Getting free aol while you're already a subscriber.

[bigshotceo]

I know that many of us do not use AOL, but those who do, here's how to get a couple of months free when you're already a subscriber.

Call AOL and ask to cancel your account. The trick is NOT to sound decisive. Rather, tell them you want to quit, but sound unsure of yourself. You see, the people who handle these calls get bonuses dependent on how many people they can convince not to cancel their account. They're allowed to offer to give you a free month of two if they think it'll keep you as a subscriber. If they sense any doubt in your voice, it's likely they'll offer you the free month(s).

Of course, you can try this as often as you like. Just hope they don't catch on...

[sitlet]

my mom did that when we had msn dial-up 2 years ago. its came with our new computer for 6 months free i think. so my mom calls them to cancel, and we actually did want to cancel, but they gave us 6 more months free anyway. after that was up, we called to cancel again, and they gave us 6 more months free.

[Roundabout]

I haven't used AOL since I bought my first PC 7 or 8 years ago, but when I first got it, I used one of those 1 month free offers to get online. After a month, I had already discovered that AOL wasn't for me and called to cancel. They automatically gave me another month. So I thought, what the hell, it's free, why not? Then another month came, same story. This went on for 5 months, they just kept offering me free months until I guess they reached the limit of what they wanted to offer. I didn't care, because by that time NetZero had arrived on the scene, and there were many other free services popping up every day. I used FreeI, Juno, NetZero, AMEX, and every free service out there for a long time. It wasn't until they all disappeared that I finally had to pay for internet access. But that didn't happen until Jan. of 2002, when the last surviving free service (from American Express) was finally cut off.

In the past year, I found the free service is still available here in SoCal, though they don't have an SMTP server, you can surf the web free all you want, unlimited free access. I may go back to that soon, this broadband connection is costing me too much and I can't afford to keep it much longer. I'll probably sign up again when the cable co. offers a good deal like I got for the past year (15 months for $24.95/mo.). Until then, I have to disconnect and survive on 56K for a while.

Unfortunately, the phone lines where I am are so old (and they're using SLK96 line splitters, ensuring a bad dial-up connection), I can't connect faster than 28.8K even with a 56K connection. So it's really gonna suck. I don't think the phone co. has any incentive to upgrade the lines, they'd rather sell their DSL service for more.

[redwudz]

AOL is even harder to get rid of. I finally got them to quit calling me to sign up again by saying I was moving to Colorado and there were no telephones there. It worked, they never called again.