Important Warning: AOL Canada

This warning is being sent to all of our users and is very important: AOL (America OnLine) is attempting to move into the Canadian market. The new organization, AOL Canada, is currently conducting an extensive mailing campaign that gives people Free software and a 10 Free hour trial of the AOL Canada service. The front of this package says: "Experience the POWER of AOL Canada". Computing Serives staff (5 of us) have received around 30 of these packages through office mail and mail at home.

Although the trial for the service itself is Free, we feel we should warn you how expensive this Free service can be. Inside the pacakage is a small foldout brochure glued to the package. You can read every page of the brochure, except the back page, without removing it from the package. The back page has an 800 help line number and some fine print. In this print, starting at the third line, it states: "Members in Canada pay communication surcharges, even during trial time."

I called AOL Canada's help line and asked them about it. Apparently there are different charges depending on where you are calling from. Major cities have a lower rate than more rural areas. All of NB is a rural area in their charging scheme. The communications surcharge for NB users is $0.20/minute. That means that each Free hour of usage of AOL Canada from NB costs you $12.00. That would be $120.00 for the full 10 free trial hours.

To use the service, you must provide some billing information such as a credit card. You are told by the software that you will only be billed for the service if you exceed the 10 Free hours. What they don't tell you is that they will bill you for the communications surcharges while NOT billing you for the service.

So be careful of this scam and please warn others of the actual cost of this so-called "10 Hour Free Trial".

[This letter was written anonymously to provide information only. Enscquire is publishing this infor-mation based on the advice from the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students (CFES), and makes no claims as to its validity. -Ed.]

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