OK, we all know that AOL is the anti-Christ incarnate in the form of an ISP, but whom do they think they are scamming? 1000 hrs free for 45 days?!?!?! That means 45 days period. Actually, it means 41.66666666 if you leave it on 24 hrs a day. Who do they think they are fooling? Who are they marketing to? Has anyone fallen for that? And if so, tell me about how hard it was to cancel your subscription once you realized how bad AOL sucks.
Maybe this should go in the BBQ Pit. Maybe so, I’m sorry for being so new and not knowing.
Everyone seems to hate AOL. But how many people really have an honest gripe with the company? I used to have an account and it was great–access points all over the world. And I pretty much got connected everywhere I tried.
So why does AOL suck? Their browser is demeaning and rife with ads (but I usually used AOL to connect, then I used Explorer to browse). It’s overpriced (but I heard that there is recently a basic dial-up option for $10 a month). As to how hard it was to cancel my subscription, the AOL agent I talked to gave me 3 free months after I admitted that I’d never even tried their Instant Messenger or their other features! I called back and cancelled with no problem a couple months later.
So the only thing I can say didn’t like after my own experience with AOL is that they send so much marketing mail including their latest CD. But so does every credit card company; all go conveniently into the trash, causing me little stress.
I’m ABSOLUTELY sure someone will be along to tell me that “No, AOL does suck big time”, but I feel compelled to say that AOL always worked fine for me, and I could easily ignore the “demeaning and overly-simplistic” features and marketing schemes that are, let’s be honest, not unique to AOL. In fact, I’d probably join AOL once more if I work internationally again.
I used to use AOL, but no longer do. When I learned that I got a free email account with my cable modem service and that I could set AIM to tell me when I had email at that account, I cancelled. It’s virtually the same, yet is essentially free.
I don’t hate AOL. I’ve had no problems with them. In fact, years ago when I did get hit by malware, the AOL techie helped me completely clear my computer of it since at the time I had no idea about such things.
Maybe those who hate AOL fall into three groups:
[ul][li]Those who have had bad experience with them, either their fault or AOL but just blame AOL nevertheless.[/li][li]Those who haven’t had any experience with AOL whatsoever but like to jump on the bandwagon of hating AOL.[/li][li]Those who haven’t had any experience with AOL but dislike the pay-to-use concept they have.[/ul][/li]I suppose there could be more. The OP seems to fall into the first category.
They continued billing me for two months after I cancelled an account, after my spending forty-five minutes on the phone with a twit who tried to talk me into a “limited use” account and tried to tell me I’d use it because I’d just been on the account today (after a hiatus) – of course I had, I’d gotten on to find out HOW TO CANCEL, you dumb bitch!
#4 Those who used AOL for a couple of months and found the service bad so they switched to another ISP.
Things that made my AOL experience a bad one.
Constant disconnects, on the average three times an evening which on bad days could easily be ten to fifteen times, everytime loosing all Instant Messenger windows and sites I was looking at at the moment.
The lack of ability to read my mail offline, sure I had a flatrate then but signing online only to have a look at my mail account wasn’t my thing.
Spam, from the first day on I got spam on my aol mail, not terribly much but a couple of pieces a day which increased despite me never using the aol address to sign up for anything.
There were several other annoying things like that techsupport was a pay number that costed almost as much as a permium phone sex line then here, but mostly too minor to mention. All in all not an entire hell but I switched to a broadband connection and have since an almost uninterrupted Internet connection.
(I used AOL with versions 4,5 and maybe 6 but not sure about that, some of my complaints might not appear anymore)
I use AOL mainly for my email. I don’t use it to surf the net because IMO its slower on AOL. The only gripes I have about AOL is the little things that pop up every so often telling me that its updating my features or an ad offering low priced digital cameras. When I sign off, I want to sign off then. Not 30 seconds later. (Yes I’m impatient). Other than that I don’t bother with AOL enough to have more gripes
arachnidlove: Malware is malicious software. That can include viruses and password sniffers, among others.
Those little AOL popups you can stop, and have been able to for quite some time now, by selecting the option to not receive them. The updating features thing is to update the AOL software, so you might want to let it do that.
Blaming AOL for the spammer using an automated program to send e-mail to every possible e-mail address is like blaming yourself for getting shot by someone firing a random bullet into traffic.
I just wanted to say that I was in a bookstore today, and behind the counter, I could see that someone had reserved a copy of “AOL for Dummies”. Made me grin.
Well, I hate AOL because of how they destroyed the gay forums and how little they valued the contributions of those of us who volunteered for their various fora so that they didn’t have to pay someone to do it. I hate AOL for leaving Mac users in the cold several versions behind Windows users, and when the new versions finally roll out for Macs they are horrifyingly buggy and stripped of the features which made the most sense in favor of worthless crap. I hate AOL for how an AOL rep hung me out to dry for daring to criticize the company in a “backstage” area message board (she faked TOS violations on my account and cancelled it). I hate AOL for the way they have completely sacrificed the idea of online community if that community doesn’t serve to shovel money into AOL’s pocket (yes, I know AOL is a for-profit company and have every right to do whatever they want within the bounds of the law to make money but gutting the very thing it built its early success on sucks). I hate AOL for taking the things that made me initially enjoy the internet (I know, AOL isn’t the internet) and shitting on them.
I’ve never used AOL (or “anal hell”, as I prefer to call it)…but I still hate it.
Why? Because its a rip off. The service offers nothing that the “real internet” can’t. If someone can tell me what AOL can give me over regular ISP service, I might change my mind.
Wasn’t the reason the Straight Dope left AOL (I hope I’m remembering correctly here) that AOL wanted the SD to pay for the privilege of having the Dope as content?
To do something like that to the almighty Cecil is beyond the pale. It’s reason enough to hate AOL forever. AOL should have been paying the Dope for being able to associate themselves with the Master!
My AOL career lasted 8 of the 10 free hours in 1995. The drooling- idiot-to-normal-person ratio was far to high for me, so I cancelled. They didn’t give me any trouble with that, but I guess that was back in the days before they hired a whole department of people to badger those attempting to cancel.
Believe it or not, I was a subscriber to AOL from 1995 to just last month. It took me a while to realize that I wasn’t receiving anything of value for the $23.90 per month that I was being charged. When I finally called to cancel, the lady on the other end was very reluctant to do so, asking me a million questions to try to get me to stay. Finally, when she asked me what did I like most about surfing online, I mentioned that I loved surfing for porn. That finally got her to process my cancellation.
