I activated an aol account at my office at work and was told that I had 1000 hours free to use within a 45 day period. Ofcourse, after that 45 day period if I wished to continue with AOL a fee of $239.XX would either be billed to a credit card or drafted from my account.
Because my boss does not use a credit card for business purposes he wanted to send a check immediately (before my trial period was even up) to AOL, but AOL has a policy where the amount can only be drafted from the checking account (I do not understand why we could not just mail a check since they weren't going to draft the account for 45 days anyways, and they would receive the check before that time period was up).
Anyhow, I requested that the $29.80 monthly fee be drafted from the account as a lump sum (All 12 months in full after my trial period...pre-paid to them in other words) which came to the $239.XX fee I mentioned above.
The customer service representative said that would be fine and told me the date when the $239.XX would be drafted from my account which was 45 days from that day since I was on a trial. I then deducted the $239.00 from the company checking account at that time as I didn't want to forget to do it in 45 days.
So 2 months pass buy and I have a problem with reconciling some bank statements and really start looking through them. AOL has drafted $29.80 from my account (I was expecting $239.XX to be drafted as my boss specifically wanted it all in one lump sum). I call AOL and ask that my account be looked over to be sure proper billing is listed and ofcourse....it wasn't.
I then had to go online and change checking account information so that I could make proper changes and was told I would get 2 more months free (as I noticed mentioned in other posts about AOL). And that the $239.00 would not be deducted until after my 2 extra free months.
What I can't figure out is how do they call it 2 free months when they've already taken $29.80 from my account one (not being refunded to me) and taking the full $239.XX out later? Looks to me like I'm paying the $239.XX for my one year of service and they've already got a mistaken $29.80 out for another month on top of it.
I know it's not alot of money, but it's a matter of responsibility when you hold someone else's bank account information in your hand. Makes you wonder what these people are thinking. I'm anxious to see this month's bank statement.