Why AOL is the enemy

My neighbour used to have AOL years ago, I remember whenever we tried IE or even Firefox, the whole system crashed and had to be restarted. He's now left them after so much frustration!
 
I remember their support:

ME: I cannot seem to set up another screen name properly. I have set the allowed online time by going into menu X and set the properties in menu Y, but still no luck.

THEM: Have you tried the option in menu X?

ME: Can you please stop being a monkey and read what I said?

THEM: I did... have you looked in menu X?

ME: ARE YOU ****ING RETARDED OR SOMETHING?

THEM: If you continue to type rude words, I will be forced to terminate this chat!

ME: YOU WILL SAVE ME FROM DOING IT YOU USELESS **** BECAUSE YOU AREN'T HELPING!
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On the plus side, I did get free AOL for around 2 years by signing up to a 2 month free trial and then when I went to cancel it they offered me a 1 month extension. Then after that month, I asked if I could try it out for a bit longer... and so on, lol!
 
must admit they screwed me as well. i didnt know the stuff about adware.

i was paying 15 quid a month for 1mb broadband, the service was for up to 8. they said it was the fastest i could get. i accepted that.

then i moved providers as the new one was a lot cheaper. i rang up and asked for the mac code. they said ok fine. recieved an email shortly afterwards saying they had cancelled my account.:mad: that meant i had to wait 3 weeks to move providers instead of a few hours with the mac code.

to top it all when i got a new connection i was recieivng 3mb broadband. so much for the 1mb limit in my area.
 
Danger Phoenix said:
I remember their support:
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I thought the aol recording on youtube was pretty ridiculous.


Obviously the people who worked in the call centres must have hated their jobs if they had drummed into them to make things so difficult for already disgruntled customers.
 
God, I remember the days of AOL.

I remember buying a case of Stellas for the weekend when the workaround for using AOL on IE was introduced. Napster and decent browsing for the weekend was ahead.

I actually took AOL's 512k Broadband when it was first introduced. I never had connection problems and got 512K speeds continuous.

As their broadband became faster, I was upgraded within weeks for free. IIRC I paid £18.99 for the 2 meg connection. Was damn cheap back then.

Then it all went **** up when their IM services was comprimised and I kept getting dodgy lady boys pretending to be fit webcam birds and it all went downhill from there. :(
 
I seem to remember one of the reasons doing the rounds for why the AOL dial-up software was difficult to remove. It was because, at the time, the CIA had a part share of AOL and the software had a keylogger built in. The logger "dialed home" every time you went on line, the upshot being of course, the CIA knew everything they wanted to know about every AOL customer. The logger was still installed even after the AOL software was uninstalled. It sounds far fetched, but we all know how stupid the CIA is, so it must be true :D
 
- AOL cd's everywhere and i mean everywhere, most ended up in landfill sites. Most round here hang on boats to scare seagulls away.
- forcing users to install terrible software on their computers which used the service you paid for to feed you spam through AOL browser (modified IE). I always used a router. And it used microfofts rendering engine, they certainly don't have the IE source code.
- famously terrible customer service. True
- dishonest charging of payg customers, something like adding 15 seconds then rounding up to the next minute. :eek: Shock horror, it's appalling, or it would simply cost more per minute if they didn't do that.
- virtually impossible to uninstall there software (adware). One un-installer when I ditched it, worked fine.
 
I remember them from the mid 90's it was the CD's that burnt into my brain, although i always thought AOL was a classier version of COMPUSERVE... but then I was young and had to pay £10 a month for global plus the phone call!! never used either but know people who use AOL now and are happy with it.
 
When I first got dial up internet AOL wasnt that bad.

Where I used to live everyone in the small area where we lived knew my dad was a tech guy and always asked him to set up their new pcs and connect them to the net.

He was unable to do it after a short time because of other things so he used to send me round.

Most of the people I set up the pcs for wanted to sign up to AOL and I would install all the hardware and software for them and when the wanted to change to a diffrent provider I would do that for them.

I must have done at least 30 or 40 pcs and I can only remember 1 or 2 who had problems wiith AOL.

When everyman and their dog started to get broardband thats when I started to run into loads of problems with AOL.

So many people I knew had connection problems and the software kept crashing (granted it was probably the fact that they used windows ME and downloaded lots of stuff from dodgey sites.)

I remember one of my friends had loads of connection problems with AOL BB I had to go to his place a few times a month for 4 or 5 months and each time I ended up having to uninstall all the AOL software and reinstalling.

In the end I convinced him to get a diffrent BB package with someone else and he was problem free for the next year until he moved and I havent seen him since.

Dont even get me started about trying to cancel his account though it tool me nearly an hour pain in the rear end that was!!!!!!!!!!
 
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