Elwenil :
It probably has more to do with the fact that AOL is notoriously hard to get rid of once they have their claws in you. There are probably people out there still paying for AOL and don't realize it. My aunt recently told me she still pays the monthly fee for access to her email. She is not Internet savvy and had no clue that she doesn't need to pay anyone anything to access her account online. I wasn't really surprised when I found out that she called and cancelled it twice and still they billed her her every month just like they did to me many years ago when I dropped AOL as an ISP and went DSL. AOL has always been a crap company and always will be.
Yeah, I had that problem too, way back in the day. The offender wasn't AOL, though -- I think it was Earthlink. Bloodsuckers charged me for what must've been close to extra two years despite my constantly cancelling.
Seems like that problem was an epidemic with dial-up providers. I guess the monthly charge was small enough that they could pull it off without most people noticing. Adds up, though.
Anyway, life is war, unfortunately. Whether it's the bank, the DMV, an unscrupulous dial-up provider -- chances are, someone is going to screw you over in some small way, and fairly often, either through institutional ruthlessness or bureaucratic incompetence. For example, I've been registered under three separate spellings of my name with my municipality's Jury Selection Committee for the last five years or so -- and no matter what I do, I can't get them to fix the error. So I'm summoned to jury duty constantly, and it's a fight each and every time.
C'est la vie. C'est la guerre.