I’ve never had an AOL account, so I’ve always been grimly amused by the crap that people go through just to cancel one.  However, I think this incident takes the cake.  The AOL user, suspecting he was going to be mistreated, decided to record the call himself.  The recording has been posted and linked in numerous places (accessible from the above link).

However, this guy also has a weblog, where he recounted the story.  In the comments I found this jem, which may just perfectly summarize AOL’s business practices with respect to cancellation:

An AOL account is like herpes. Once you’ve got it, you’ve got it for life.

Heh.