AOL ripoff Sterling Virginia

This letter is to official report AOL for abusing Joan T ***** and her account, ******@aol.com. On June 20, 2004, I received an email that I thought was from one of my group members. It was for a link to pick up a picture for a project that one of my other members was working on. I clicked into the site and it brought up an AOL Site complete with links that worked, AOL Disclaimer and their triangle. I spent a half hour checking out this site and making sure it was okay and legitimate. I even emailed the person who sent me the site.

I knew my member who needed the photos was on a time crunch so I went into retrieve the picture from the site, which of course required my putting in my password.

Once I opened the picture, I began to get suspicious because it did not tell me who it was from nor was it related to the project.

checked the site further and it took me to all my personal AOL links and email so I thought well maybe it was legitimate and one of my friends was playing a joke on me. But to play it safe, I immediately reported this incident to all of the above mentioned Internet Abuse sites.

Today, I went in to check my sent mail and found 12 emails to people I do not know and each one of them had twelve emails or so BCC to others. I immediately called AOL technical support who set me to security who sent me back to technical support who sent me to Community Action who told me tough luck, my account was going to get closed down once it caught up with me. I said that was ridiculous since I am the one who reported it to them and am notifying them of what happened. They did not care.

So I called into AOL's Executive Offices only to be told tough luck that this is the way the system works and they cannot stop it from closing my account. I am floored that this is how I am being treated after being a loyal customer for over 15 years.

I have never switched Providers even when I have one that I have to pay for through my Cable Company. This is an atrocity that AOL disregards their customers and treats them with so much disrespect.

I would appreciate someone looking into this situation and making sure that my account with AOL is not disconnected or otherwise have my service disrupted.

AOL's attitude is that I am responsible for my account. Well, I did everything humanly possible to protect myself, going as far as to email the sender as well as thoroughly check for AOL's disclaimer and icon and made sure all of the links took me to my actual AOL account which they did. I should not be penalized for someone else's scamming of AOL. This should solely rest on AOL's shoulders for not finding another way to protect us from Scam artists without making us suffer.

Please investigate this matter immediately as they refuse to connect me with the President of AOL or Vice President to discuss this matter.

Thanks,

Joan
Southbury, Connecticut
U.S.A.