Think of Cancellation Calls as Sales Leads! Why did Vincent have such a hard time cancelling his AOL account? It turns out that his customer service rep was just following the AOL Retention Manual, a copy of which was sent to consumerist.com. Nicholas Graham, executive vice president of AOL Corporate Communications, had sent Vincent a formal apology (Google cache - right now his site's been pummeled beyond capacity) saying, "The employee in question violated our customer service guidelines and practices, and everything that AOL believes to be important in customer care." Um...really? New York Times article on the cancellation-call hoopla. via digg.
posted by granted on Jul 18, 2006 - 38 comments

When you really, really want your email to arrive at its destination: now you gotta pay postage. Another brilliant, forward-looking idea for monetizing-the-Internet^TM from the wizards at AOL and Yahoo.
posted by digaman on Feb 4, 2006 - 46 comments

Perhaps you've seen the new MSN commercials that use M$'s "spam-blocking" technology to support their ISP service. Maybe you've read fluff pieces like these, where AOL and Microsoft execs are allowed to wax poetic about their deep anti-spam convictions:

"'I get spam too, and I am as fed up with it as all of our members are,' AOL chief executive Jonathan F. Miller said yesterday." "'To help keep intruders at bay,' Microsoft said, "we must all do our part.'"

So what's this all about? "'AOL and Microsoft argue there is a place for legitimate unsolicited e-mail in the marketplace,' said Marc Berejka, Microsoft's senior director of public policy."
posted by Pinwheel on May 9, 2003 - 19 comments

AOL owns Instant Messaging? - MSNBC is reporting that AOL's subsidary ICQ has received a patent for Instant Messaging. I would have thought IRC was enough prior art to invalidate the claim, but the Patent Office knows best. Can AOL put the genie back in the bottle?
posted by Argyle on Dec 18, 2002 - 15 comments

You've got jail? The SEC is no longer alone in investigating accounting irregularities at AOL Time Warner. Tonight the "world's leading media and entertainment company" confirmed that the U.S. Justice Dept. has opened its own probe. This, one day after President Bush signed the so-called Corporate and Auditing Accountability, Responsibility, and Transparency Act (pdf of HR 3763) (summary). Tonight, however, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, including Senators Patrick Leahy, D-Vt and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa are criticizing the President for trying to weaken the corporate fraud bill before the ink is even dry.
posted by found missing on Jul 31, 2002 - 7 comments

Google to Power AOL Search. America Online and Google today announced a multi-year agreement that will make Google's popular search technology and targeted paid listings available on America Online brands. Google's paid listings will begin rolling out on the AOL service and AOL.COM immediately; they will launch on Netscape and CompuServe in the next several weeks.
posted by ncurley on May 1, 2002 - 6 comments

AOL membership tops 30 million. America Online continues to pad its lead as the largest Internet provider, hitting 30 million members — doubling its vast size in just two and a half years.
posted by Brilliantcrank on Jun 25, 2001 - 24 comments