Dad's story
Tell me about your experience
It all started with the continuous booting offline. Then came the junk mail and lamers (for those of you who don't know what lamers are, they are people who just go around kicking people offline for no particular reason). Then, we got a CD-ROM through the mail that AOL just guessed that he would want. Then they billed his account for $50 (appx).
Finally, he started having real financial problems. His job was a mess, taking him several hours away each week (he had to leave Sunday evening for work and stay until Saturday, leaving the next Sunday evening, still without earning enough salary to pay the bills, not to mention, AOL). Just at the end of summer (August 15, 1999) he put the account on hold for $3.99 a month.
Yeah, right. Like AOL would let him put the account on hold for $3.99. I would get online every now and then (AOL charges $2.50/hr for accounts on hold) and read my mail. Then, Dad came to me asking about a $55 bill from AOL. I never bought anything, and overall was only online for an hour and a half or so.
We kinda ignored that for awhile, and I got rid of my AOL software (for many problems which I will mention later). I thought about the $55 charge from AOL and decided to install the software again and see what it was. Curiosity killed the cat. I went to keyword Billing and checked out the bill. I looked on there and my total charges were around $6 (from 5 cents to 50 cents each session). Then I looked at the very bottom and there was this $46.87 charge that AOL calles "Fee Resubmit".
Fee ReSubmit. That's a lot of money for AOL. I told Dad about it and he just ignored it, it was ancient history. Just a week ago, he got another bill for $55. I checked it out, and it was another "Fee ReSubmit". This time, it would not be ignored.
We called up AOL and asked them what it was. They gave us a bunch of BS and finally Dad just told them to shut the account off. They willingly canceled our account and the nightmare is over. Or is it? The bank charges a $15 fee for not having enough money in the bank for what you've spent. So total, AOL charged us $30 in bank fees because of some nonsense thing they like to call "Fee ReSubmit".
We asked to be repayed for our loss, with Dad's financial situation and all, and all they gave us is a 800 number to call for credit. What kind of deal is that?!
Now I would really like to say a lot of "dirty" words on here, but I try to keep this site free of it for the people who take life so seriously they get offended by it.
What do you think? Think that AOL should have the right to take money away from a hard-working man who happens to be a member? (By the way, Dad is a construction worker).
Now, Dad has two phone lines and is currently searching for another decent ISP.
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Now for MY experience. A little over two years ago (November '97) I got my first computer. The first thing I did was install AOL 3.0 from a diskette I had. I talked my grandma (that's who I stay with most of the time) into getting me an AOL account.
The very first day I had it, somebody stole my password and I got my account canceled. I didn't know what was going on! I talked my grandma into getting the account back. I made a new screen name for this new account and went through so many painful hours of 800 numbers to get signed up it's not even funny. Finally, I got AOL back.
I had that account for about 6 months. I had me a screen name I really liked, though I had, probably, registered about 25 screen names to that one account. This one was Twisted X2. I had this private chat room I would go in all the time and people would come to it. Private chatroom Twisted Chat. I got my first web site through AOL with that screen name!
Then, one fateful day, some of these lamer people posing as AOL personnel started coming in my chatroom and kicking us out of it. They TOSed me and here I am, back to the drawing board. I used my uncle's account to get back in the chat, and they TOSed that account too! AOL didn't seem to care about what it was, just that they had some complaint from someone about this screen name and so they canceled the account. AOL seriously needs (needed, I don't know if they fixed this or not) to look into it when the same screen name TOSes multiple screen names and the owners deny it.
Anywayz, then I decided I was going to fight back. I downloaded some "progs" and "punters" to kick
these A-holes offline. Before I even got to use them, I got TOSed by the same people for them. Acutally,
I don't remember too much, but I do know that I have been TOSed from AOL at least 5 times. Yeah, 5
times. At least I've lost my account 6 times, not counting Dad's 2 lost accounts.
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There are several reasons I can give you for leaving America Online. Also I'll tell you some things to look out for.
- Do you get booted offline constantly?
- Do you get as much junk mail as I do?
- Do you get as many error messages as I do?
- Does the parental controls not allow you to go to harmless web sites?
- Does it seem to you that the AOL software has taken over your computer?
- Software. Do you have any idea how much space the software takes up?
- Is it really worth the constant busy signals to get online?
- Don't you just love those jerks who are constantly booting you offline?
- Does this privacy issue with AOL bother you the least bit? (read on for more info on the privacy issue)
- Is AOL really number one?
- The tech support's answer for everything is reinstall AOL
- Sometimes there are hidden charges. Read up at the top for more info on Dad's situation.
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On the twelveth day of AOL those Bozos gave to me,
12 reasons to cancel,
11 channels not working,
10 hours without mail,
9 frozen chat rooms,
8 hours of busy signals,
7 frozen IMs,
6 disconnections,
5 web crashes,
4 idiots at tech help,
3 error messages,
2 pieces of junk mail,
and a jerk cursing in a chat room.
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Did you hear about this privacy issue with AOL? If not, here's the scoop.
America Online changed their Terms of Service to be easier to read. Somehow in the midst of all this, they reset every member's privacy preferences to the least secure setting. In other words, if you didn't know about this, AOL can and will sell your account information to other companies for soliciting; you will get junk mail, you will be harassed by endless phone calls from nameless companies, and you will need to stop this.
If, for some ungodly reason, you wish to stay with America Online, I advise you to change your
privacy settings back to normal (highest security; you will not allow any company to harass
you with phone calls, junk mail, etc.) .
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With all this out in the open, I hope you realize just what AOL is really like. If you've been using AOL for very long, you probably already know what I'm talking about, and know all of AOL's little secrets already (at least enough to know that it's evil). I know that once you've got a taste of America Online, you don't want to quit it. I know that you've made a lot of friends on America Online and you love to chat. I know what it's like. I've been there. I want you to know that there are much better places to get chat and the Internet. That's all you need, right? Let's see, there's AOL Instant Messenger which is currently free, and lets you send IMs to any AOL or AIM user, as well as chat, file transfer, and several other features. Though it is made by America Online, it is by far much better. To get connected to the Internet, there are several decent free ISP (Internet Service Provider)s.
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