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| Fygee 909th Post
 
Red Carpet Regular Member++
    
    
    
|  "AOL is run by surly drunken morons."
, posted Fri 9 Jan 05:13
Either that or they just have a naturally aggresive and argumentative attitude. Anyone showing any shreds of decency or kindness are likely fired on the spot.
Here's the skinny. After much discussion and knife throwing, the family decided it was time to stop using shit dial-up and go broadband, so my brat of a sister would stop using our only phone line. The problem with her has been getting progressively worse, and there's no real way to keep her off it anymore (she either throws a tremendous fit which results in the destruction of nice things, or just creates another AOL account, which is now possible as you no longer require a credit card, or any kind of proof of identity any more to sign up). I gave Sprint a call and now we have DSL, so I can now download my movies of dubious morality in less than a week, and get on any time of the day.
Now that everything was set up nice and fine, we figured there's no use of having AOL anymore, so we gave them a call to cancel. Instead of met with a curteous "We'll take care of that for you", instead we got yelled at by the customer service rep for allowing a minor to create an account (it was done without our knowledge initially, and they fucking REMOVED everything that prevented minors from signing up after AOL 8.0 came out), and threatened with charges. Being that my grandmother is old, bitter, and half Italian, she got royally pissed and 0wn3d the service rep in an amusing shouting match about how AOL were the ones that were negligent, especially with their "higher then thou" attitude and their initial refusal to cancel the stupid account. Eventually the service rep backed down and cancelled the account, and we all had a good story to tell people for the day. Peace was restored throughout the land and the populace was prancing with glee amongst the streets.
Then we get a letter in the mail yesterday claiming that we reactivated the account and that we would be charged the usual monthly fee again ($24 btw), including this month. First, that's not even possible as I uninstalled AOL on the main computer, and deleted any previous AOL account info on the other, so no one could've reactivated the account without doing it though me. Second, the letter was addressed simply to "AOL Member", which is quite illegal as any bills or notifications of subscription require a specific addressee name (as to prevent fraud or accidental subscription/billing). So we go for round 2...
We get a different service rep on the phone this time, so we figure that things would be better this time around. Turns out this person was even worse than the last one, saying that only the person who reactivated the account could cancel it again, and then getting into an even bigger arguement about how no one reactivated it to begin with. We were insulted, told we're unsuitably raising a minor (its not really all that far from the truth, but you know what I mean ), claiming fraudlent information, and that all company policies are iron clad and there was nothing we could do. So I got on the phone and delt some serious shit about how the previous AOL rep was rude and probably failed to properly cancel it the first time, and also how AOL is resorting to stupid and desperate tactics like removing any and all methods of age, ID, and address verification from their subscription and billing methods due to their constant loss of money (they lost 500 billion dollars last year). The costumer rep flat out laughed at me like I was some uninformed moron, told me I was wrong, and that its illegal to speak such slanderous accusations. Well, after things got really dirty, the service rep finally said that the subscription was canceled, and that AOL would file charges if I ever "harrassed or slandered" them again.
I couldn't help but laugh at the ordeal, but after all was said and done, I got the impression that I was hardly the first person to complain about such things (especially since I heard another rep arguing with another customer in the background), and that AOL is getting a LOT of subscription cancellation notices and complaints about their new "easy access" subscription system, and they're super desperate to keep as many customers as they can, even if it means through intimidation, false information, and being flat out rude.
So if you're a AOL member and you plan on cancelling anytime soon (which I highly recommend as they clearly do NOT deserve the business or money), be ready for a fight.
(Edit - Just a sidenote, does anyone know a good place to host images? My current host blows.)
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| OmegaDog 980th Post
Red Carpet Regular Member++
| "Re(2):AOL is run by surly drunken morons." , posted Fri 9 Jan 10:23:
No CS problems here, so I'll just go on a tangent and relate a couple of stories:
- Back home in 1997, we signed up with a start-up dial-up ISP and went for their 6-month plan. After the 6 months were up, they never sent us our bill for the next billing period, but we still had service. And we were able to use their service for the following years. My folks have moved on to DSL since, but the ISP is still around, and the account is still valid -- they use the ISP's webmail service for e-mail, and they probably still have dial-up service available from them!
- Anyone remember WOW! from Compuserve? They sucked. The whole on-line experience was through a graphical interface which, if I remember right, limited the resolution to 640x480 (with much of the screen taken by the border), with the browser and other programs built into the main WOW! program (so nothing was upgradable and, to my recollection, no outside online program could be used with WOW!'s service). Also, transfer rates were horribly slow in peak hours: on our 33.6K modem, it took about 30 minutes to download a 1.3 MB file (the Megaman X PC demo from HappyPuppy.com).
"I'll punish you with my burning fist of justice!!" | CCT: NEXT STAGE IS 15 |
[this message was edited by OmegaDog on Fri 9 Jan 10:31] |
| Radish 2017th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
    
    
| "Re(3):AOL is run by surly drunken morons." , posted Fri 9 Jan 10:31
quote:
No CS problems here, so I'll just go on a tangent and relate a couple of stories:
- Back home in 1997, we signed up with a start-up dial-up ISP and went for their 6-month plan. After the 6 months were up, they never sent us our bill for the next billing period, but we still had service. And we were able to use their service for the following years. My folks have moved on to DSL since, but the ISP is still around, and the account is still valid -- they use the ISP's webmail service for e-mail, and they probably still have dial-up service available from them!
- Anyone remember WOW! from Compuserve? They sucked. The whole on-line experience was through a graphical interface which, if I remember right, limited the resolution to 640x480 (with much of the screen taken by the border), with the browser and other programs built into the main WOW! program, meaning nothing was upgradable and, to my recollection, no outside online program could be used with WOW!'s service. Also, transfer rates were horribly slow in peak hours: on our 33.6K modem, it took about 30 minutes to download a 1.3 MB file (the Megaman X PC demo from HappyPuppy.com).
Haha, I remember my dad subscribed to Compuserve when it was 100% text based. He tried to download a map of some place and it never ended up working.
We had AOL back when they first started and it was a mess. I was used to BBS boards where you had to type in exverything and it was a text based interface. However they were one of the only way to get game demos and stuff back in the day other than usenet. When I tried on AOL, it took easily 10 times as long and since it didn't tell you file sizes before you downloaded, I actually spent an entire afternoon getting a 10k file. It was outraeous.
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| OmegaDog 980th Post
Red Carpet Regular Member++
| "Hijacking the thread: Dial-up BBS!" , posted Fri 9 Jan 11:03
quote:
Haha, I remember my dad subscribed to Compuserve when it was 100% text based. He tried to download a map of some place and it never ended up working.
We had AOL back when they first started and it was a mess. I was used to BBS boards where you had to type in exverything and it was a text based interface. However they were one of the only way to get game demos and stuff back in the day other than usenet. When I tried on AOL, it took easily 10 times as long and since it didn't tell you file sizes before you downloaded, I actually spent an entire afternoon getting a 10k file. It was outraeous.
Oh man, that reminds me -- the days of the dial-up BBS! I remember being about 14 or 15 at the time -- my father brought back local computer publications from work, which I would scour for any local BBS numbers I could dial up and try to get programs off of. First time I dialed long-distance was to the Sierra On-line BBS, to download a patch to our copy of KQ6.
After that, I stole chances here and there to connect to the Sierra BBS, incurring occasional 50c. and 95c. long-distance charges. But one time, I decided that I shouldn't be without a demo to one of the Incredible Machine games. So I started up a 1.2 MB download through the terminal.
... it took 1 hour. The cost of the session was $21. (My folks were pretty pissed...)
... and it was soon afterward that my school got a computer lab with direct connections to the wonderous Internet, where I could've downloaded the same demo very quickly and put it on a floppy for free. ("Sonuvabitch!")
Ah, the memories...
"I'll punish you with my burning fist of justice!!" | CCT: NEXT STAGE IS 15 |
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"Re(1):AOL is run by surly drunken morons." 
flakier crust!"