AOL could be facing some legal troubles. It seems that in an effort to gain a little more money they have been upgrading former employees free AOL accounts to paid accounts without notification or indeed without any kind of billing.

Now this would have gone unnoticed but one of the former employees now works for the Wall Street Journal. The former Employee (Jason Zweig) wrote his experience up on the popular online publication for the world to see.

Apparently AOL is threatening to send this not to collections without any signed agreement, bill, or any other type of documentation. The upgrade was "automatic" according to one support representative Zweig spoke with, yet they could not provide any supporting documentation other than to say the agreement was on "page C" (or was that D?).

AOL has a history of shady billing and collection practices. In the mid-90's they actually had to open a separate business division to deal with AOL Fraud. At the time people were finding that despite having canceled service AOL was continuing to bill their credit cards for service. In a few cases this went on for as long as two years before finally being corrected.

I spoke with a former AOL phone support representative who told me that they were told to do everything to prevent someone from actually canceling their account, including not sending in the cancelation request.

Read the whole story here.