Originally posted by Majormd:
Hmm, customer service was one of the few good things about AOL. I always got someone on the phone, and they didn’t pressure me to keep on using AOL when I wanted to cancel. :eek:
If you wanna cancel from AOL, it’s real simple. Just take those 2 megs of web space they give you and put up porn. They’ll cancel your ass so fast…
I personally dislike AOL.
I sold my soul to Satan for a dollar. I got it in the mail.
I don’t have AOL, but I hear lots of people bitching about it. My parents get the CD-ROM advertising 250 hours free about every week, and Ma has a nice stack going. Neither of them have ever actually touched a PC, so they aren’t in any danger. Last time I was there was around Christmas, and Ma had all the decorations up. She’s big on angels, and while I was on the phone I noticed she had about a dozen scattered around the phone table with suspiciously-shiny-round-coaster-thingies under them. I checked, and sure enough, each and every one was an AOL CD_ROM.
So at least someone is pleased with their AOL service.
Neenah
My children insist on us keeping AOL, so here I am…
BTW, I called the other night to complain about the AOL timer kicking me off without warning. The rep told me to open a chat room and only invite myself. Even though the room stays empty, AOL sees it as activity. So far it works.
Hey guys,
It is easy to fix AOL kicking you off line. I have a nifty program called Wizon that I have used for several years. It basically answers “yes” everytime Aol askes if you want to stay on line.
I emailed it to TVeblen and it fixed her problem.
If anybody wants it, post here and I will be happy to send it to you.
By the way, I really haven’t had many problems with AOL. Once and a while I get a busy signal, but that’s about it.
“It’s like banging your head against a wall because it feels so good when you stop.”
I was using this anti-timer thing on AOL, but it wouldn’t work with 5.0. If you have something better, I’d like to have a copy.
Please send to MrsBWayne@aol.com
Other than that, I have no complaints about AOL, but I’m not savvy enough to know what else is out there, either.
Thanks!
Meow!
AIM keeps aol from dumping you also. It probably works along the same lines as RonaldBarnhardt’s chat room fix, but quicker to use. I use AIM for only that purpose.
I still Hate aol.
since this is the pit…
Learn to do the codes right, SHITHEAD!!
I hate AOL. I really hate it. It sux. It really really sux. If it was a chic, it would be down on it’s knees behind a laundromat every saturday night. It blows. I hate it.
Want proof?
yahoo! Finance News
See? They’re all a bunch o’ pricks! If they were an ice cream flavor, they’d be pralines and punk-ass bitch!
I can’t say any more to express how much I hate AOL! I hope they go down and all their employess (the cool one’s, the worker bees) get huge settlements so they don’t have to work any more. As for all the corporate yes men, I hope they get stuck with a shitty job that sucks, but that still pays enough so that their families don’t needlessly suffer.
And while I’m dreaming and wishing, I’d like a new car and a million bucks.
Fat Guy in a Little Coat,
SDMB Self-Righteous Clique
I’ve already complained about this, but since the topic came up, I’ll do it again!
I decided to use the free hours, cause hey, free ISP. Anyway, at the end of my free time, I call up to cancel. The guy I talk to tells me they’ll give me a second free month (hoping to get me addicted, I guess) and I say, okay, cool. I ask him, very very specifically what this would entail, when I would have to cancel to avoid paying, etc. So I was extremely surprised to recieve my next credit card bill saying that I owed $21.95 for AOL usage! I call AOL and they check out my account. It turns out that they had indeed given me a second free month - the NEXT month. In other words, I got one free, was supposed to pay for one, and got the third for free. HELLO??? I asked about the terms of the second free month explicitly just so this wouldn’t happen! AOL fucking lied to me, and I was so pissed off I sent a very polite letter to my credit card company explaining why I would not pay for the AOL. Still working on getting myself excused from paying that. I could just pay it, but it’s the principle of the thing, and THAT is why I hate AOL.
Although I also currently hate my regular ISP, which decided that it would be really cool if it simply stopped working on Wednesday evening. Despite an hour of talking on the phone with tech support and assurances that it would work, it’s still not working. I’m presently online with the free student ISP, which gives me 10 hours a week (I pay $11 a month for unlimited access…supposedly.) The moral of the story is that no ISPs are perfect, I guess, especially AOL and UCSC’s CATS ISP.
~Harborina
“This is my sandbox. I’m not allowed to go in the deep end. That’s where I saw the leprechauns.”
Ah—AOL—let me name the ways I hate thee…
I have some old-timer computer friends who said that when AOL went “big time” and lowered their rates considerably (before most other ISPs, apparently - I think this was in '95 or so) that the Internet was flooded with a whole bunch of newbies that had all of a sudden signed up. Those new low prices lured them in. AOL’s lines were always busy, and all these clueless newbies come in ALL AT THE SAME time, doing many clueless newbie things on the internet, antagonizing the old timers. I guess that sudden influx made a big impression on everyone. To be honest, it’s still going on. I mean, I think it is common for a person’s first ISP (not that AOL is a “real” ISP) to be AOL - they hand-hold you through the whole process. So, a higher percentage of newbies have AOL addresses, and do their typical newbie blunders with AOL tacked on to their names. So - of course people will still associate “newbie” with AOL! I confess I do.
My personal experience with AOL was bitter. I got it when I got my first computer. My PC crashed when using the software. When I put the software on a new PC I got late, it immediately (like, within 5 minutes) crashed too! Screw that.
There were also the busy signals, the being bumped off, the clicking on something and getting an hourglass taking you nowhere for 20 minutes, the online web page software that DIDN’T work…I could go on and on.
After two months, I decided that I’d had enough of trying to fix the buggy software, and all the other shit, I called to cancel. One of my friends has used the phrase “Death will not seperate you” in regards to AOL. He was right. The customer service guy just would not let me go. He tried to tell me it was all my computer’s fault (even the buggy online web authoring software - which was a lie - AOL’s message boards were full of other people with the same problems.) He was truly tenacious. Finally after about 20 minutes I convinced him to pull the plug. Whew! Free at last.
I got on EarthLink, found out what real freedom is!
I tried the free AOL thingy too. When I decided to cancel, the person on the other line asked me if I used all the services,and started to prattle on about the things I could go to, and things AOL had. It seemed like they were desparate to keep me as a customer. I pretty much ignored them. It was more amuzing than anything.
However, I do have a free dial up account with my school. since it’s a local call I don’t have to payeach month. It’s nice being able to have what I want without extra shit that I will never use. Also, customer service is always available, because I can go right up to the building where they manage the schools intranet / internet connections.
It’s worth the risk of burning, to have a second chance…
apologies for poss. getting off topic, but had anyone tried worldspy? i have free net access w/o pop-up ads, and my mail is linked to my outlook express-- a few tech problems along the way, but free and sans the spam and sneaky crap you get through hotmail.
the hog squeal of the universe is coming from my modem!
[[Well, I also hate their stupid browser, but I just bypass it and use Netscape.]]
Also owned by AOL.
I tried AOL for about a week, maybe five years ago. I encountered some problem that required calling customer service. Well, after punching in about 45 keys and STILL not having the option to talk to a person, I finally hit the key for “cancel your AOL account.” That got me through to a human being really quick. I told him I was cancelling because I had a free student account and he gave me no hassle. But I’ve never been tempted to try AOL since.
Jill, can I pretend at least that I’m raging against the machine by using a pre-AOL version of Netscape? v3.0 or something? 
“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
Just a tiny clarification…I did receive Wizon and appreciated the tip. Probably due to my own incompetence, I couldn’t get it to work well.
Faced with doing something or heaving my laptop out of a second-storey window, I went a-searching and found FREEON+ from Adjunga. It has worked great; shareware, cost a whopping $20 and it stopped, cold the bumping offline and annoying AOL spam.
Yea, it is but a bandaid on the supperating wound that is AOL, but at least helped.
Veb
Oh, how I love my university’s free T1/LAN ethernet connection. I am afraid to go out into the real world just because I don’t want to be parted with our ethernet. I had relatively few problems with USWEST as an ISP, but damn you can’t beat the speed of a T1!! (except when all 4000 students are using it at the same time on a weekday afternoon, okay, okay, so it has its drawbacks. But boy are they few and far enough between)
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” --Whitman
How do I dislike AOL? This is just for starters…
1 For some reason, when using AOL, I cannot perform simple functions, like
Cutting and Pasting into a MB. Others (in the ATMB forum) have said they don’t have
this problem, but I did, and I found it extremely aggravating, and limiting.
I had been using AOL for a couple of weeks, and got so fed up with the problems, I just
hooked up with a different ISP, and whaddaya know, I can C&P again.
2 AOL boots me off when I am reading a MB (good to know there are tricks to
avoid this, but for me it’s too little, too late.)
3 Sleazy, unsolicited porn come-on e-mail messages. At least 10 per day. I
know for a fact that I have done nothing to lead “them” to believe I want these messages.
(And I am the only one in my household that gets on line) I don’t care if I get an
occasional advertisement e-mail. But I do care if it’s porn.
(Call me a prude…)
4 I wasn’t able to send projects from my computer via e-mail because AOL got in
the way. Now I can again. (And I do a lot of that. I compile photo albums of the “chicklet” and e-mail them to G-Mas and G-Pas across the country with Corel. AOL doesn’t allow that, or bypassing it was too complicated a task for my barely computer literate self…?)
AOL just goofs with other settings on your computer, especially if you have software for
more than 1 ISP installed.
Bleyecch.
I like Earthlink, which is where I am now, and it does not interfere with other functions on my computer.
Voted “Most Popular Small Appliance” on the SDMB 1999
(ok, so I made it up!)
Chrome Toaster