Much as we love to lovingly prod AOL for their faults — or even just lovingly throw gasoline all over them, fling our zippo in AOL’s face, then urinate on the immolated corpse — we would be amiss in our duty if we left unreported an instance of AOL treating a customer right.

Especially since this might be the only customer AOL’s ever treated right.

Kimberly (not pictured) was treated well by AOL. Astonishment. Kimberly created an account with AOL in 1998. She used it once. 8 years later, NCO Financial Systems — collection trolls — nailed her with a bill for $95.60.

Okay, that all sounds pretty bad so far… hardly a thumbs-up for AOL. But when Kimberly called AOL, they very quickly fixed the error and called off the collection agency. All is well. A single angel claps her hands in heaven for AOL.

Kimberly’s email, after the jump.

Hi Consumerist,

Just got off the phone with AOL. I’ve been reading your continuing coverage of their fuckwittery, but I just had to write and let you know that calling them to dispute charges went smoother than I could have imagined.

I used gethuman.com (thanks for the tip!) to call AOL and reach a human y…uh…not pressing or saying anything, which took quite a while. But finally I reached a representative, and I told her my sob story.

I received a collection notice from NCO Financial Systems – another company that sort of stinks; I’ve been calling them all morning and I keep getting a British-sounding ring and a weird answering service – saying I owed AOL $95.60. Since I’ve only used AOL once in my life, back in 1998, I was pretty damn confused.

I had to tell my story to 3 different people, but lo and behold, the final one waived the charges in 3 minutes flat. I had found out from the second representative that a screen name was set up that sounded suspiciously like my personal email address, and we realized that this was a classic case of identity theft. Basically, I gave them my addresses (past and present), told them I did not set up this
account, and they got rid of it. End of story. They are also going to send NCO Financial a letter verifying the cancellation. Of course, I called them too – by the time I finished writing this, I got someone on the phone who said he’d take care of it.

Just thought I’d pass this on. Keep up the great work.

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