Show home Page

About the Devil and AOL

Few moths ago I went to buy a laptop form Saturn (Germany).
An AOL advertiser tricks me to sign a contract for 1 year with the Devil (AOL).
It told me that I will also receive a free modem but finally it was a lie. I never received a modem so I had to spend 142EU on a new modem. Why? Because only a customer that signed an independent contract received a modem. That AOL moron sold me the contract together with the laptop I bought and it gives me and insignificant discount for that laptop.
So I gained few lazy euros buying the laptop but I spent 142 EU on the new modem. Bingo! This is what I call spirit of business.

Since then the hell moved in my house.
First it possessed my commuter through their software: AOL9.
When I tried in the first day to connect to the Internet I didn't succeed. After few phone calls (paid not free) they convinced me that I can't use the Internet connection without they software AOL9.
So I was forced to install this beautiful software.
It installed few HUNDRED of megabytes without giving me the possibility to choose a folder (it spread through my entire computer), and it installed 2 services also without asking me.



Their AOL 9 is colorful like the doll of a sissy girl and it needs AT LEAST 100MB of your computers memory to load and run.
It crashed my computer 5 times in first day.
It also didn't work with my firewall Zone Alarm 5. Again after few phone calls they recommended to install a free under-table made firewall instead my powerful Zone Alarm.
So the firs week at AOL was a nightmare and I was forced to reinstall Windows one time and their software several times.
Finally the support team from AOL put me to install an older (and much smaller) version of AOL.
This time their software wasn't colorful at all. Actually it looked like an obsolete Windows 3.1 application.
It also didn't worked. Please remember that Internet Explorer and Netscape 7 worked ONLY if AOL was open and running (and eating memory).
After another few days I called AOL to break the contract. In that moment they told me that actually it is possible to use the Internet connection without installing ANY additionally AOL software.
It was a 30 seconds procedure using a Microsoft Windows wizard.
Finally I removed almost all AOL crap (after uninstall, AOL didn't removed all traces) from my computer and I reinstalled Zone Alarm back.
ICS still doesn't work. So I had to spend another 119 american dollars to buy a software that made possible to use the AOL Internet connection on both my computers.

Now after few months I bought a professional web hosting account for a good company called M6.net
Of course I wanted to close my old Yahoo email account and to use my new email address (few gigs bytes storage space).
Until then the Devil left me alone since I didn't used their software, support, email address, and web server/space.
But now when I tried to use my new email (provided by M6) AOL didn't allow me to send emails: SMTP error 421. Rate limited.
I decided not to call AOL again because I know how many hours I need to spend around the phone. So I contacted AOL through their online chat support.
After waiting 20 minutes a guy managed to type from time to time some answers to me. I think it played Solitaire while speaking to me.
Discussions started at 6:06:56 PM and ended at 6:35:31 PM. It contains 29 replica lines. 29 phrases in 30 minutes.
AOL must have the slowest employ in the world.
That guy told me that AOL limit the number of email sent. I tried to find what that number is but it gives me only evasive answers. I only send 3 or 4 emails and they cut my line saying that already is too much!
It gave me the email address where I could find help (actually I used this chat hoping to find that help but it was too busy with that Solitaire game).
When I told to that guy that it is unhelpful he closed my connection even if my question was unanswered.

So I sent some emails to the addresses it gave me. The answer:

<postmaster@aol.com>:
64.12.138.120 failed after I sent the message.
>Remote host said: 554-
>554 TRANSACTION FAILED
>This is a permanent error; I've given up.

Also at support@aol.com is nobody home:
>>> RCPT To:<support@aol.com>
<<< 550 support IS NOT ACCEPTING ANY MAIL

Long live AOL! Next time I will buy Internet form the food store at the 1Kg can. I think they are much better than AOL :)

My ratings for AOL Company:

Support: 2
Honesty: 1
Internet connection quality: 7
Embedded software: 1 (AOL9)
Security/privacy: 2

(scale from 1 to 10, 10 is the best)