Get it while you still can -- Consumerist has AOL's complete customer retention manual available for download. Just click on the smoking gun image (I'm not kidding) to download a pdf.

Even if you're squeamish about downloading a company's employee training documents, read the Consumerist critique and coverage of the AOL client retention debacle.

It's bizarre. You can use it to explain to your call center exactly what you should not do, which is to "Think of Cancellation Calls as Sales Leads," as the AOL manual says. It's slimy and your customers aren't that stupid.

Here's a short summary of AOL's customer service slide into media hell:

1. August 2005: New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer gets AOL to pay a $1.25 million fine for its nasty policy of haggling with customers who try to cancel service, and for billing cancelers anyway.

2. June 2006: AOL customer Vincent Ferrari records the call he makes to AOL. Ferrari tries to cancel and the agent, known only as 'John,' argues with him for about four minutes that seem like hours. Ferrari posts the recording all over the Internet.

3. Vincent Ferrari becomes the new Paul English, appearing on talk shows and in newspapers all over the country.

4. AOL representative Nicholas Graham apologizes publicly to Ferrari, announcing that 'John' has been fired, saying that he "violated our customer service guidelines and practices, and everything that AOL believes to be important in customer care - chief among them being respect for the member, and swiftly honoring their requests." No one buys it. The blogosphere flames are fanned.

5. July 2006: the Consumerist blog obtains an AOL client retention manual from a disgruntled employee. They publish it online.