This isn't one rogue agent's bad attitude; it's AOL's culture. Try Googling the term "AOL horror stories" -- it's almost a cliché. Ed Foster's Gripe Line discussed it a year ago:

Sometimes it seems the only way to cancel your AOL account is to cancel the credit card they're billing. "I'd heard all the stories about how AOL keeps billing you, so I was very careful to follow all the correct notification procedures for terminating the account," wrote another reader. "Didn't matter. A couple of months later, the AOL charge was still showing up on my credit card statement. I called to complain, and AOL told me that they had no record of my canceling the account. What's worse, my bank wouldn't reverse the charges. When the charge showed up on the next month's bill again, that was it. Now I've got a new ISP, and a new bank!"

Just saying goodbye to AOL after a tech support call can be hard because of all the promotional offers AOL support techs try to sell customers. "AOL tech support seems to revolve around upselling and cross-marketing," one reader posted recently. "They can't fix it, or even tell you what's wrong, but they'll sell you something that does it or replaces it. New modem? Modem config software? DSL? AOL shopping? Sure!"

Everyone who writes about trying to cancel AOL says they'd heard about how hard it was to cancel it. And then they try to cancel it, and it's hard, and rumors grow. Click here and here to read thousands of AOL complaints.

Consumerist says that the agent who gave Ferrari such a hard time was fired. The story continued yesterday with Netscape interviewing Ferrari. When asked if he thought it was just AOL, he said:

"Well, I think it is actually the nature of customer service to be honest. I think retention people are particularly bad because they can never accept that someone wants to cancel... If I'm predisposed to canceling, just let me do it. I'm not staying no matter what. Retention people are the worst."

Your company's reputation isn't worth the customers you browbeat into keeping their business with you. Besides, think of how many violently hostile callers your agents will have to deal with. Now reread the news item about AOL cutting 1,300 call center jobs and ask yourself why you think that's happening.