AOL Users Will Need to Pay $2 a Month For Phone Support 202
destinyland writes "8.7 million AOL subscribers face a new 20% fee increase next month — unless they agree to never call AOL's technical support lines. They'll have to use AOL chat for support or the online help "portal" unless their issue is a failed connection — and they're being enrolled in the program by default unless they opt out. Ominously, AOL used the exact same wording as when they quietly changed their terms of service to allow them to sell subscribers' home phone numbers to telemarketers. 'Your continued subscription to the AOL service constitutes your acceptance of this change.'"
The death spiral (Score:5, Insightful)
as they descend in AOHell; desperate grabs at revenue are being made. It was tough to cancel before; no you can't do it on weekends or holidays.
After creating eternal September they are sliding to obscurity.
Why the hell should we care? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nostalga is okay but in this case who gives a flying fuck? AOL is irrelevant. They are a internet portal and dialup provider. I'm with the posts that say "hey i didn't know AOL still had users!" but I take it a step further in that I don't want to know either. Back when they had a huge market share they were relevant and their pricing practices deserved scrutiny, even if 99.9% of slashdotters thought it's service was foul. Now they have to compete for the scraps of dialup users who don't want to upgrade to broadband, and that market is neither vibrant nor growing. We don't post pricing practices of Juno or netzero, do we?
C'mon it can't be that slow a news day can it?
Holy Maligned Priorities Batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
they can afford a vacation home, but can't afford internet for it?
Additionally, if it's in another country, and that country is in western europe or the pacific rim, they could probably get broadband there for half the current price of AOL.
Either way, they're paying a "tax" for that level of stupidity.
AOL "scam" e-mails (Score:5, Insightful)
You aren't kidding about grandmas.
In addition, it seems to me that AOL is tricking people into accepting this $2 increase. Let me explain:
My wife's grandma uses AOL and she told me that she got an e-mail that said that her bill will go up by $2 every month unless you click this link and answer some account security questions. I immediately thought this was a fake e-mail to get grandmas account information. I looked at the e-mail and it looks just like the false bank emails that I receive all the time. However, I called AOL and it ended being a true e-mail.
We have been trained to ignore e-mails with wording like this, how many old people do you think will just delete this e-mail and end up getting charged an extra $2?
ISPs in other countries already do this (Score:2, Insightful)
Plus this is nothing new. Telephone-based customer service is at the customer's expense in lots of places around the world, because the person making the telephone call pays the bill. So it is typical for an ISP to charge a euro or so a minute for the phone call, billed via the phone company with the monthly telephone bill. Someone has to pay the salary of the tech support person. Of course, this can lead to abuse, since the ISP earns more money by inspiring people to call technical support ... but that is fraud. The American-style system, where the ISP generally foots the bill for the technical support, might lead to better service since it is in the ISP's interest to lower tech support costs, but in my experience, it doesn't work and instead causes across-the-board higher costs for customers (e.g., with Verizon). My experience with 1&1 in Germany, despite their high cost per tech-support incidence, was fantastic --- they make the U.S. look like they are decades behind.
Re:ISPs in other countries already do this (Score:2, Insightful)
they make the U.S. look like they are decades behind.
That's because we ARE decades behind....
Re:Wow, 8.7 million still (Score:2, Insightful)
You got modded funny, but it's actually very true. Before my area had ANY broadband, we had AOL. The local dial-up ISP started charging outrageous rates, so we switched out. (This was in early 2000.)
Anyway, after years of promises, we finally got broadband from our local cable company, and I called to cancel our AOL service. I was greeted by what sounded like a computer with an Irish accent. Even funnier was that he would literally sing the last part of every line he would say. "Hello, thank you for calling AOL, what can I do foorrr youuuuuuu."
I couldn't tell if I had reached AOL customer service or some mental asylum by accident. (Cue jokes.)
When I expressed that I was calling to cancel my AOL service, the man / computer nearly broke down and cried. My attempts at being stern about wanting to cancel were continuously brushed away with what sounded like begging not cancel, the promise of up to four free months, and extreme guilt. This man or whatever it was I was talking to was not going to take no for an answer.
I finally got out of it after nearly an hour of "Please don't cancelllll; You can continue to try AOLLLLLL for a month for freeeeeeeeee, and call back to cancel if you're stilllll not satisfieeeeeeeed."
I think cheating Death out of a contract on a loophole would have been easier.
Re:Not really. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't care if the place is in a nuclear test area, most people can't afford vacation homes, and if you can afford one you can afford the broadband.
Additionally, If your utility argument held water they wouldn't have a phone line to use the dialup they're paying (20% more than "dsl lite" in my area of town) for.
Re:Get a consumer watchdog!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Didn't you hear? We're not customers anymore, we're consumers.
AOL takes their lead from VMware (Score:3, Insightful)
AOL is hardly the only company to do this. Technical support is one of the most expensive parts of an ISP's services, and even companies with sophisticated products can burn many hours of technical support on fairly minor problems that their first-tier and second-tier staff have no chance of understanding, because it's not in the troubleshooting flowchart they use. Someone has to actually understand the problem, or have tried a similar configuration.
VMware does nearly this. Their dial-up and online support is, frankly, useless, and points you to the customer forums. unfortunately, those customer forums are so deluged with similar problems and no way to expire bad answers and get them out of the forum that it's quite difficult to search through and find the real answer.
Re:Not really. (Score:3, Insightful)
The working poor aren't the way they are because of too little money. But rather, because of too much consumerism. When I look back 20 years ago, the poor kids didn't have Nike. The poor kids didn't have Polo. The poor kids didn't have SHIT. Parents put priorities first.
Now today. Every kid has fancy sneakers, cell phones, laptop computers, new cars for graduation... And bankrupt parents.
It's not the kids I'm worried about. It's the parents. What will the world be like when the parents of todays spoiled, money sucking kids, get spit out at 65 without a dime to their name - and greedy children with little desire to help them out?