I hate AOL for one reason only: I do tech support for an ISP. A non-AOL ISP. That costs way, WAY less than AOL.
The VAST majority of our users are former AOL users. We’re a very low cost ISP, so our service is very no-frills. You get dialup access, 4 email accounts, newsgroup access, etc. using your own browser/email client/newsreader. The main reason people cite for switching from AOL to our service is “AOL cost too much!”
Yet, they call tech support and want to know why “this isn’t at all like AOL!” because to them, AOL=The Internet. They want to be able to have 5 separate screen names, instant messaging (which they can use with our service, we just don’t provide our OWN), unlimited access (which AOL doesn’t give… getting dropped a lot? It’s cuz you’re a “heavy user” and they’re disconnecting you.) and “all the stuff that AOL has” for under $10 a month. Not gonna happen.
So while I have no personal gripe with AOL, I just am so so tired of former users who moved to a low cost ISP calling support to complain that they don’t have all the features of AOL when they’re paying about 75% less.
I do have gripes with AOL. Their tech support has been very, very difficult for us to get through to. And we have used the software for over a decade (I remember upgrading to 2.0). It is difficult to get through, expensive, and just a pain.
I also hate how they’ve randomly turned parental controls on for some accounts, for NO REASON. All throughout my childhood, that was a pain. I know very well my parents didn’t turn it on, AOL just spontaneously decided they SHOULD be on.
The chat software is horrible. The people in the chatrooms are horrible.
One can’t access e-mail through a different mail client. Thus, one can’t use mildly effective spam filters.
My beef with AOL is the ip addies. Dealing with AOLers, not being one. I run a large forum and chatroom, and with AOL it’s ban all users or ban none. Or do a pseudo ban and hope the kid can’t figure out that he need only reconnect and get a totally new ip assigned that lets him return unhindered. Only the first digit in the ip is static. Maybe SDMB has figured a way around this, but our tech guy isn’t up to the job.
My biggest pain in the ass complaint about AOL is the fact that they make it so fucking difficult to cancel. I sent a fax last month, a week before my billing date, to cancel because I didn’t feel like speaking to anyone (I’ve tried to cancel before and been sucked into the Giant AOL Vortex).
The next week, I’m billed on my account. WTF? I call to ask about it, the guy refuses to cancel and THEN refuses to let me speak with a supervisor. I was absolutely livid, especially since I had a copy of the sent fax, and the fax confirmation. I’ve written a letter to the head office of AOL - mainly because a friend said that was the only way she ever got anything. I’ve been a member since 1994 - I’ve only cancelled because I only use them for dial-up when I’m on the road and I don’t need it anymore - I’ll use Juno for dial-up because it’s cheaper and I very rarely go online.
If it’s so hard to get AOL to legitimately cancel your AOL account, why not just deliberately commit a TOS violation? This would get you cancelled a lot faster.
I recently bought a new laptop, and decided to extract the pre-installed AOL service to see if they were any better since the last time I used them a few years ago. Got it set up and working, and it fucked up my optical mouse. That aside from being slow, buggy, and unreliable. Naturally, I called and cancelled; and lo and behold, managed to get the phonedrone to turn off my account (and give me a cancellation confirmation number) without too much fuss, after explaining the technical problems.
But now I’m trying to uninstall the fucking thing. There are two application directories in the Programs folder, and neither of the Uninstall apps recognizes the fact that AOL is installed. No matter how I go at it, the uninstaller says, “No AOL program is found on this computer.”
So now I gotta call tech support and sit on hold just to talk to another phonedrone to figure out how to get this fucking thing off my machine and hope my mouse starts working again. (And I gotta hope they’ll help me even though my account is ostensibly deactivated.) At least they do their users one small courtesy when trying to get a hold of tech support: “Thank you for calling. Estimated time before a phonedrone answers: Thirty… Eight… Minutes. Please hold.” So if nothing else you know how much time you’re gonna have to kill…
:rolleyes: Well DUH BRT… 9.0 is rocking right along. Works for me.
Got two full accounts on MY laptop, mine and the wiffs.
Easiest, safest, simplist, fastest email around and is almost instatainious between AOHell users…
I was on AOL for years. I was a regular member of a particular chat room and met many people who I’m sure will always be friends through it. I’ve not found any other chat rooms which I enjoy nearly as much. I finally canceled my AOL account, however, when I came to the realization that they really don’t care about their customers at all. Long story but I’ll give you the brief version. There was a person in the chat room I frequented that I thought was a decent guy once upon a time. We talked on the phone a few times, I realized he really wasn’t a decent guy at all, and wanted nothing more to do with him. He eventually took to calling me several times a week, or even a day, threatening me on the phone and online. He’d go into quite a bit of detail in the chat room on just how he was going to kill me. I notified AOL and I know at least 500 other complaints were filed against this guy by other people. He spent MONTHS doing this. He posted my phone number in chat rooms announcing that I was both a prostitute and a heroin addict, that I’d do anything for my next fix and that I really know how to please a guy. I contacted the police, the attorney general’s office, and the district attorney’s office. Even after the police went to see this guy, he didn’t stop. His chat records were subpoenaed from AOL. I thought, ok, at this point, AOL has got to realize the guy is a problem, but nope. Despite my repeated phone calls to them for help, despite hundreds of pages of logs of him threatening and/or harassing me, despite my forwarding threatening e-mails, despite hundreds of notifications of his behaviour being sent, and despite the fact that there’s a criminal investigation concerning his conduct being underway, AOL refused to take any action. So much for their enforcing their TOS.
