To avoid fees, customer has to know enough to ask

Some AOL subscribers are discovering that the company's new free service is only free if you ask for it.

AOL in early August announced to the world that instead of charging customers for a subscription fee it would give away its products in a bid to boost the growth of its online advertising business.

``We've listened to our customers," Time Warner president Jeff Bewkes said at the time. ``Many of them want to keep using these AOL products when they migrate to broadband, but not pay extra for them. So now we can tell them: `You've Got Mail -- for Free.' ``

But AOL neglected, at least initially, to mention that the service wouldn't be free automatically.

``Apparently you have to ask for free service or they'll keep billing you," said Harriet Rantoul-Hazard of Dartmouth, who has a broadband connection and an AOL subscription. ``Who knew?"

Rantoul-Hazard and several other AOL subscribers said they learned their service wasn't free when the monthly charge showed up as usual on their credit card bills. She called the company for an explanation and learned that she hadn't authorized the company to stop charging her $14.95 a month.

``Why wouldn't I authorize it?" she asked.

Anne Bentley , vice president of corporate communications at AOL, said the company didn't want to change the service level of its customers without first receiving their approval. She noted the free service in many cases offered fewer benefits.

``We're not automatically moving people to free," she said. ``That's just not our strategy. You have to take a proactive step, but it's a simple proactive step."

It sounds like a case of poor communication, but with AOL you can never be sure. The company has received loads of bad publicity over the years for the countless roadblocks it has thrown in front of customers trying to cancel their subscriptions. Was the confusion over free service just another attempt to hang on to paying customers a little bit longer?

By offering many of its services at no charge, AOL is hoping that it can stop defections to other free Internet services offered by Yahoo Inc., Google Inc., and Microsoft Corp. and increase its advertising revenue.

According to corporate filings, the AOL subscription base has been steadily shrinking, dropping by 976,000 in the three-month period ended June 30. As of then, AOL had 17.7 million subscribers, down 15 percent from the year before.

Larry Tye , an AOL customer in Lexington with a broadband connection, said he assumed after receiving an e-mail from AOL about its new free services that the $25 monthly AOL fee on his credit card would simply disappear.

The follow-up e-mails that Tye, a former Globe reporter who is now an author, received from AOL did little to dispel that notion. One mentioned that several new services, including a privacy wall, identity theft insurance, and more online storage, were being added to his current subscription at no extra charge.

At the very end of the e-mail was the notation: ``We have also introduced new services, including Free AOL, as well as new connectivity plans. To see whether there is a better plan for you, go to AOL Keyword: Change Plan anytime."

Another e-mail supplied by AOL's Bentley spelled out two new options for customers with high-speed Internet connections: a free service without customer service or back-up dial-up connectivity, or a service called AOL High Speed Essentials, which offered backup dial-up service and around-the-clock customer service for $9.95 a month.

Bentley says the e-mails clearly indicate that the customer has to choose one of the plans. Once he understood his options, Tye chose the $9.95-a-month service. But he said the transition to ``free" wasn't clearly explained.

``These are people who understand clarity and lack of it," Tye said. ``One wonders whether the lack of clarity was accidental or intentional."

In addition to the e-mails, Bentley said there were also prominent promotions across the AOL service to let people know how and where to go to change their plans.

``We have not seen confusion among our members regarding moving to free. I'm sorry your readers have had problems, but they seem to be a very small minority," Bentley said.

Miriam Brooks of Braintree got the surprise of her life recently at an Apple Store in the South Shore Plaza mall.

She and her husband began experiencing problems with their two-year-old Apple iBook laptop about three weeks ago, so they took it in for service. They paid a flat fee of $290 and were told it would be returned to them in about two weeks.

When it came back on Sept. 12, the laptop had a new logic board, a new battery, and several other new parts. The hard drive was wiped clean, so they had lost everything

``We set to work trying to rebuild what we had lost," Brooks said. ``And then it happened again: black screen, no response."

They brought it back to the Apple store on Sept. 20 and a technician named Steven Kuzia spent a considerable amount of time trying to find out what had gone wrong.

Nothing seemed to work. Brooks said she was getting nervous that the laptop couldn't be repaired and that she might have to purchase a new computer.

When Kuzia excused himself and went into a back room, Brooks said she prepared herself for the worst. But when he came back he was clutching a new Apple laptop, with more memory, greater speed, and more features. He gave it to her, with apologies for failing to properly repair her old computer.

``We were just, quite frankly, flabbergasted. They did the right thing without any fuss," Brooks said. ``I don't suppose I have to tell you that Apple has more than earned my loyalty."

Bruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com.