I don't know whether you saw the recent PC World article where Senior Editor Tom Spring signed up for 32 online accounts with the intent to document and report on his experience in canceling them. If you want to see that article the link is below. It caught my eye and I read it with interest for a couple of reasons:

1. I've had a couple of recent experiences with closing accounts like this.
2. Your financial health can in part depend on successfully bringing some accounts to full closure.

Maybe you've been through the arduous process of closing the account from hell. The PC World story tells the tale of classmates.com. Getting out of the $5 per month run of charges at classmates.com is more than a nuisance. It nearly qualifies for nightmare status. Classmates.com put me on guard with their incessant come-ons to sign up for a fee account. Their constant reminders put me off. From the story I can see my reluctance to sign up was rewarded.

Worse though, is my recent nightmare experience with one of the leading cellular operators. I took advantage of their offer to consolidate all my cellular services under one contract. The offer provided me and my wife with new phones. The combined contract price was cheaper than the sum of our previous contracts. The service level for the new contract was equal or better in all areas. Best of all, I had 30 days to evaluate and cancel the contract.

Well you know because this post is about closure that I exercised that 30-day option. That's where my troubles began. About 30 days after I closed the account and returned the phones a collection agency called demanding my unpaid balance plus their 18% collection fee.

I'll spare you all the gory details, and just tell you the whole thing was my own fault. When I closed out the contract I believed the person on the other end of the line who thanked me for my business and told me the account was closed and no further action was required (after returning the phones).

See, but their billing department didn't see it that way. Evidently they decided that rather than apply the credit balance on my account, the money I'd paid for the phones now returned, they'd just turn my unpaid closed account balance over to an outside collection agency. Harsh! These guys really don't like it when you exercise your 30-day evaluation option.

The lesson in all this is to be really careful about the account closure process. Take down names, dates and times in your conversations. They do, and you should too. I had sufficient documentation of my conversations with this company and I used it to demonstrate they were wrong to send my account off to a collection agency. The process has been reversed, with no impact to my credit record.

Had I not been so careful this could have had an impact on my credit record.

It's a competitive world out there. These guys want your money, and once they have you signed up they don't want to let you go. Take the extra time to understand the sign-up, evaluation and cancellation process. Document. Document. Document.

Nobody's looking out for your financial health but you.

Here's that PC World article I mentioned above:
Just Cancel the @#%$* Account!