Yeah, it’s pretty much a meme across the Internet and the mainstream news outlets about the AOL subscriber who tried to cancel an account and only met with frustration. It was difficult enough for him being the owner of the account. How much more complex/impossible would it be to do this type of cancellation if you’re the spouse/parent/child of the owner of the account who has deceased? Does it kinda intimidate you that it can be this difficult?

Face it. It’s that difficult with any service in which you subscribe and can faithfully (within contract terms) end the arrangement. After all, every one of these companies has a department or group within the organization deemed “Retention”. The point of the group is to retain you as a customer and they usually receive compensation/commission for each customer they retain. Naturally, it is in THEIR best interest to keep you on. Ironically for the AOL representative, his attempts to further line his own pockets resulted in his termination.

In a similar vein, another individual also met with this kind of brick wall when he attempted to cancel his father’s gym membership at Gold’s Gym after the man had been dead for 2 years. They went so far as requiring the death certificate (most likely because they assumed someone was just trying to get out of a contract early) before they would end the monthly charges.

Unfortunately, in many cases, it was people in the past who had used excuses such as feigning their own death in order to get out of contracts. We certainly do not endorse/condone such actions since you signed the contract. However, it has created an atmosphere of distrust by the major companies of anyone who is attempting to divest their monies from them.

The best advice for you is to stick to your guns like Vincent Ferrari did and don’t raise your voice (after all, they have the right to end the call if the customer is belligerent). Perseverance wins over low-paid call center employees.

In what is going to be an interesting legal case, an attorney is suing over his account being locked due to misuse of the auction system within Second Life. The actual result of this case is important in one aspect: does the virtual property in Second Life have the status of “real” property in terms of financial/legal ownership?

Naturally, there are arguments both ways and even a conference discussing these types of issues. However, it will be critical, should virtual property be deemed real property, to protect your investment for your beneficiaries. Some of this property can be worth thousands in real dollars, a significant amount of money that should be passed on to someone.

Other things to consider in this possible outcome is if the property is now taxable and whether or not the transfer of that property to a beneficiary can be contested. Virtual property as real property opens up a whole new set of questions that we haven’t yet asked or answered.

How many of you who play Second Life have your account information documented? Do you want to risk the loss of that property because you didn’t take the time to write it down somewhere?