The rediculous saga of trying to delete my AOL account

So for about 3 months off and on I've been trying to delete my AOL account in my continuing effort to clean up my digital life.
It's a free account and I haven't used it in about 10+ years. I just don't want the open account out there with my name on it.

I should be able to just delete it, right?

Nope.

The website gives you every option to adjust your account, short of deleting it. You can change it, upgrade it, downgrade it, transfer it, even take over the account of a recently deceased person...but no working option to simply leave and delete your information. The option doesn't work.
I only figured out it doesn't work because I went through the steps a few months ago, and logged in 2 months later and was able to log in. Account still intact.

So I reach out on Twitter. AOL support sends me to the website. I take a screenshot showing them that there is no option. That the confirm deletion button or action is gone.

They tell me to call support.

Got around to it today. Support tries to send me to the website. I explain all over again and ask them to please just delete the account,.

They tell me they can't do it on their end, but if I could wait another couple of weeks till the website is redone/fixed then I can do it online.

I ask for a supervisor and was disconnected. I call back and start all over again.
The second customer support agent opened a ticket, and escalated it and someone is supposed to get back to me.
Seriously? Just to delete my account?

This seems illegal to me. Seems like I should be able to remove my information from their company freely. That they shouldn't be able to hold my information hostage. Again,this has been a 3 month saga. I'm not having a knee jerk reaction because I got bad service today.

The time and resources that both they and I have spent to do something that should be simple and that users 100% should be in control of is ridiculous.
Not sure what OATH ( Verizon company that owns AOL now) is doing, but this is unacceptable.

Anyone else have a similar problem trying to leave a service or delete an account?

Not the same thing, but I just had to deal with canceling a subscription, an expensive $ 500 a month subscription. It is on automatic renewal and it said you can cancel anytime. Just like Harold the site had NO Option to cancel and not even a phone number so there was literally no way to cancel. I sent almost a dozen emails and messages to the "support team", starting weeks ago without any response.

Anyway, just before the renewal date a few days ago I cancelled the debit card that they had on file. Despicable business practice.

I also have a very old AOL account but I don't even remember the user name or password.

So someone got back to me today. They basically said that they couldn't fully delete it. Something about not recirculating the username.
I asked how that would work if I was calling from Europe where they now have a right to have their info deleted. He said they were getting out of Europe.

He did offer to change what little personal information was connected to the account to fake info, and said that the username ( which is my real name) should only be accessible to AOL employees if they really went looking for it.

That's the best I could get. And that still doesn't remove any meta data which would still be directly connected to me (which I forgot to ask about).

Something to know in the future, be careful using your real name when signing up for accounts or creating usernames because you may never be able to delete it from that company's servers.
I fully support people using fake names and aliases for personal email accounts and such wherever they can, and this just solidifies that position.

I sometimes use a slightly altered version of my name. Obviously not for legitimate sites but sometimes a one time use requires name, address etc. I realize they at trying to gather info but it's often not completely relevant to my one time use.

I seem to remember my wife deleting her facebook account. I believe it took her about two weeks. I suppose the more accounts they have, the more they can charge for advertising?

Been cleaning up my junk email inbox. Since this experience I'm starting to take notice of other accounts that don't give you a way to cancel. It's also surprising how many newsletters and promo emails from otherwise reputable or well known companies don't have that "unsubscribe" link at the bottom. I was sure that they had to have that by law if they are emailing people in the U.S.

Some people say to reply "UNSUBSCRIBE" but of course most come from no-reply emails and it just bounces back.

I am making headway though. For a long time every morning I had 30-40 new emails, with many emailing me multiple times a day.
This morning I only had 14 emails in that inbox and 10 of them I wanted to be there.