This sounds like a scam by the "collections agency" to get your credit card info. There's a similar story here: [www.millersmiles.co.uk]

Did she recently stop working for Time Warner? She never explicitly said she canceled (which I wouldn't either with a free account), so if she stopped working for TWC or they dropped this benefit, that could explain the charges. It does not explain the phantom credit card, however.

Do I have an AOL story... They can't do this to me because I cancelled the credit card that automatically paid them. When I contacted them to change the payment method to a newer (better less criminally high in interest rate) card they asked for my address - when I gave it I was told it was the wrong address - I'd moved. This was the only method they had at the time to ID me - an old address. I moved a lot in those early to middle days of my career. The only way... i told them to cancel my account if there was no way to update the address and payment method. I've never looked back. Businesses get what they deserve.

Get some WaReZ and punt them offline.

But in all seriousness: See if they can provide you with the last four digits of the CC#. I work in a customer service call center and it's not all that uncommon to see "VISA" or "MC" thrown in where it should say "AMEX". Sometimes it IS user error. Maybe then you can find something that matches up?

Keyword: Lame

Call your state attourney general regarding both instances and also go here: [www.ic3.gov]
It's the internet crimes division. After all, you had an account which was used to possibly commit theft as well as identity fraud so you can file a report there too.

Once you have all of those reports in the que, call up AOHell and let them know that they'll be recieving a subpoena regarding any and all account information. So this can be resolved. In a friendly manner, yeah, that's it.

EECB, perhaps?

Could this have anything to do with AOL breaking off ties with TWC?
Maybe tell them you have a new Visa with the same number but this one expires in 11/15?

Why would you update an account that you stopped using years ago? Especially when the notice said they are having problems BILLING you? I would be afraid that they would try to fraudulently bill me, even if after updating it said the account was still a free account.

I would put a fraud alert on your credit report in case this is a case of identity theft, find out the last 4 digits of the billing card as another commenter said, and contact the Attorney General. Provide them any and all information you can to prove this account was supposed to remain a free use account.

Who knows, you should contact Time Warner and ask them if their free AOL use changed or if it's still free. Maybe it's not anymore...

@verucalise-T minus 22 days!: If you're asking why the OP would call in response to the "update your account notice," it's pretty clear: her credit is flawless. If she had ignored it, they likely would have sent it to a collections agency.

Oh, how i hate AOL. they are one of the true evils incarnate. i have dealt with few worse companies than AOL. took me 20 minutes to convince them to cancel my account back in 2000. they offered me 2 more free months, this & that, that & this, blah blah blah till i finally just YELLED at them to cancel my account of id file a complaint with the BBB. then months later i found out they sold my info to other companies, who started randomly debiting my visa for "services" i never recieved, asked for, or was even told about. basically just took my money. i had to close my bank account because of these SOBs. i shouldve sued their asses.

I had an AOL account in the early/mid 90s. I remember the first time we got connected at 800 baud. I would gladly pay some token amount for that account again, if only for access to the ancient emails and any that have been sent to it since! Come to think of it, I can't remember a single spam mail on that account ever. Wow I'm old.

AOL still exists?

@lockdog: Unless something changed, your old password should still work to access free services, such as email and IM. If you canceled before they started offering free email though, I can't say for sure if you can get to it.

@lockdog: Cheer up, your not that old. Did make me feel younger though, since I had Aol with a 14.4kbs modem.

The strangest part of this article to me is that she says she has never had a Visa. Who has never had a Visa?? If not a credit card, just about every debit/check card is a Visa, seems hard to avoid to me.

Get a copy of your credit report. Find the credit bureau it is reported on. Write and dispute the charge, explaining what you just told us. Then check back in a few months. Make sure the collection is closed or off and hasn't "moved" to another bureau or shown back up on the same one again.

@Coles_Law: Going out on a limb here but maybe TW was paying its AOL arm for this benefit via a Visa card? I've heard of stupider things companies have done so I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case. If AOL was a money-losing division, which it was, and TW was a money-maker then paying the AOL division would make tax sense for the company. Depends on how they structured the company when they merged.

@hypochondriac: I can remember "upgrading" to a 14.4 modem. haha!

...on my Packard Bell. It had a 200 mb (compressed and doubled to achieve that) hard drive and a 33mhz processor with "Turbo" button running Win 3.1 and a 5 inch floppy (literally floppy) drive. Thing was a $1200 boat anchor brand new. But hey, it had MS Paint which got me on the path to where I am today.

@BZMedia: My thought too. I guess you and I are living under a rock.

@BZMedia: You beat me to it with the blurb about upgrading the modem. Back in the '90s the big news was when you could put in the faster modem. Now those were worthy upgrades! :-)

@katstermonster:

i would have contacted tw/aol and said, "what's there to update? this account is closed! free account? awesome, except no, i don't want it. please close it and do not contact me. EVER. not for a free car, not for a free burial plot. what's your customer service id#? is there a case number for this? gimme that too. lemme talk to your supervisor after this." just make a big stink about how much i don't want it.

it sounds like someone's records got mixed up with yours, like some fields were entered in the wrong place. that would be a good time to bring that up.

@HiPwr: Ever heard of Time-Warner? Now known as AOL-Time-Warner?

Um, yeah, they *Bought* Time-Warner.

'Twas a dark day indeed. How soon we forget.

@cc82: That's like saying, "I dunno, I just never went swimming! What?"

Off-Topic, sort of, but does anybody have a big collection of all the AOL disks (Then later CD-ROMs) that used to come in the mail? There were so many different proliferations of that. I hate AOL but I am curious to go back in time to see every free AOL disk that has ever been produced. Time 4 teh Googles!

I had a zombie account show up in my checking account and I NEVER HAD AN AOL ACCOUNT to being with. Start with the credit report. File a fraud claim with AOL (that's the only option they gave me)....

@rawsteak: Did you read the article? Regardless of what the OP told them, they continued to insist that she owes them for 4 months of service. They have her name attached to the account, regardless of whether she closes the phantom account now, they can and WILL send it to collections, and she will get screwed over unless she can straighten out the confusion.

@cc82: Nope. My credit card and debit card are both MC. My bank only offers Master Card...granted, it's a smallish regional bank, but I know a LOT of people in the same situation....never touched a Visa.

@katstermonster: And this time I need to read the article...it has ALREADY been sent to collections. But to that end, this isn't about refusing current service, this is being billed for previous service. Refusing service in the future won't help anything.

@Fist-oâ„¢: I thought it was just kinda like "Time/Life". Life doesn't anymore.

I was one of the original beta testers of AOL when it was distributed on a 720K floppy. I was recovering from back surgery and it was a pleasant diversion.

Fast forward to almost 10 years later; I called to cancel my account (probably a Mumbai call center) and was told that it would be done. About three months later I logged in and found that the account was still valid. By logging in, I automatically re-initiated the account and started the whole billing cycle.

I started receiving letters from bill collectors; called AOL and paid - telling them that if they billed me again I would file a complaint with the State Attorneys office for billing fraud. Never heard from them again.

AOL sucks. They know it. So does every unhappy AOL subscriber. There used to be an aolsucks.com website, but if you go there now it redirects to aol.com.

@hypochondriac: Hey, that's when I had AOL! 14.4kbs modem, man. I had a pad of paper next to the computer that I would doodle on while I waited for pages to load. When we upgraded to 56k (and ditched AOL) I thought the internet was SCREAMING fast.

@BZMedia: OMG, you too? Our Packard Bell came with a 2400 baud modem, running on Win 3.11.

Ah, Packard Bell. We put a *1 gb* hard drive in there a couple of years later when the prices dropped enough that it could be a family Christmas present. That and a 33.6 modem. Good times. I have never in my life opened up a less-upgradeable computer than that horizontal Packard Bell. The mini-tower we got 3 1/2 years later was like a chorus of angels to my battered hands.

@summerbee:

OMG, i almost spit my water at the screen. oh god the days in junior high when someone pissed you off and you could just punt them offline . . .ah the memories.

@hypochondriac: Oh, I remember 14.4 too (and maybe something before that, but what was the speed, 12.2 or something). But 800 was a big step up at the time, by the time 56k got popular I was out of the house and on the college's blazing network (since I was one of like three kids in my just wired dorm that brought a computer).

@William T. Sprague Jr.:

I laughed. Those were certainly the "good ol' days"

I personally miss instant messaging in crazy wavy rainbow font. Good times.

I had a fraudulent AOL account tied to one of my creditcards at one time. The bank took care of it for me fairly quickly. Why in hell would you open up an AOL account with a stolen CC#? That's thinking big.

This happened too me with AOL == I finally changed banks to be rid of their predatory ways... PS they haven't found me so far thank God.....I hope they die a slow death for the way they do business.

I remember trying to cancel my account back in 2003. I had moved to an apartment complex for college students (I was a post-college intern so they let me live there) and the internet was free. I told AOL that I didn't need them anymore b/c I had free internet. The guy actually said, "Really? I don't think you really have free internet, places don't do that for free." It took about 20 times of me saying, No, just cancel the account, and he finally got mad and said "the account is canceled" and hung up on me. Terrible business.

My parents have AOL and so does my step brother. They only have it cause of the email account they use.

@kabuk1: Having AOL was like having a wart on your dick.

@lockdog: I remember when we first got AOL in 1995 I was allowed 1 hour per week and my mom would sit next to me if I wanted to be in a chat room (I was only 9). If I wanted anymore time during the week my mom would charge me $3.65/hour.

@lockdog: 9600 baud was one that I remember, it's what my dad used to VPN to his work.

@Fist-oâ„¢: Not for much longer, Time-Warner is looking to sell off AOL and become just Time-Warner again.

I still have my AOL account/e-mail address from 1996. It's my only (non-work) e-mail account. It's been "free" since 2002 or so when I started using broadband.

Remember the days when AOL didn't even have the "WWW"? The "Internet" as we know it was an added feature to AOL in '95/'96. Also: 2,400 baud FTW!

Starting in 2006, I started getting calls from a debt collector trying to get money for an AOL account. The only AOL account I ever paid for, I closed and paid off in 1999. So I have no idea why either AOL or Allied Interstate, the debt collector, thinks I owe them any money. I also have no idea why they suddenly decided, 7 years later, to start trying to collect it.

What's worse, the phone number and address they have for me, date to around 2003. I was not living at that address when I still had the AOL account, and was no longer living there in 2006 when they started trying to wring the money from me.

Usually when Allied calls for this, I tell them that I dispute the debt, ask them to send me documentation of it (to date they have utterly REFUSED to do this ... they always say they NEVER mail ANYTHING to ANYONE), and further inform them that the statute of limitations has expired, so the debt is unenforceable even if it existed, which it doesn't.

The person on the phone inevitably threatens me with "taking it to collection" (whatever that means, given they're debt collectors themselves!), or reporting it to a credit bureau (they have never done so, I've checked my credit reports), or even a couple of times they've threatened to "send it to the legal department," at which time I say, "Please do that, immediately. And let me know which staff attorney I need to discuss this so-called 'debt' with." They never give me a name, of course.

It never goes beyond that, though. After this, they usually leave me alone for a few months, then there's another spurt of "robo-calls" from them telling me to contact them. Last time they called me about this was about 6 months ago, so I think I'm due for another.

BTW the amount of the debt they think I owe, is something like $35. I have no idea how much they've spent trying to get this from me, but I don't see how this is worth their time or effort. What I think is that they're expecting I will be frightened into just paying it without realizing the "debt" is not enforceable, even if it were valid. However, even if I were to suddenly turn stupid the next time they call, and just pay it over the phone immediately, they still likely have spent more than that already and therefore can never recoup that expense completely.

I got a letter in the mail from AOL a couple of years ago, addressed to my full legal name, confirming that they had cancelled my account.

I have never had an AOL account, and I never would. I was on the internet before AOL was, so not only was there no need, but, like many others who were on Usenet at the time, I have always associated AOL with the Eternal September's first influx of idiots.

Anyway, I called them, and they initially insisted it must have been me and I just forgot or something. Then, they said it was probably 'one of my kids.'

When I impressed upon them that that was not the case, they refused to tell me anything at all about the account, except that it was closed and there were no outstanding charges for it. I realize that it's probably not actual provable fraud because whoever did it actually paid their bills, but AOL seemed pretty cavalier about the fact that some asshole was using someone else's personal information on their account.

MY mother in law uses AOL... and I can't tell you the number of hours I've spend re-installing it for her, because it continually f's up her computer. I think I have finally convinced her to at least use IE for netsurfing instead of the aol interface (please no lectures on using mozilla instead, I'm lucky to convince her to use IE). But she still does email through AOL.