[codeflo]

I got that e-mail too, on a decade-old test account: first an e-mail that reads like my account simply "expires" if I don't update. Then an invoice.

Here's what I don't get: After a stunt like this, any reputation/brand value that you might have had is gone. So, the obvious conclusion is they bought the company purely to pull this trick. Any other value the company might have had is deleted. Can that have been worth it? Very few people will pay voluntarily, I can't imagine them successfully collecting the money, and the acquisition price probably wasn't 0 either. I can't imagine that the math checks out, or does it?

[dccoolgai]

Someone once told me that as recently as the late 2010s AOL was making millions of revenue off of old dialup accounts from the 90s that people just never cancelled and the cards just kept running. That's what they're probably shooting for here.

[iancarroll]

My parents actively paid AOL for quite some time because they thought it was for their email service, not for dialup.

[GnarfGnarf]

The expiry date of the credit card needs to be updated every couple of years. How can AOL keep charging a credit card if they don't have current information for it?

[detaro]

Credit card information is often automatically updated, the CC networks have services for that.

[elkos]

Are you sure this is a thing in other countries too? I think Visa and MasterCards issued in EU don't get auto-updated.

[Meekro]

Very few of these 13 year old accounts are going to have valid card data on file, though. Any cards that were valid back then have long since expired. Seems to me that they're just spamming a bunch of people for no reason?

[mattigames]

They are as eager to find out as you, meaning they have never done this before and it's just a gamble.