I was an early user of AOL, before they even had a Windows interface, back in the Geoworks days. I even had a four letter @aol screen-name. No numbers.

But by the late nineties I outgrew the service, tired of the ads and dumbed-down interface and called to cancel. I thought it would be straightforward but not so. It took nearly five minutes of trying to convince the rep that, yes, I really wanted to relinquish my valuable screen-name and move on, before he would agree to close the account.

Apparently things haven't changed much . This guy recorded a recent painful attempt to cancel AOL and this women wasn't able to shut down her mothers' s account, even after she passed away.