOL so we'll see if i get any response.

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heathero617
Lothian, US
Jul 28, 2009 2:55 pm EDT
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

Emailed this mmurray several times.. nothin yet. I thought harassment and stalking online were TOS violations and illegal and that AOL prides its self on protecting its members? What a crock

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extremeracingny
Ozone Park, US
Aug 31, 2009 9:51 pm EDT

I emailed mmurray and the legal department and I got a response the same day, I was an aol member for 11 years and expressed my grief and situation at hand. I called the number and it went to his secretary, but the number does work, trying to get through to him would be more difficult. If you express yourself with professionalism I believe they will bring your account back, and I also have to threaten with possible legal action from my attorney. Don't call the regular numbers and talk to the offshore customer service reps, it will get you nowhere, this blog really helped me out, thank you barnack leica and parkeil13, after emailing those two contacts my account was reinstated the same day. Just make sure your professional about your requests and reasonable, as long as you get in touch with corporate here in the states, they will be able to help you out, just need to cut all the red tape. Thanks

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artinvideo
jax, US
Jan 25, 2010 7:34 am EST
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

Just curious...have more conservative leaning people been cut off than down the middle or liberal thinking people. Hate to think conspiracy...but would like to know if political opinions triggered TOS to cut off accounts. I was a very loyal AOL guy for a long time at a high monthly price. Cannot get response after numerous tries.

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AOL user but not for long
US
Mar 31, 2010 4:19 pm EDT

I had the same thing happen to me today. My account was closed due to "solicitation". I had to hunt down an explanation, no one warned me or emailed me, which is hard to believe after being a member for 15 years! I have never solicited anything in my life! After looking online and after finally getting a human to speak with at the help desk I was so frustrated that I was told I had to write a letter! I wrote a letter, that I was going to mail, but came across this site. I called a phone number from one of the above posts and the lady gave me this number [protected]. The guy there told me there was nothing he could do that I had to write a letter. I asked for a supervisor and after he put me on hold, he came back and said the superviser told him he could reinstate my account! I am so relieved to have my account back, however, I am going to wean myself off of AOL, since I am so annoyed that they can just yank my account without telling me!

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pete toms
Salt Lake City, US
Oct 09, 2010 9:51 pm EDT

I have AOL E-Mail service and when I want to E-Mail someone and attach something with the E-Mail I go thru the search service that is attached to the E-Mail service, this is with google. Over the last 6 months AOL service says there is a error and can't find page. After I sent them feedback about this problem it is fixed in a short period of time. And then it happens again later on. Again another feedback is sent to AOL and again it gets fixed. But this problem just keeps happening. I don't think they will ever fix the problem. I would like to know how many other people have this same problem. Let me know. Thanks

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Jay Andre
Baldwin Hills, US
May 29, 2011 1:46 am EDT

Same thing here. Waiting for response to the "letter" (explaining what I don't know).

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quantmlp71
Philadelphia, US
Jul 31, 2012 8:54 am EDT

My AOL account was suspended without my consent. I called AOL and they told me I was ineligble to have my account re-instated. I was with AOL for 12 years. This is how they treat their loyal customers, by backstabbing them!? They said I could open a new AOL account. No way!

On the bright side, I also have an e-mail account with Verizon. I just hope Verizon does not do the same kind of unethical backstabbing AOL did to me!

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Barnack Leica
Broomall, US
Jul 31, 2012 9:17 am EDT
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

CAT is about as effective as viagra is on a eunuch. I have had problems with them and when they parrot back from their script to send a letter to CAT to really tick them off i ask for the name of the proper person to adress it to. They wont give me a name and claim they dont have one. I told them to look in thier aol corporate phone directory and give me the name of that department head. They claim their isnt one of which i retort, somebody has to be in charge who is it? It ticks me off that they refuse to give the name of a person as it makes you think our letters just go into some shredder

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Technomann
Berlin, US
Aug 06, 2012 5:45 pm EDT
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

AOL not only will disable your account, and tell you that no one can reactivate it. They also say for a fee of anywhere from 130 - 400 dollars they can fix it.
Run away from AOL as fast as you can!

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Marjorie Roscoe-Mcgill
US
Jan 22, 2016 3:29 pm EST

I am sick and tired of A, o.l. Every four to five weeks I am not able to get into my e, mail account.What the hell do you people want from me.? I follow all the directions to bring it back and you shut me down every time. Who is running that useless company. I am going to switch over to another company..When once I do I will never come back to A.O l. Marjorie McGill