After nearly 15 years, AOL is finally no longer hitting my credit card. I've successfully transitioned to the new free AOL service. Of course, I left AOL long ago mentally. This just gets them out of my pocketbook. Below, some thoughts on my changing relationship with them as well as my experience in getting out of the billing relationship.

I first started with AOL back in July 1992. I think I'd paid something like $250 for a 14.4K modem around that time, and I was online with a few other services as well -- Prodigy, CompuServe plus some local BBS systems.

I can't remember what got me into AOL. Certainly the disks were flying around, and I think there were a number of journalisms forums I was trying out. It's so long ago that I can't even remember if I was doing much email. But I can recall that AOL made it easy to get into a wealth of content behind their walled garden.

Having a walled garden then was pretty easy. We didn't have the web itself to go onto. AOL content really was worth paying for. Like many, I readily paid and was thrilled at special offers allowing me more time online. We paid by the minute back then.

By the end of 1994, I'd seen the web and knew where my future was. In particular, I can remember one meeting at the Orange County Register, when I was part of a committee that was debating what made more sense for the paper to do -- Prodigy, CompuServe, AOL or MSN as an online option. No decision was made, because it was all so uncertain. A few weeks later, after experiencing the web firsthand at a conference, I knew the online services were dead. I also knew newspapers would take too long to jump online. I bailed out into web development (and ironically later registered ocregister.com for the Orange County Register as an outside vendor).

I was still going into AOL occasionally around 1995 for some online content and to use it as a connection point when working from home. But mostly, I'd fire up the software then jump into the web itself.

AOL was pretty indispensable for me on my big trip of 1996, at least for dial-up services. AOL had dial-up points everywhere I went, allowing me to stay connected. But by this point, I had my own domain name, my own POP server for my email and no need for the AOL walled garden. AOL was simply my ISP, not my content provider.

Jumping across the pond to England, I moved into AOL's bring your own access plan that I think came out in 1997 (hey, Google News Archive comes through -- looks like it was around 1996, and a related News.com article here). It meant that for $4.95 per month, I could keep my AOL email address plus have three hours dial-up access for free in the US or access to the dial-up network when traveling in other places. For my day-to-day dial-up in the UK, I used a variety of different providers other than AOL.

I really didn't need to maintain that email address. Nothing ever came to it. But I liked the security, and there was some nostalgia over having a name so old that numbers weren't required.

Around 2003, I gained a new AOL account. My long-time UK ISP had closed, so I shifted over to AOL UK for dial-up. Hitting the walled garden never occurred to me. They were merely a connection point. I also continued to maintain my AOL US account.

Last year, broadband through phone lines finally came to my area. I'd considered staying with AOL for it, but having to use their software to connect put me off, as I've written. That ended my billing relationship with AOL UK. As for a content relationship, I'd never used my AOL UK email address nor the services within AOL UK. No loss, no regret.

A few months ago, that $4.95 I'd been paying to AOL in the US quietly kicked up to $6.95. I probably got some notice sent to my AOL email address, but since I never check that, it went right past me. It got me thinking it was perhaps time to end the AOL relationship altogether. Then the news of "free" AOL came along.

My latest credit card statement just came in, complete with that $6.95 charge, making me finally act. I called the 800 number listed on my bill (no, it's not free from the UK, but I pay only about $0.03 per minute to call the US). Last I heard, you still had to call them to cancel.

A cheerful voice mail system tried to help me. What was my billing ZIP code? No idea -- it was years since I last gave one to AOL, and I've moved several times. My phone number? I tried one of my old ones, but that didn't work. My credit card number? Oddly, it didn't like that. After about five minutes, it decided I needed a live rep.

The rep came on within a minute, told me I needed to talk with billing and transferred me. Well, tried to. I got disconnected. So I called the billing number he'd given me, which put me back through the same voice mail system as before. No amount of yelling "OPERATOR" helped.

I got to another rep, who quickly got me onto the new system. There was no delaying tactics, no cancellation hell attempt to keep me going. He explained how to keep getting access to AOL through the new software briefly, all the while me not having the heart to explain I'd never, ever be downloading it.

He also explained how to access the help area, if I needed advice. I went there out of curiosity as he talked and was amazed to discover I'd been there before (as my screenname automatically popped-in via stored passwords in Firefox). I was even more amazed to rediscover that there was an entire online billing system independent of the AOL software.

While on hold, the voice mail system had suggested I could cancel by just going "keyword: change plan" using the AOL software. I don't have the software on my computer, and I wasn't going to load it up just to cancel. But potentially, anyone could try using the web help system to change plans. I can't tell if it works, because I'm already cancelled by now.

The account system gave me access to all those details about my account I couldn't remember. What was my billing address and phone number? Information from 10 years ago is listed. Despite being so old and out of date, apparently that raised no red flags with billing my card all these years.

That's it -- I'm all done with the billing. My relationship with AOL remains keeping my old email address, which I never use other than for AIM. The software won't be going on my computer.

Looking to start fresh with AOL? Signing up is apparently easy over here. Already a paying member and want to step down? Buried deep in the FAQ, you'll learn that you need to call and select the Billing Option, as I've described above. There's no mention of making changes online, either via the web or through the AOL software. Frankly, they should have made it easy for anyone to do this in those ways.

I do have one other relationship with AOL, I suppose -- my Internet Access Provider Disk Report. Over the course of a year, April 1995 to April 1996, I tracked the number of internet access disks I received from various companies. AOL was the big winner, with 62 percent of the slice. Check it out if you want lots of charts and a bit of web trivia.

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