Free, from AOL

I’ve kept an AOL account for many years, mostly so I can test AOL’s spam filtering on clients’ email lists, and so I can test AOL’s gradually less wonky rendering of HTML email. It’s been costing me $6.95 a month for the “bring your own Internet access” price plan, which was reasonable. Today, though, I happened upon the fact, completely by accident, that AOL is now free for those that bring their own access.

Given AOL’s history of making it next to impossible to cancel an account once you sign up for one (endless telephone calls, tricky questions once you talk to the right person), I assumed it would be a Herculean task to turn off my $6.95/month account. Kudos to AOL for actually making it very, very easy; witness what I saw when I logged on to my AOL account:

Note the prominent Change to Free tab. I clicked there, confirmed, and now I’m on the “free plan.”