Posted by: Anonymous
[ip: ]
on March 12, 2002 12:30 AM
While the article is decently written, this whole subject is of laughable importance. I was a five-year employee of AOL and their business practices are funny. Yeah some of us laughed all the way to the bank but what gets you to the top doesn't keep you at the top.
First, just because they offer a toll-free number for members to call does NOT mean that AOL "always provides toll free support". What they mean is, "we have a toll-free number that you can call, we will give you one minute to state your problem, deflect you somewhere else or send you a fix in the e-mail, and then upsell you some long distance".
Generally, for about two out of three problems, the phone rep listens to the problem and offers another number to call or explains that because it is a free product or feature, we don't support it.
The number one thing AOL reps were taught in the 90s was to get the member off the phone fast, the mantra was "send em to bubba", where "bubba" was anyone besides us (hardware vendor, ISP, microsoft, whoever).
The list of things that AOL does not support is HUGE, and gets bigger every day. AOL hasn't fully supported a 16-bit client over the phone in a long time, and that's a bad practice. Think of the retired fellows with tons of money in the bank but no need for a new computer beyond e-mail. AOL locks them out from using the service, losing out on their money (getting members to shop online with shop@aol is the number one goal at AOL), and generally loses a subscriber, due to not wanting to teach new phone reps the ins and outs of older programs.
AIM: I was one of two people who provided tech support for AIM for a couple of years, and it was ONLY done via e-mail. Same thing for "products" like AOL Search, AOL Hometown, AOL Speaks, Netscape, AOL Coach, QuickBuddy, Mail Alerts.... even a paying AOL member could not get questions answered about AIM over the telephone.
Of course I could cry and say that this all started when such and such took over this and that department and now they don't care, but it happened so quickly and so gradually... truth is that back in the day, AOL cared a little bit more. Then they got sued many times for many different reasons, and now they care only as much as 1. it takes to keep them out of legal trouble and 2. they can push the phone tech slave labor without causing them to crack (a few of them did.)
AOL does maintain a large tech support team in Ogden, Utah that handles special clients and products (the sister team was located in Jacksonville FL until it was dissolved to make way for... ugh... "AOL@School"... another fine software program that had NO SUPPORT beyond installation and ordering disks.) The third party team in Ogden would probably handle AOL on Linux unless they've been dumbed down beyond their former capabilities, too.
The AOL clients that run on Java (Mandalon and .... something..... Mega? there's a different version for Netscape and MSIE) were decent last time I checked (a year ago), keep them in the browser, the way real online services are meant to be. That's the software that powered the Gateway TouchPad or Quickwhatever.... it was a failure because it was a P.O.S.
Bottom line is that AOL software is a joke, has been a joke, and will continue to be a joke, and no Linux advocate should want their fine OS sullied by the taint of AOL, no matter how far it will advance "Linux on the desktop".
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AOL Support/ Linux/ A Joke, really
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: ] on March 12, 2002 12:30 AMFirst, just because they offer a toll-free number for members to call does NOT mean that AOL "always provides toll free support". What they mean is, "we have a toll-free number that you can call, we will give you one minute to state your problem, deflect you somewhere else or send you a fix in the e-mail, and then upsell you some long distance".
Generally, for about two out of three problems, the phone rep listens to the problem and offers another number to call or explains that because it is a free product or feature, we don't support it.
The number one thing AOL reps were taught in the 90s was to get the member off the phone fast, the mantra was "send em to bubba", where "bubba" was anyone besides us (hardware vendor, ISP, microsoft, whoever).
The list of things that AOL does not support is HUGE, and gets bigger every day. AOL hasn't fully supported a 16-bit client over the phone in a long time, and that's a bad practice. Think of the retired fellows with tons of money in the bank but no need for a new computer beyond e-mail. AOL locks them out from using the service, losing out on their money (getting members to shop online with shop@aol is the number one goal at AOL), and generally loses a subscriber, due to not wanting to teach new phone reps the ins and outs of older programs.
AIM: I was one of two people who provided tech support for AIM for a couple of years, and it was ONLY done via e-mail. Same thing for "products" like AOL Search, AOL Hometown, AOL Speaks, Netscape, AOL Coach, QuickBuddy, Mail Alerts.... even a paying AOL member could not get questions answered about AIM over the telephone.
Of course I could cry and say that this all started when such and such took over this and that department and now they don't care, but it happened so quickly and so gradually... truth is that back in the day, AOL cared a little bit more. Then they got sued many times for many different reasons, and now they care only as much as 1. it takes to keep them out of legal trouble and 2. they can push the phone tech slave labor without causing them to crack (a few of them did.)
AOL does maintain a large tech support team in Ogden, Utah that handles special clients and products (the sister team was located in Jacksonville FL until it was dissolved to make way for... ugh... "AOL@School"... another fine software program that had NO SUPPORT beyond installation and ordering disks.) The third party team in Ogden would probably handle AOL on Linux unless they've been dumbed down beyond their former capabilities, too.
The AOL clients that run on Java (Mandalon and .... something..... Mega? there's a different version for Netscape and MSIE) were decent last time I checked (a year ago), keep them in the browser, the way real online services are meant to be. That's the software that powered the Gateway TouchPad or Quickwhatever.... it was a failure because it was a P.O.S.
Bottom line is that AOL software is a joke, has been a joke, and will continue to be a joke, and no Linux advocate should want their fine OS sullied by the taint of AOL, no matter how far it will advance "Linux on the desktop".
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