Sort of.
Back in The Day, when only the priviledged few (government, military and colleges) had access to the internet, online life wasn’t cluttered with people. Then along came America Online, offering internet access to everyone… for a cost.
I won’t go into what the “cost” is here because I’m sure many of my readers are AOL users and I don’t want to offend.
The paradox is that I am now an AOL user, and a disgruntled one at that. In my new apartment, I do not have cable or DSL access to the internet. I figured dial-up is the way to go. Of course, with AOL’s free 1000 minutes, it seemed like the best choice. Well, once you sign up for AOL, you have to call their toll-free number to activate your account. I did this, was told my account was verified, and was given a new password. I logged in–no problem. The next time I dialed up, I got the same message as I did originally. It disconnected me from AOL and said I had to call a toll-free number to activate my account. How odd, I thought.
I let it go for a while, borrowing Denise‘s account (thanks, Denise) when I needed to connect. A few days ago, I called the toll-free number again to verify my account. At first the ever-so-helpful individual on the other end of the phone line said it was already activated. He didn’t believe me when I told him I couldn’t get online. So from what I could tell, he verified it again.
Excellent! Now I could get online. Until yesterday. I connected yesterday and it told me my account is invalid. Sigh. So once again I called, explained the situation, and the customer service representative explained that my account had been deleted because I never called to verify the account. It was absolutely ridiculous. So after the guy on the phone verified my phone numbers, credit card number, mother’s maiden name, place of birth, social security number, criminal history, and name of the first girl I kissed, he said he’d reactivate my account.
Was it all worth it? No. I can’t wait to get into a place where I don’t have to dial up for internet access. But I guess this will have to do for now. Until they start charging me, anyway.
AOL takes over everything in your computer, too. It puts itself everywhere and you can never get it all out. I hate AOL. Down with AOL!!! Oh, and don’t forget to cancel your membership when you’re done with it, because they’ll start charging you and they’re super expensive now. Grr. Hate. Aol.
You should have just used my account until we cancel it. Then you could have set up your’s with the 1000 free minutes. By the time you were done with those minutes, you would probably be in a new place with a cable modem. Goofball…
yeah well dsl isn’t soo squared away either. i just set mine up… and spend 3 hrs total (3 separate calls) to setup our secondary user so jessie could have email. first they said there was no password associate with the acct… said it would be ok within 30 min. 8 hrs later i was back on the phone. said wait 24 hrs. 24hrs i was back on the phone — they said they thought the username was “corrupted” and created a new one. how annoying!
but yey for fast connections 🙂
It’s not widely known, but AOL’s new slogan is: “AOL – It sucks Darren’s ass!” It’s true…
I worked for AOL for 3 years (helped running a tech forum)…run like the wind while you still can. AOL is the devil.
Damn the Man! Save the Empire!