AOL!

I was watching the evening news last night, from my lovely room at the Edelweiss Lodge in Garmisch Germany. (Yes, that just had to be thrown in! Here's my view!)

Anyway, a story popped up that caught my attention, for obvious reasons. Please refer to MY story, here http://kimrific.blogspot.com/2006/03/march-03-2006.html

Not 2 months ago, I was making this phone call. Now tonight, on the evening news, they have a tape-recording that was given to them, by a man trying to cancel his service! On his tape, he repeatedly asks 19 times to Please Cancel His Account. 19 TIMES. I should have counted how many times I asked before loosing my patience which resulted in vulgarity! You know I get my way if I swear one time! At least that got him off his rocking chair and up to actually cancelling my account, which, in all honesty, he had no intention of doing the day I called. We’ll give you 6 more months free. We’ll give you 2 years free, just don’t drop our numbers! Anyway, the frightening thing is that he probably found the same website I did and did, basically what it had said. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat. They cut you off. They want you to stay. They take it as a personal attack to their character that you are, by god, DROPPING their service. You must be planning on coming over and murdering their chickens tonight as well! How dare we customers make our own decisions! I now wonder if tapes of calls are kept for “training’ purposes. When I get home, I’m going to go through and see if I can find the names and times I called and write a letter of my own.
AOL does have a good product if that’s what you need. The problem is, that over the last few years, other products have been advertised to us that we know will serve us better. We move on. We need to move on to what fits us more. Vicious cycle of the world. Maybe AOL should take a moment to review the reasons their customers are leaving and which providers they are leaving too and why. What do the other providers have that is better than what AOL has to offer? My first vote is customer service, not in India and not staffed by high school dropouts with Napoleon complexes.