Good customer service is something that seems to be in very short supply these days. I’ve always valued good customer service and I have a small group of favorite companies I like to do business with because I have had good experiences with them. It’s not a large list, but these companies have earned my business and I am very loyal to them.
On the other hand, there is also a small group of companies I will never do business with. AOL, or America Online as they are otherwise known, hold a prominent position within that group.
I cannot be certain, but I think I actually had an AOL account way back in the early days of getting online. It was probably around the time I had a CompuServe account (remember them?). I have been through so many service providers over the years that I cannot recall if my experience with AOL was a good one or a bad one.
What I am certain of is that I did not keep the account very long. If I had used it for any significant length of time, I would surely remember.
I guess my experience with AOL could not have been all that bad if I am not able to recall much about it, but that’s not important since it is the things I have heard since that time that earned them a spot on my ‘never do business with’ list.
Firstly and most importantly, anyone choosing to get online via AOL is not going to be on the ‘real’ internet as I understand it. AOL is, and always has been in the business of creating their own customized internet experience for their customers. Heck, that’s probably something they brag about!
The problem is that they are offering their customers what amounts to a ‘dumbed down’ version of the internet. Access to the internet is controlled with the software they provide, so you are essentially viewing the internet as AOL thinks you should see it and not as the internet really is.
Chief among their reasons for doing this is profit. No surprise there. The environment they provide their customers with makes it very easy for them to shove advertisements in their faces. Advertisements they are getting paid to show of course.
There has been a controversy or two through the years about whether or not AOL has at times filtered various elements of the internet to prevent their customers from accessing them. I have no idea whether or not that is true, but I know for a fact that it is something that could easily be done if a company like AOL had the inclination to do so.
But since the above issue is not based in any real fact that I am aware of, perhaps we should examine the issue of customer service. That’s something I do have some factual information about.
When I was working as a real estate agent I became known around the office as someone who knew a bit about computers. I spent a couple of decades doing that kind of work and was happy to help anyone around the real estate office who asked me.
One day one of the agents in the office came to ask me about AOL. She was an older woman and very pleasant, and like a lot of folks, was not terribly savvy when it came to computers. She described a problem she had been having while using her AOL service and hoped I would have a suggestion for her. Other than cancel AOL, that is!
Not being an AOL user myself, I really am not familiar with the inner workings of their software and told the other agent that I really didn’t know much about AOL at all. I asked her if she had called AOL for help and she told me she had called a number of times and they were not able to help her. The most recent time she had called they had basically told her that there was nothing they could do to help her.
I was a little surprised to hear that, although not having a very good opinion of AOL to begin with, I was not completely shocked. Still, it was a bit much to hear that they had told her that they were not able to help her. What kind of customer service is that? She was having a problem with their service and they tell her there is nothing they can do to help her? That’s ridiculous.
What prompted me to post this was a segment from the cable news channel MSNBC that someone posted on the internet. It’s about a guy that was forced to waste 21 minutes of his time trying to convince some jackass at AOL to cancel his account.
Once this stuff hits TV, is never fails to get the attention of the company in question and they quickly recruit one of their public relations minions to fire off a letter of apology. Sure, enough, AOL sent an apologetic letter to MSNBC so they could let everyone know how sorry they were and that they had fired the jackass in question.
The former AOL customer that was feature for the segment said he felt a little bit sorry about the jackass getting fired over the incident, but I sure wouldn’t. After the obnoxious behavior that guy demonstrated, he surely deserved to be fired.
I can’t help but suspect that he was probably doing exactly what AOL wanted him to do, but as we know under these circumstances, someone has to take the fall, and it’s usually the little guy at the bottom of the pay scale.
To see the MSNBC segment yourself, click here.
AOL got their start back in the days when the dial-up modem ruled supreme on the internet landscape and was the only way the vast majority of people could get on the internet. Although many folks are still left with only that choice, high-speed options like cable modems and DSL have been making a great deal of progress and offering more people a much improved internet experience.
Not wanted to be left behind during this revolution, AOL came up with an idea to get a piece of the high-speed pie as well. Although, they don’t directly supply the service that enables people to get online using a high-speed connection, they wisely partnered with some of the companies that actually do provide high-speed internet service and have given high-speed customers the opportunity to replace the experience of being on the internet with the experience AOL thinks you should have on the internet.
They have been running a lot of commercial ads on TV for their high-speed offering and using the slogan: ‘Want a better internet? You belong at AOL.’ Well, I guess I don’t have to tell you that I think that is the biggest crock of crap I have ever heard regarding internet service. For my money, it should be: ‘Want a better internet? AOL is the last thing you need.’
All the various ‘services’ they talk about during their commercials like ‘spam blockers,’ ‘spyware blockers’ and ‘pop-up blockers’ are all available for free from most major internet service providers these days, and even if they are not offered free by your internet provider, I can show you of a free version of each of those programs that anyone can download from the internet for their own use. They are not hard to find, just search for them using one of the major search engines, like Google or Yahoo.
In my opinion, you are much better off with a ‘pure’ internet connection without imposing AOL’s idea of what the internet should look like on unsuspecting high-speed customers. AOL is purely and ‘add on’ for a high-speed connection and certainly is not something you need to get a high-speed internet connection.
In my experience, all the big internet companies are providing all the help and tools you need to get online and you don’t need to be shelling out money to AOL every month when all you need is the high-speed connection.
When all we had was dial-up, it could be argued that AOL provided a valuable service by connecting people to the internet. Even if it was all through the customized interface they provided. These days however, if you have high-speed internet service available in your area, I would consider AOL service completely useless and something that would actually detract from your online experience.
The tools needed to get you online sending e-mail and surfing the web are no more complicated than setting up AOL service on your PC. I’m sure AOL is not too happy to see these kinds of things getting easier and easier since they can no longer claim that their software is so much easier to use than the standard tools you can use to do everything you need to do on the internet.
Perhaps I should say that they should no longer claim that their software is so much easier, since I suppose they are free to make whatever claim they choose according to the amount of risk they are willing to accept.
I think getting online is moving beyond the need some people may have for services like AOL. My mother-in-law is a newly-minted internet user herself, and previous to that she really knew nothing about using the internet at all. A quick lesson or two from my wife and a new computer later, she is now happily sending e-mail and playing bingo on the web every day.
When more people understand that getting on the internet is not rocket science and high-speed internet reaches almost everyone who wants it, it might be hard for AOL to come up with a reason to exist. I’d like to think so anyway. At least it would put an end to those annoying television commercials.
[tags]aol, msnbc, video segment, cancel account[/tags]
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