According to a report today in the , may have been counting more than 830,000 subscribers who had signed up via cheap incentive schemes the ISP ran between 2000 and 2002. It reports that this could be the reason for a sudden drop in subscribers, with the company admitting that it had been "cleaning up the files".
The incentive schemes saw AOL selling bulk limited-usage accounts to organisations such as Target, JC Penney and Sears for as little as $1 a month. These companies could then sell them on to employees at a discount to the standard rate, which was around $10 a month.
The newspaper reports that there is no clear figure about how many of these subscriptions were offered or activated. It says that America Online resorted to bulk sales during 2001 as it struggled to meet analyst expectations.
AOL Time Warner reported its results earlier this week, and said that subscriber numbers were down 1.2m on the same period last year to 25.3m, and 846,000 less than in the first quarter of the year. The extent of the losses came as a shock to analysts, who closely watch subscriber numbers as a key marker in the fortunes of America Online.
The company has already been under investigation by the US regulator, the Securities & Exchange Commission, about inflating advertising revenue at America Online. AOL Time Warner ended up restating $190m in incorrectly booked advertising revenue between 2000 and 2002, although there may be further changes to come.
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