Customers of AOL from around the world are saying that their free .COM e-mail (webmail) addresses have been cancelled without any prior warning. The situation is believed to have started at AOL's Australia division during early December and is now affecting users all over the world.

Those attempting to access their accounts have been presented with a notice informing them of the cancellation, which is usually accompanied by an error code of 'C0FE022B'. To make matters worse, some users have been migrated over to a commercial alternative and charged for it, without approval. However those with expired credit cards on file have simply been cancelled.

It's unclear whether the situation has anything to do with AOLs current financial predicament, which could see its international divisions being separated further. Some have reportedly been able to solve the problem by subscribing to AOLs commercial alternative, while others suggest trying to join the Aol FREE Plan.

To date we have not seen any sign of this problem affecting those in the UK (most have .co.uk addresses anyway), although AOL UK is semi-separate from the group’s wider USA connected divisions. Never the less we would like to hear whether anybody in the UK has faced a similar situation (please post in the comments to this news – guest posting allowed).

This situation does not appear to be directly connected with the closure of AOL UK's Hometown (personal webspace) service - as reported in October HERE.