Quitting AOL...

[John L]

is not as easy as it sounds...

http://tinyurl.com/g5por (http://tinyurl.com/g5por)

[DaveM]

It does help if you've never had AOL, which every day I thank my lucky stars for.

During the 80s, I can recall when a company called Quantumlink, then Q-Link, began offering a dialup service specifically aimed at Commodore users. I considered it, decided "why on earth would I want to use my computer to hook up to something via the telephone", and promptly forgot about it. Ditto when Q-Link went public and their stock price was childishly low.

Q-Link is of course now known as AOL Time Warner. So much for my ability as a futurist. If I'd had $1,000 to invest at the time and done so....I'd be retired in someplace mighty comfy now. Sigh....

[AceOn6]

I was on CompuServe in the mid-80s, mostly in the HP forums. When CServe was sold to AOL, I cancelled my account. I guess I did the smart thing as cancelling CServe was a fairly simple process.

[DaveM]

Does Compuserve still exist? I can recall a period when it allegedly existed but actually dialing through to them was a virtual impossibility.

[Amy in Vermont]

As a true geek, I am ashamed to admit I have had an AOL account for 12 years, starting in the days when it cost 20 bucks a month plus $3.50 an hour (plus phone costs).

I have considered cancelling it several times, but so many of my friends are there.. I used to be a chat-a-holic. We have a community of folks that is pretty fluid, but has a core of folks that I would miss terribly. We get together in real time a couple of times a year, but the chat room is "home". What can I say! I also use those email accounts to test stuff for work alot, and at 15 bucks a month, I am inclined to hang on to it, for now at least.

[diver_boy]

amy, you can always use AIM. AOL is a whirlwind of pure disaster. It attaches stuff on your computer -- and even when you think you have cleaned it out, some way or another, AOL pops RIGHT back in your pc. Get rid of it!!! Get your free version of AIM (instant messenger) and call it a day. AOL sucks! (and this is coming from having 5 years of AOL) - which i gladly am glad to get rid of it. their customer service is downright horrible, and they give you such a hard time cancelling...

i remember one time, i wanted to cancel - the reason was that I was moving to Sweden (yeah, right!) - but the man said, "did you know that AOL has AOL Sweden now?!" I about fainted when I heard that - PLEASE CANCEL MY ACCOUNT!!! it took them over an hour to finally let me go....not without sending me over to another department to see if I wanted free long distance before my relationship with AOL was final.

Sorry for the vent - but AOL is bad. Bad.

[NinasSpaceChild]

I have no problems with AOL. It meets my needs.

[DaveM]

I know lots of people who have no problem with AOL. I happen to have an ISP that costs half as much and I pretty much get what I pay for, so I live with it. Despite allegedly having a spam filter on my e-mail, I just cleaned 112 pieces of crap out of my in-box. And that was just for this morning.

I cannot help but wonder how many get caught by the filter. And sometimes wonder, what if one of the Nigerians, "slot technicians", or stock analysts is the real deal? That kind of thing can give a person nightmares.

[Amy in Vermont]

Dave,

I know that at work, our spam filter stops about 90% of all incoming mail. In spite of that, I still get roughly 20 pieces of junk a day.

For all the bad folks say about AOL, they have what appears to be one of the best spam filters I have seen...

[DaveM]

I could turn my spam filter up a bit and get rid of most of the crap--the problem is that the silly thing always starts filtering out my "real" mail and the garbage still gets through. I had high hopes the for Norton Anti-Spam that came with this machine, but then ended along with my brief experiment with Outlook Express.

[Green Monkey]

Update: AOL Representative "John" has been fired, thats the guy who gave Vincent such a hard time. AOL has sent Vincent a written apology.

More on the 'quitting AOL trouble story' in this video:

http://video.msn.com/v/us/v.htm?g=a064e6b6-aa2a-49c9-9ec7-3eecfcb3e1ef,8f506371-1105-4e3c-be88-1d426dc22520&t=m23&f=15/64home&p=