Back in 2006 an AOL subscriber recorded their conversation with an AOL customer service agent while trying to cancel the service. It was really bad, way worse than this NYTimes process. The NYT wrote an article about the debacle [1] and had this to say about Netflix's great customer service and ease of cancellation, compared to AOL's awful service:
"Seeing how Netflix would be so protective of my time were I to leave makes me all the more unlikely to do so."