CHAOS SNARLS AOL REFUND PLAN.Byline: David E. Kalish Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. Phone delays and conflicting information bedeviled America Online See AOL. customers seeking refunds Thursday - the same problems that made the company promise to reimburse re·im·burse tr.v. re·im·bursed, re·im·burs·ing, re·im·burs·es 1. To repay (money spent); refund. 2. To pay back or compensate (another party) for money spent or losses incurred. them for troubles getting on line. A day after AOL (A division of Time Warner, Inc., New York, NY, www.aol.com) The world's largest online information service with access to the Internet, e-mail, chat rooms and a variety of databases and services. reached a multi-state agreement to give millions of dollars worth of credits and refunds to customers, the company had not yet updated its toll-free phone number for handling requests. People calling the number got a maze maze, detail of landscape gardening based on the Greek labyrinth, consisting of intricate paths or alleys lined with high hedges and having a center and exit difficult to find. It was a prominent feature in the formal English gardens of the 17th and 18th cent. of recorded options. None mentioned a refund. Moreover, confusion abounded over whether the best way to get a refund was to call or write the company. The toll-free number finally was updated by Thursday afternoon to include a prompt for getting refunds. America Online spokeswomen said that it took time to gear up because the settlement was negotiated in less than a week and that the company was working as fast as possible to staff up its customer service lines. ``Everything happened really quickly. We did our best to get it in on time,'' said Wendy Goldberg, a spokeswoman for the Dulles, Va., company. Still, some customers ironically encountered the same problem they were trying to get compensated for - clogged phone lines. A customer service representative answering AOL's phone line Thursday afternoon said it would take at least 30 minutes before someone could handle a refund request because of a flood of phone calls. Instead, he urged the request be put in writing. Even attorneys general from the 36 states that negotiated the refund agreement with AOL were telling customers to write the company. However, company spokeswoman Tricia Primrose primrose, common name for the genus Primula of the Primulaceae, a family of low perennial herbs with species found on all continents, most frequently in north temperate regions. insisted that the only way to get refunds was to call. |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion