I'll miss America Online.

No, it's not going away; just changing. I'm going away. I've been keeping an AOL account for years -- mainly to test the e-mail messages that I send to readers and listeners. Because AOL's e-mail format traditionally has been different than the industry standard, it's difficult to make a graphical message look good to AOL users and non-AOL users at the same time.

I also have used AOL on occasion to access some of the cool content that resides there.

But I use AOL a lot less than I did before -- and AOL is making most of its content available to non-AOL users. Why give them $4.95 every month for something I barely use?

So, after four months of putting it off a day at a time, I finally cancelled my AOL account -- by telephone. It reminded me just how good AOL is at marketing -- and just how nice those people are. They're courteous; and for the most part, they give their customers real value.

My cancellation experience started well, being greeted by a voice prompt system that seemed very friendly. The voice was so courteous, that I could swear the woman whose voice was used had an ear-to-ear grin as she recorded the messages. To help find my record, she asked me for the phone number associated with my AOL account. Then, when I spoke it into the phone, she repeated it back -- which proved she got it right -- and asked me for the first three characters in my primary screen name.

As soon as I answered her, she excused herself to look it up; then read me my entire screen name to make sure she had the right account. But I could have been an impostor, so she excused herself again to look up my Caller ID. When she verified that the number matched the number on record, she said OK, I passed the test and would be connected.

As you can see by my repeated references to "she," it was easy to forget that this friendly voice on the other end was not a real person.

Next, a friendly male voice came on to set my expectation level -- the wait might be as long as six minutes.

The live consultant, Mike in Jacksonville, Fla., also was excellent at customer service. He took a few moments to talk to me about the Steelers, made sure that my concerns would not become problems and promptly put my cancellation through.

Of course, during the time I was on hold, AOL's voice system continued to give me information that might have changed my mind about canceling my account. And it offered my family free AOL Mail e-mail accounts -- presumably so AOL would be able to continue to serve us advertising and make money on us -- which is fine by me.

In the end, a recorded voice gave me my cancellation number, and told me that I would get a formal confirmation at my new AOL Mail account -- a savvy way to get me to log in immediately to see how good the service is -- as well as by U.S. mail.

So while I say good-bye to AOL, I have a feeling I'll continue to have a relationship with the company -- even if it's as a customer who doesn't directly pay them a penny.