AOL On hold: Not for Me
August 3, 2006 2:08 PM
Well it’s official. Time Warner Inc will be offering AOL to users with broadband Internet connections for free, allowing them to access e-mail and other features.
Time Warner wants to make AOL an ad-supported service and realizes it could lose half of its 17.7 million subscribers. But company officials say “no sweat” because they intend to offset that revenue loss by making headcount reductions in marketing and customer service.
Huh? How are advertisers going to react to reaching half the eyeballs they now have? Not well, I predict. And how are AOL users, who already endure rotten customer service, going to react when the service worsens?
And how will AOL actually handle this transition? I still have AOL as a backup and I would rather pay the $15.00 a month rather than ever have to make another single service call to Calcutta. Any AOL subscriber who would take the new freebie service, I predict, is gonna have trouble just getting through.
I’ve asked a lot of questions and I think subscribers and advertisers deserve some better answers from Time Warner.
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Comments (4)
AOL is SO Yesterday..
Posted by Troy | August 4, 2006 1:09 AM
Well Troy,
Yep SO yesterday, at least it is for 5,000 employees who just got their pink slips today. Maybe it could have worked if AOL didn't place so many of its so called, "call centers" in India. Like listening to terrorist chatter, working in a boiler back room.
Here's my problem: How do you stop people, who you have already notified about your new address, mpcable@verizon.net, to stop emailing you at AOL?
They don't. But this old dog has learned new tricks. Mozilla Firefox knocks down all walls, especially Netscape.
Marianne
Posted by Marianne Paskowski | August 4, 2006 7:31 PM
AOL is a total waste. Email is free these days and you can have as many accounts you want. I see no advantage of have AOL unless you travel the world and need a dial in access some where. But I just go to civilized places that are already connected.
Trash AOL!
Posted by Cliff | August 10, 2006 4:32 PM
Hiya Cliff,
I really appreciate the feedback, but remain in a state of intertia about, well you know, another call to India. Since I wrote this blog item, the WSJ wrote about the exact problems, I mentioned,and experienced. AOL is just my backup address, and I'm trying to wean people away from it. With mixed results. My new gameplan is to let the whole mess settle down, for a couople of months, and then attempt to get the free access to email, because I am a broadband subscriber. Sound like a plan?
Thanks for telling me that AOL was so popular in other countries, I really didn't know that.
Marianne
Posted by Marianne Paskowski | August 10, 2006 6:27 PM