Ex-Time Warner Employee's Zombie AOL Account Finally Put To Rest
You may remember Jennifer, who we wrote about on Wednesday. She suddenly started receiving collection notices for an AOL account she hadn't paid for since 2000. Her situation has since been resolved, and serves as an important reminder about accounts and benefits when changing jobs.
As many readers guessed, the re-emergence of the account occurred because Jennifer no longer worked for Time Warner. Someone able to fix the situation contacted her through Consumerist, and yesterday she wrote:
Well, the nice man from AOL's "executive escalations" department cleared my account of all charges and said he'd do the same with Allied Collection Agency, so that's good. (This whole thing only wasted about 6 hours of my life). It was indeed because I left Time Warner. The dates didn't add up, which we couldn't solve for, but basically AOL doesn't inform anyone-company employee or not-that their account can change overnight from an unpaid to a paid account. Pretty reprehensible in my humble opinion. If a service is now free, it should be free, no matter what you signed up for nine years ago. I'm contacting Time Warner's benefits department to let them know they need to warn people!Thanks again to you and your readers for helping me get to the bottom of all this.
Now all that's left to do is make sure that the collection agency actually listens to AOL. If you work for Time Warner and have a free AOL account, make sure it's put to rest when you leave the company.
Also, no matter where you work, make sure that any subscriptions and benefits you get through your employment are squared away before changing jobs.
PREVIOUSLY:
Zombie AOL Account Crawls Out Of The Grave Nine Years Later
(Photo: Maulleigh)
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Instead of warning people that a free perk as an employee becomes a chargeable account when they leave, they should actually ask the ex-employee if they want to keep the account. Give them a form at the exit interview, or send it to them at home, that lets them opt-in to a paid account (with signature on usual customer terms). If they are leaving on good terms, let them have the account for free for 30 to 60 days (sans any employee privileged access). If they don't opt-in to the chargeable account, then close it at the end of those days. If they are leaving on bad terms, shut it off and don't even allow them to pay to keep it.
@Skaperen: So what do you do when the sides don't agree as in the employee thinks they are leaving on good terms or at least non-bad terms, but the company thinks differently?
When it was AOL, employee accounts were always closed upon leaving employment, and the names were taken out of the list of names that are ever available for use, even if they do eventually purge your account after awhile (mail, for instance, never EVER lasts more than 28 days without being read)
Maybe that's changed since AOL bought Time-warner, then was overthrown from within... wouldn't surprise me at all.
(ex AOL email group employee here, so yeah, I know the score)
I have never worked for Time Warner, but got collection notices suddenly claiming I owed $22.00 for an AOL account YEARS ago. Many large firms use "fake/internal" collection agency letters to shake people up.
I had no such account and it seemed there were not charges for months prior or since this one odd bill in 2007... never heard from them again, threw it out and nothing is on my credit report as I suspected.
I take it these ramdom threats bring in some extra needed cash. SAD!
@pdxguy: Then the employee has bigger things to worry about when they have to fight the company for unemployment.
GET IT IN WRITING
Chiming in late here because I was on vacation -- but I wanted to warn Jennifer because something similar happened to me. I cleared something from collections from a case of identify theft. Five years later, I got a collections notice from another collections agency for the same debt. Sometimes collections agencies sell their accounts to other agencies and they either erroneously or deliberately sell closed accounts. If I had not kept copies of everything, it would have been very difficult to prove.
1. GET IT IN WRITING that the debt is cleared up. Do not just take the AOL rep's word for it.
2. Double check your credit reports in 30 days. If the debt is still not off the credit report then you have something in writing to PROVE that the debt should be removed when you dispute it.
3. Please make a file and KEEP all your records of this issue, including what you got in writing to prove that the debt is not valid for at least 5-7 years.
Re: I'm contacting Time Warner's benefits department to let them know they need to warn people!
I think you just did. :)