Anti-AOL

So last week was Retro Week at the house of Anti-AOL. Just for old time's sake I installed AOL 9.0 Optimized and AOL 9.0 SE on my computer (both ancient versions of AOL, in case you didn't know), confident that my own how-tos would help pull me out of any issues removing them.

Boy, was I wrong.

I spent days trying to understand why what I wrote to guide others through this very problem was made out of pure fail. The problem itself was this: the AOL Uninstaller (Choose Which Products to Remove) hung while searching for other versions of AOL, regardless of which version of AOL I installed - at one point, I had both versions mentioned above, plus AOL 9.0VR, but still, no dice.

It's not that I suck - is it?

By last Friday I was ready to leave myself a comment on most of my removal articles saying that I suck and to just delete the entire blog to save face while I still could, but then I thought better of it, if only because I was finally getting a little much-needed attention in News. With so many eyes on your blog you can't just go...

I give up - AOL wins again!

So anyway, I'm going to guide others through removing AOL from Vista by doing the very thing I hate doing and have told others not to do dozens of times - just delete it. It's not as easy as it sounds, it's not fun, and it's not quick, but it can be done safely and effectively if you take the steps in the right order. My next post will have the actual how-to.

This post is just me letting off some steam before I write it.

What puzzles me the most is, I've had dozens of AOL installations on my Vista systems over the years (purely for testing purposes) and removed them without hassles in almost all cases. When I did run into hassles, my own tutorials got me through them.

This marks the first time I've understood what everyone else is talking about when they email me that a certain how-to (or none of the how-tos) is working for them. My guess is that having Vista fully updated to SP2 might have something to do with AOL's wayward inability to uninstall. But honestly, I just can't figure it out.

So far readers have thanked me for helping them get back over $1,200 from AOL. This is not chump change.

Reading my blog helped Sarah discover that even though AOL was still charging her every month for an account she canceled almost a year and a half ago, there was still hope she could get back the $400 AOL had taken from her bank account without her permission by the time she wrote to me. In Sarah's own words:

I bought a computer in February 2008. The computer came with a free trial offer to AOL. I signed up for the offer on a Friday. I decided to choose a different internet provider and canceled my account the same weekend. I never received a letter, email, or phone call from AOL until June of 2009, when my card expired and AOL could not process my payment. I had no idea they were even charging my account until I received the letter. I tried calling and after about 15 minutes of prompts finally got someone who's English was obviously his second language.

When I tried explaining my situation it was like he wasn't even listening to me and was continually trying to sign me up for more services. He got me so upset I ended up hanging up on him. My husband called back demanding to speak with a manager. We ended up speaking with a another non-English speaking person who informed me that I could write a letter explaining what I wanted them to do along with copies of my bank statement showing what I had been charged. I did this, sent the letter, and never heard anything back.

In July I got a bill from AOL saying that I owed $51.80. I sent another letter explaining the situation again, and both letters have included my work and cell numbers where I can be reached. I have yet to hear from them. Now today I received another letter saying that it is now going to collections. AOL owes me between $300-400 dollars. I have accepted the fact that I will probably never see a cent of this money, however now I have something that I don't even owe going on my credit report. What advice can you give me?

I explained to Sarah that she should file a complaint against AOL with the BBB and told her how doing so helped another reader get back over $800 from AOL. I also suggested she file complaints with the FL Attorney General (she lives in Florida and has given me permission to use her name) and with the FTC. I also suggested she file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Bureau. When AOL deducts money from your debit, credit card, or bank account without your permission, that's online fraud - and that's a crime in all 50 states.

That was in mid-September. She wrote me again a few days ago with the good news:

Thank you so much for your help with this matter. I wanted to let you know that AOL paid me back the $414.40 they owed me. I was really set to the idea of never seeing the money again. I was very surprised but when I filed a report with the BBB, within a month the money was back in my account. Thank you.

I want to keep publishing these emails to show my readers that if AOL won't let you cancel, or if they won't let you cancel without slapping you with erroneous, outrageous fees, or if they simply won't stop billing you once your AOL account is canceled, the BBB is on your side.

It seems like once you contact the BBB, AOL will almost instantly bend over backwards to resolve your issue (you can scroll down this page on the BBB to see just how many cases AOL has either resolved or "tried to resolve" - that's all of them).

The BBB even "tried to resolve" my issue with AOL years ago, which did not stop me from starting this blog.

It's not the fastest or easiest way to get your money back - but it works. I encourage you, if you're getting taken advantage of by AOL, to file an online complaint with the BBB.

The account for this journal was set to expire, based on when I started paying for it back in 2006, on Jan. 24th. While I usually renew early - in case, I don't know, I get hit by a train or something - thanks to a contest I entered on LiveJournal that I won, I can go back to my more natural inclination to put off renewing for a while. But I will be putting one more year of paid time on this blog before next June or July - it's got nine lives, somehow.

You can read more about the contest here.

Ready?

So you're ready to make the big switch. You've set up an account with a new service provider so you won't lose your Web connection, you've saved your AOL email, Favorites and AOL Address Book, and you want to call AOL soon to cancel your account.

New Game In Town

In the meantime, you're looking to get rid of AOL's software and on the lookout for a way to get on the Web that's fresh, fast, and fun. Maybe a friend or co-worker told you about Firefox and you're intrigued. You should be. Nearly 25% of web users worldwide are devoted to Firefox, with it's clean, simple look, exceptional speed, excellent pop-up controls, and awesome private browsing features. This article will help you make the switch.

Wait...what is Firefox?

Firefox replaces AOL's program with a much lighter, slimmer one called a "browser" that you can surf the Web with. It doesn't include an email or IM program (a fact I'd really like to change), but with so many free online email and instant messaging services to choose from, and tons of free, high-quality email and IM clients that are just a click away once you install them, that's no big deal.

Where is it?

The latest and greatest copy of Firefox is always right here. To get started, just download Firefox and run it's installer program. Once the installer is done, keep the check box filled for "Run Firefox now" so you can start surfing right way.

Where's what I use in AOL?

The difference between using AOL or IE and Firefox goes like this:

• Instead of clicking View - Refresh to reload a page, in Firefox you'll click View - Reload.
• Instead of saving pages in Favorites in AOL or IE, in Firefox, you'll save pages in Bookmarks. The Firefox Bookmarks offer tons of helpful sorting and tracking tools, and there are many add-ons (I'll get to those in a bit) that can help you do even more with them.
• Unlike the way you clear cookies and "tracks" in AOL or IE, in Firefox you can clear them manually whenever you want or clear them automatically at browser shutdown.
• Instead of clicking a "Search" button to search the Web in AOL or IE, in Firefox you'll use a tiny search box that's always visible in the upper-right hand corner. Firefox is set to search Google by default, but if you want to try another search site (or try them all) you can do that.
• Unlike the way search results open in the same page of the AOL Search window, in Firefox, your search results will open in a new page; you can just use the Back Button to return to the page you were on.
• Instead of using clunky pop-up dialogs for downloads in AOL or IE, in Firefox you just use a Download Manager. You can start installing or viewing downloads right away from Firefox's Download Manager, or get to them whenever you like from the folder they're saved to on your computer.

Flyin' Now

Once you start surfing the Web with Firefox, you'll notice web pages look better than they do in AOL or IE, websites load faster, a lot of content that's blocked or unusable in AOL or IE will finally show up and look just the way you want it to, and you'll feel cool knowing Firefox is one of the safest, most secure browsers on Earth.

Pimpin'

Firefox is made with "open source" code that anyone can draw up, so anyone (yes, even you!) can create an "add-on" to add to how Firefox looks and feels. Luckily, there are so many add-ons (estimates say maybe tens of thousands!) that you don't have to make your own to get every sort of cool thing you could want. You can find and download all the free, high-quality add-ons you want here.

There's also a set of steps for how Firefox runs that you can see by typing "about:config" into Firefox's address bar. You can change any of those steps so Firefox will work just the way you want it to.

For more on what you can do with Firefox, here's some posts on the Web that go on where I'll leave off:

• How to Customize Firefox
• Have It Your Way In Firefox!
• 20 Firefox Tips and Tweaks

Want to see my Firefox add-ons? (I think I have over 60 of them!) They're here.

Admittedly, I haven't kept up with how many people get laid off at AOL. There are so many layoffs every year, all year long at AOL, that keeping up is rather time-consuming. Luckily, Alley Insider has picked up where I left off with a much better chart than the one I made (it's also better than Valleywags's, which was the one I tried to improve upon) with a new layoff chart of their own.

I like it better than Valleywag's or my own chart because a) you can see it (I seem to have lost the bigger copy of my chart), 2) it lists the name of the CEO who presided over each layoff in chronological order, and c) it's bigger than my chart, or did I say that already? oh, and d) it's up to date, which the other charts no longer are.

If I were to get really ambitious, I'd compare all three charts (it would help if I could see my own chart, of course, but I can't) and come up with an improved version, if needed, that I could add to this December or next February (depending on which rumor you believe) when the bulk of AOL layoffs are supposed to happen (rumors place the upcoming body count between 1,000-2,000 people).

My apologies to Alley Insider: LiveJournal forbids embedding of iframes; thanks to JavaScript hackers weeks ago, LJ's own embedding format is still disabled except for video, so I can't use the codes given on AI to embed the chart properly.

ETA: As soon as I wrote this post, I found a bigger copy of my chart, linked to right under the smaller copy. Since it's my usual habit to link bigger images to smaller ones (but not to place the link to the bigger image underneath), I thought I'd lost the bigger version, which pretty much sums up what I would think.

Nicholas Carlson wants you to know the full extent to which doublespeak is used by AOL. To that end, he's reprinted a chart that AOL drew up for their recent earnings call. The chart is titled, in big, bold letters, "AOL Highlights". This gets funnier, I promise.

The total number of subscribers was down, total revenue was down, and of course, total profit was down. But that didn't stop AOL from trying to make things look good, at least to the average layperson. It's hard to absorb what lengths AOL went to to obscure the facts without seeing the chart, so here it is:

To anyone who saw the chart without hearing the earnings call, it might look like AOL had a banner year: there are no negative numbers, and growth appears to be up in all categories.

But, wait.

2009's figures, which are lower, are on the left, while 2008's much higher figures are on the right. If you read charts the way most people do (from left to right) without looking at the dates, you will certainly think subscription, advertising, and all other forms of revenue are up - especially since they're listed under the "Growth" column.

But the "Growth" column figures are purely negative. They're not expressed as such (AOL used no minus signs). By the time I was done reading this chart, I was impressed, but probably not in the way AOL would want me to be: it's the most unintentionally amusing thing AOL has released in a long time (but AIM 6.9 comes really close).

To break it down...

AOL is continuing to suck. To put the missing negative values back into focus, year over year:

• Subscription revenue dropped 29%
• Total ad revenue dropped 18%
• "Other" revenue dropped 14%
• Total of all revenue dropped 23%
• Operating income dropped 40% (ouch!)
• AOL made only half a billion. Maybe less.

Getting all that out in the open makes me feel so much better.

I'm asking because one of my primary annoyances is not having an all-in-one browser/IM/email client to usher ex-AOL users to once they're ready to quit AOL. For years I've wanted to be able to say to them, "There's this program named X that works just like AOL does, with instant messaging, email, and browsing all in one client, but it runs on a more modern layout engine, loads more pages the right way than AOL or IE does, and it's safer to use and more enjoyable than AOL is."

Outside of SeaMonkey, there is nothing on the market that I know of that can replace not just what AOL has, but the way AOL combines it all into one client. I don't think it's a bad thing to just use Firefox and say, Yahoo! webmail and/or Outlook if you like, and to keep an AIM or MSN client on the computer for chat, but for people who have used AOL forever and like having all three tools ready-to-go in one browser, having a replacement for that would make it much easier for them to move away from AOL.

While I like SeaMonkey for it's strong Mozilla/Gecko backbone, it falls short of what I'd want to see ex-AOLers using for several reasons: the GUI is out-of-date and would need a complete re-write to bring it up to today's standards, you can't use too many Firefox add-ons or any Firefox themes with it, and the few SeaMonkey themes that are available are getting pretty old. SeaMonkey crashes a lot, and it does not work with AOL's SMTP (at least, not as of last night). It doesn't include any modern chat, just Chatzilla/IRC.

I would like to see a more modernized version of the SeaMonkey client, or an entirely new client that is simply a fork of the old project. That would keep the price of moving away from AOL as low as possible (free) and make it more tempting and a little easier to cancel AOL, knowing a full replacement that works pretty much like the AOL client does is already lined up, ready and waiting for people on their computers.

Short of that, if a pay project for a non-open source client was to be started for such a thing, I was thinking that just charging a small amount for the first, say, 10,000 downloads (maybe $1?) could pay all of the costs, which would keep the browser free later on for the majority of people who will use it.

Unfortunately, I can't code, so I can't write and publish such a program, but if anyone has any ideas for such a project, please drop me a comment here or email me with what you think.

Maybe this is not the "cool" or "in" thing to say, but I think such a client could have potential well beyond the AOL crowd. How cool would it be if you could combine browsing, email, IM (or maybe an embedded Meebo page), along with Twitter, Facebook and Flock-like "Post to such and such site" tools into one client? Because, seriously, it's a pain to open Firefox, AIM, and Digsby, then jump back and forth between all the windows, plus it can put a big strain on a computer's RAM and CPU - at least on older computers, which a lot of us (like me!) still have.

Thoughts?

Here's a comment left by a visitor on my AOL Customer Service Phone Numbers and Contact Info page, who writes that by calling 703-265-1000 and leaving a voice mail message, he or she was "miraculously" able to cancel AOL:

After reading this web site I was finally able to cancel AOL and get them to cancel the continued billing for AOL. I'd had AOL for years but when my bank account was compromised and I got a new Visa number I was unwilling to give the number to a person in Romania who barely spoke English.

When I offered to give the number to someone in the US they refused. At that time I tried to cancel AOL. I was being billed monthly service fees but blocked from using AOL. As the monthly charges continued to increase the "total due", I was unable to cancel and convince them I had not been using AOL since they had blocked my usage.

Finally thru this site I called ....703-265-1000 and left a message on a voice mail. Miraculously I received a letter canceling all charges and finally terminating AOL.

Never give your full credit or debit card number to an AOL call rep.

You can change the way you pay for your AOL account online; visit this page for instructions. It's better to keep your credit or debit card number to yourself, especially if you don't feel "safe" passing it along to a rep in the first place.

All the same, the US rep should have at least asked for the last four digits on the customer's debit card to confirm the billing method for the account, and from there should have canceled the account when asked to.

This customer was also blocked from using AOL. My take on it is the last call rep knew that the billing was in question and decided the account may have been compromised, too, so the customer got TOSed simply to protect the account.

Since the customer was still being billed monthly for a locked-down, unusable account, there was no choice except to contact someone higher-up at AOL; in this case, that meant calling AOL Corporate (the Corporate headquarters have moved from Virginia to New York in the last year; I assume calls are being re-routed to the new Corporate office).

I'm glad this story had a happy ending - but if you're having your own problems canceling AOL, please let me know.

Today Joe Manna responded to a comment of mine that I left on his blog a few weeks ago about a lawsuit AOL settled over advertisements in the footers of AOL email (some topics are much too "Yawn, whatever" for me to cover, sorry).

In case you missed it, last month AOL was court-ordered to pay damages to people who could not disable advertisements on their outbound email. The advertisements encouraged people to sign up for AOL. The court ordered AOL to pay damages in the form of a "small donation" to "charity".

I hinted to Joe that both the lawsuit and settlement was ridiculous. How about a more serious issue that AOL should be sued for (again): all the customers who are routinely overcharged each month, and who get lied to by call reps who say their accounts are canceled, when in fact they are not? Where is the money for them?

Joe's response almost exactly mirrors the answer I received on Alley Insider when I was sparring with anonymous AOLers over the same issue a month ago. Except Joe's comment and mine somehow got lost in the Disqus system that Joe adapted for his blog, making them impossible to read and/or reply to, so I'll reply the old-fashioned way: on my blog.

Joe Manna wrote:

The best part of it [is], the donation to charity is a great way to reduce their [AOL's] tax footprint and they can deduct all of it, even if court-ordered.

Well, go AOL! Reduce that tax footprint, Tim.

Joe continued:

With regard to people being charged $20 [by AOL] month after month for over a year is an issue I have. Not with the company but the people being charged. I'm not trying to defend 'the man', but there's a certain amount of personal responsibility people have in monitoring their finances ensuring they are billed correctly by their creditors.

Oh, really?

How could she [unidentified subject] not know after at least a couple months something's wrong?

I'm unsure which "she" he was referring to since our comments are lost in Discus space, but either way, I don't disagree with Joe. You have a responsibility as a consumer to check your bills each month for overcharges and accounts that haven't been canceled. No argument there.

But...

Sometimes shit happens. Perhaps you get hospitalized the day after you cancel AOL only to learn six months later, after you finally get out of the hospital, that AOL is still billing you for that account.

Or perhaps you're one of those meek, trusting souls who simply "believe" AOL will cancel your account in a timely manner, so you don't check your credit or debit card statement the following month, or the month after, or the month after that, to make sure the account is in fact, canceled.

While I'm not defending anyone who trusts a huge monolithic company to make the right financial decisions for them, I'd like to point out that that is a different situation than one in which someone simply doesn't check their credit card statements at all, for whatever reason.

I'd also like to point out that a customer noticing they've been robbed is not essential to successfully robbing that customer.

AOL: A classic pickpocket.

If you get your pocket picked but you don't notice your wallet's missing for two months, that may make you incredibly forgetful, but it doesn't take away the fact that there was a robber (the person who picked your pocket) and a victim (you).

If you went two months without noticing your missing wallet, does that mean you shouldn't file a police report now since, after all, you were too forgetful to file one sooner - does that two-month forgetful lapse somehow mean that getting your pocket picked was your own fault?

With all due respect: That argument isn't even logical.

Saying that a time lapse in checking one's credit or debit card statement for charges that shouldn't come through from AOL makes the consumer responsible for any such charges incurred is the biggest bunch of psychological trash since Google announced their motto was "Don't be evil", yet it is perpetuated throughout the ranks of the few lost souls still working at AOL.

It is at best a specious arguement, and at worst lowly mind games played by AOL to cover their financial ass after picking people's pockets to ensure they can continue properly padding their shrinking bottom line.

To bolster his argument, Joe continues:

That said, the credit policies at AOL only afford three months cash credit back to people which is disappointing for people have held service for a year. There's an amount of personal responsibility that we all have in holding companies accountable. Not a year later unless circumstances like death or whatnot took place.

Sorry, but even if "death or whatnot took place", the dead infamously can't cancel AOL, either (the tape is from ImpiousDigest.com, which backlinked to this blog after I mentioned it was hard to find cancel pages on AOL).

As to Joe's claim that you can only get a three month refund from AOL no matter how many months or years you were overcharged, check out this completely undead customer who went three years without checking for charges from AOL for an account he canceled three years ago.

Despite the lengthy (in fact, ridiculous) time lapse, he got his money back from AOL, and if you're being overcharged by AOL, even if you haven't checked your credit and debit statements as religiously as you should have, the answer is, No matter what, yes, you can - and should - get your money back from AOL, too.

AOL is losing money on itself, too. In the last five years its valuation (what people think it might be worth if sold to another entity) has dropped from the $20 billion Google pegged it at in 2005 to a mere $4 billion to $4.3 billion, according to several analysts.

If you cancel AOL but can't get them to stop billing you, how does this affect you? It doesn't. It's hard to fight AOL for your money back, but it can be done. In the meantime, you can comfort yourself with thoughts of karmic retribution visited upon the company by itself, which has seen it's value sliced, diced and basically diminished to nothing over the years by its own mismanagement.

AOL bought back Google's 5% stake in the company last July, effectively ending the little-understood partnership in which Google was to help AOL make their online properties more visible in Google's search results (that never panned out, so honestly, AOL isn't losing much by ending this "deal"). Google, on the other hand, lost a nice chunk on the buyback - nearly three quarters of a billion dollars.

AOL is preparing to "spin off" (become an independent company, free of Time Warner's influence and control) soon by selling shares of the company on the stock market in what's called an IPO (an initial public offering). Anyone reading this want to buy it? For the sake of your personal bottom line, I hope not.

Tim Armstrong's leadership is looked upon hopefully by most remaining employees of AOL, but it remains to be seen what he can do with what's left of the one-time giant among internet services. Most importantly, Tim has not voiced many concerns about the company's remaining money-maker, the dial-up access business (down to an all-time low of 5.8 million subscribers, from a supposed high of 20 million to 26 million).

Tim won't discuss access much, outside of letting on months ago that he planned to keep it part of AOL (rather than sell it to another company such as Earthlink), and also letting on that he doesn't think there's much he can do to make more money off of it in the future.

The fact that he doesn't say much about access is troubling if only because by avoiding the topic he also avoids discussing how AOL seems to be as hard to cancel, judging by recent email and comments on this blog, as it was three years ago, when there was quite an uproar over it that ended in Florida settling a lawsuit with AOL.

It's an open secret that AOL stays alive by keeping a chokehold on a graying population of dial-up users, who account for 100% of AOL's profits, who don't know how to argue with snarky, aggressive call reps who are not above lying about canceling people's accounts.

AOL claims a further financial advantage by preying on how trusting and naive older members are. They're known to be unlikely to check their monthly debit and credit card statements to make sure AOL has stopped billing them after they cancel.

Come to think of it, no wonder Tim remains mum on the access topic - if he spoke up, the first thing he'd have to do is admit that the system at AOL of fleecing canceling customers is wrong and must stop immediately.