Get help with your AOL billing questions

Update your account

Update your payment method

If your account is past due or you want to upgrade your account to a paid plan or Premium Service, you’ll need to update your account’s payment method.

1. Learn which payment methods are available for AOL services.
2. Learn how to add, change or delete a payment method.

Update your contact info

Whenever there’s a change in your contact info, make sure you update your account so there’s no interruption in your AOL service.

1. Visit My Account and sign in with your Primary username.
2. Click My Profile | Update Profile.
3. Click Update Contact Information.
4. Enter your updated info and click Save.

Tip icon.Update info in all places - In addition to updating your contact info, you should always keep your recovery options up-to-date in case you ever get locked out of your account. You can also edit info about yourself such as your name, nickname and gender.

Cancel or change your AOL plan

Interested in changing your plan? Before you decide, make sure you consider your options. You can always change your plan to a different subscription or to a free AOL account.

Caution icon. Caution - If you cancel your AOL account but are still subscribed to AOL services, the payment method on file will continue to be charged. You must cancel all AOL services in order to stop billing.

Some important things to keep in mind before canceling:

• You must cancel your billing and convert to a free AOL account in order to cancel your paid account.
• AOL reserves the right to charge and collect any taxes/fees, surcharges or costs incurred before your cancellation takes effect.
• If you subscribe to any AOL Premium Service, you must cancel your subscriptions to those services before canceling your AOL account.
• If you cancel in the middle of your billing cycle, you’ll have access to the service until the end of the cycle because payments are made a month in advance.

Visit our help article to change or cancel your AOL plan.

Power of Attorney to assume ownership of an AOL account

If you’ve been granted Power of Attorney over someone and need to assume ownership of their AOL account, you can do so by following the steps in our help article.

Understand your bill

View your account activity

AOL offers a way to monitor your account's activity so that you can be the first to know if anything unusual is going on with your account. You can see details such as what actions were performed and when, who made any changes and for which username the changes were made.

1. Visit My Account and sign in.
2. Click My Profile.
3. Click Account Activity.

Tip icon.Keep your account safe - To view info like recent login activity, password changes and apps connected to your account, visit the Recent Activity page.

View your billing statement and billing date

Your monthly billing date is when we charge your fees to your payment method. You pay for your AOL service in advance, so each month you pay for the next month’s service. At the same time, we’ll add on any charges you acquired since your last bill, such as connection surcharges or subscription fees.

If you’re on the Free AOL plan, you're still assigned a billing date even though there are no monthly fees. Just think of this as the anniversary of when you joined the AOL family!

You can check your AOL payment history without leaving your computer. Just make sure you sign in with your Primary username, because only this name can access your online billing statement for an AOL service.

Tip icon.Processing delay - If you use a Visa, Mastercard, Discover debit, checking account or savings account to pay for your AOL service, charges can take up to 14 days to process depending on your bank.

Explanation of charges on AOL billing statement

Here's an explanation of the different charges you might see on your AOL bill:

AOL for Broadband - The charge for your monthly AOL subscription if you have cable or DSL connectivity.
Private areas online - Some organizations, such as AARP, keep certain areas of their websites private and charge a membership fee to use these special features.
Dial-Up - These are charges for members with limited dial-up access who used more dial-up minutes than included in the monthly plan. These charges accrue by the minute at a rate of up to $2.99 per hour, so if it’s larger than normal, it means you probably used more dial-up minutes than included in your monthly plan.
Premium Services - We list each Premium Service as a separate item on your bill. Your billing statement provides a detailed breakdown of the subscription fee, including benefits, required government taxes, and any additional fees.
Communication surcharges - We answer to a higher calling - the phone company. If you connect to AOL using a long-distance number or AOLnet 800 number, you’ll see these surcharges in addition to your monthly subscription fee. We don’t refund these charges, so check with your phone company to make sure your selected access numbers are local.

Taxes and surcharges

There are two categories.

• State and Local taxes
• Checking Surcharges

State and local taxes and fees are based on the address where you get your service. They are different in each state, and they can also vary between cities within some states.

Free and credited minutes

If you're on the hourly AOL plan, free minutes are the monthly free time you get with the membership fee. You have to use these minutes within the billing period or else you'll lose them. They won't carry over to the next billing period.

Credited minutes can be given to you by an AOL Member Services Representative. These minutes carry over to subsequent billing periods, even if you don’t use them before the end of the period during which they were issued.

Sign in to My Account to check your available credits.

Tip icon.Your monthly free time is credited to your account on your billing date at approximately 10AM ET.

Check the status of your account

Account status displays Past Due

If your account status is Past Due, unfortunately, you missed a payment to your account. If this happens, we’ll let you know through a notification window that'll display as soon as you sign on to AOL, CompuServe or Netscape Connect. We’ll also let you know through emails and letters that your account is past due.

If you swear you made the payment, there could be another reason - either the credit card on your account is expired or we somehow have different information than what’s on your card. Your next bill will include the past due month along with the amount due for your current billing cycle.

There are a number of reasons why this unfortunate event may have happened to you:

• Your bank suspended or replaced your credit card.
• Your credit card had insufficient funds at the time we processed your payment.
• There is a mismatch between the credit card details you entered and the details that appear on your credit card.

You can fix this by updating your payment information online or by contacting a Member Services representative.

Pending cancellations

If your account status box shows Pending Cancellation, it means you placed a request to cancel your AOL account. We’ll schedule the closure of your account at the end of your current billing cycle, after which you’ll receive a confirmation email that your account has been closed. Once the billing cycle ends, you won’t receive our monthly bills anymore.

If this status is a mistake or you changed your mind and don’t want to cancel your AOL membership, you can chat with a Member Services representative.

Account has been canceled

Your account status became canceled when you canceled your AOL account. If you want to recover a canceled account, you can always reactivate your AOL account without any hassle.

Get help with your billing issues

Multiple charges from AOL

There are a couple of possible explanations for a multiple charge from AOL.

Last month's fee hasn’t been processed yet

This happens when your account is past due. In this case, the charge for last month’s service will post along with your current bill. At first glance, it might look as if we’re double-billing you, but in fact we weren’t able to charge you last month so we’re applying both payments to one bill.

To update your payment information, review our help article.

You observe additional charges reflected in your AOL statement

AOL provides you with a variety of services that may appear as separate charges on your AOL statement, sign in to your account and check how many services you have from AOL or chat live with one of our Member Services representatives for more details about your AOL billing statement. We’re ready to help you 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

AOL Terms of Service agreement window appears at sign on

If you've updated your payment method to either a debit card or a checking account by calling AOL Member Services, you’ll need to sign on to your AOL account using your Primary username within 24 hours of the call. Once you sign on, you’ll receive an AOL Terms of Service agreement notification window prompting you to confirm your new payment method. This notification appears because you have a temporary billing block on your AOL account. To unblock your account, you need to confirm and authorize your payment method for an electronic fund transfer (EFT).

To continue, click I Accept and continue on the notification window to confirm your payment method and authorize AOL to automatically deduct the membership fees from your debit/checking account.

If you don't receive a notification window when you sign on to your AOL account or if you're a webmail user, please go to My Account to add your payment method.

Caution icon. If you don't confirm and authorize your payment method, your AOL account will remain blocked and your AOL service will be interrupted.

If you're worried about a possible fraudulent pop-up, review our help article on how to recognize legitimate AOL communications. It's important to stay vigilant when receiving any communication.

Explanation of age verification procedures

We have a billing verification process in place when a new charge occurs. As part of the process, we bill a temporary $1 authorization charge to the credit card submitted. This is used only to verify the validity of the credit card and because you must be at least 18 years of age to purchase an AOL service.

The $1 charge won’t actually be deducted from the account. The bank for the credit card should remove the charge within a day or two. If you used a credit card for age verification and noticed the charge hasn’t been removed after a few days, please contact your bank or credit card company.

Contact AOL for billing questions

Sometimes you just want to talk to a live person, right? Contact AOL for all of your questions and concerns about billing.