How do I cancel my AOL account but keep my screen name for AIM purposes?
I had AOL in the mid-late 90s, canceled AOL probably about 5 years ago, continued to use the screen names on AIM and in February, they caught up with me and canceled my screen names. They did try to offer to get me to PAY for use of my screen names for like $2 each a month. Screw that. I reverted to an old version of my saved buddy list and made a new screen name. The (unique) screen names were supposed to be available at the end of August, but they still haven’t “released” them yet. Save your buddy list regularly and wait it out. If you luck out, they may not catch up with you. If they do, at least you’ll have a recent buddy list to load.
You know, bDiddy, I had the same thought. Then I realized I had the MrMoonPie name before signing up with them, and had to choose some variant when I joined. I used the MrMoonPie name for IM, but I seem to remember my offical AOL email (which I never used, in favor of yahoo) was, like, MrMoonPi, or something.
Road Runner also, a few years back, were trying desperately to bundle all RR accounts with Yahoo!. So they wanted anyone that already had both Yahoo! and RR accounts to merge them–but, as it is, my Yahoo! account is free and lifetime and I’d face the problem you have if I were to ever (as I actually did) leave RR. I don’t know that there’s any way you can convince them to let you do this. There is no incentive for them to allow it, and possibly no documented way to do it. It might or might not be technically easy, but it’s hard to imagine that they’d go to the troube for a departing customer. But it can’t hurt to ask. Just don’t get your hopes up.
