In AOL Hell

[RTSDaddy2]

About a year ago I signed off of AOL - we'd moved to Comcast.  AOL's response? Keep your email with us if you want, so we did.

PROBLEM: I cannot find my password.  I need this information becasue the TeachGeorgia website is sending my password to it to the AOL account, I think (it's certainly NOT coming to my Comcast account); I have to get in to TeachGeorgia to apply for a couple of jobs on it.   So I call AOL.  I have been on the phone for approximately 30 minutes with the most irritating automated answering service in the history of the known world.  The conversation goes something like this:

Robot: So what is your problem? You can say 1) _____ 2) Reset Password, etc.

Me: Reset Password

Robot: I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that...please repeat

Me: Reset Password

Robot: I'm sorry I'm having so much trouble today - could you say it again?

Me: (fully enraged by now) RESET PASSWORD!

Robot: Ok, so it's reset password that you want? Please say yes or no

Me: Yes

Robot:  Let me make sure I understand your problem...it's reset password?

You get the idea.  Does anybody know of a phone number I can call where I can talk to an actual person?

[AtomSmasher]

http://gethuman.com/

America Online   800-827-6364       Press 0 at each prompt, ignoring messages.

[RTSDaddy2]

Hate to break it to you - doesn't work.  It seems as it if will for a moment, but then it gets hung up wanting to know how to access your account - and at that point it acts as if it no longer can hear me.

[AtomSmasher]

doh  -  you may want to report it to the website I linked to.

[shardian]

What I find funny is that after going thru the hell of cancelling AOL, you didn't think to completely severe your ties to them. I have never been more unbelievably pissed than when telling the guy "cancel my account" over and over for 20 minutes. "Would you like to keep your account active for email"...are you ---smurfing--- KIDDING me!!!
 

Your best bet is to choose another path to get to a human, you know, like saying you want to cancel, then tell them all you want to do is reset your password. If you really want them to help, tell them you might consider signing back up if they expedite your request...hehe.

[RTSDaddy2]

I don't disagree with your point sharidan - I think one reason I finally just said yes was to get the idiot to shut up.... I know, bad move, but at that point I was so stinking tired of "are you SURE you don't want to try this / that / the other?"

I'm probably just going to wait and try to get someone at TeachGeorgia to reset my password Monday morning.  Probably easier.  I just had to share the innane babbling of that ************ recording.  Not that AOL was ever that great, but I couldn't believe how far they'd fallen in just a year's time in customer no service.

EVEN BETTER: They say the calls are monitored for quality assurance.  I can just see some AOL jerk laughing his head off at idiots like me yelling at this stupid recorded voice. Anybody else want to check and see if my brain's been replaced by goo?  Course I guess there's no reason to check - pretty obvious that it has.

[Grauwulf]

Rogers cable here has a similar system. The voice kinda creeps me out. I miss the old 'Push 1 for this, 2 for that and 3 for the other thing' system.

[SavannahLion]

T-mobile has a similar voice system as well. Pisses the hell out of me to use it.

"What would you like to do today?

"Pay a bill"

"Did you say you wanted to buy a new phone? Yes or no."

"NO! I-WANT-TO-PAY-MY-BILL!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. Did you say you wanted to add a new susbscriber?"

BLEH.

As for AOL. Up until about the mid 1990's, they were actually pretty good and their software was reasonably easy to interface to. IE, I could easily export the address book into a different format for importing elsewhere. Now? ---fudgesicle--- them. I had to spend weeks trying to figure out how to export my GF's own address book from AOL without paying AOL an extra ---smurfing--- fee. Then spend another month crafting a Perl script to parse the ---fouled up beyond all recognition--- up trashed data into a format I could use to import into outlook. I still had to go in and manually adjust the data anyways.

Canceling with AOL was a four day ordeal. We found if you want to cancel, order pizza and eat at home. It takes about two hours of talking to three people just to get to the "You can keep you email" stage. Longer to ---smurfing--- close the account completely.

When I canceled my own AOL account back around '97/'98, the whole process from exporting addresses, canceling the account, everything took less than fifteen minutes. Ten of those minutes was just trying to figure out the export process.

[ark_ader]

I went to cancel my AOL account today and called up the Indian billing department (which was a good experience this time) ready to get my MAC code.  Hyping meself up for an argument, etc.

I told them I could get a better service than my crap 1Meg for £9.99 I get now, so the guy says: OK I have upgraded you to 8MB for the same money.

No hassles no arguments Boom 8MB (probably 6mb really).   

Can't argue with that....Well until next year 

[Raleigh]

I canceled my free trial today.  Was using it because I was using dial up in the rural area where I am limited on options and after the MSN free trial I went with the AOL trial.  When the automated system first answered since I hadn't paid anything I chose a non paying person, all was going fine in terms of them understanding what I was saying until I had to canceling and having to say my ID where the system kept acting like it did not understand and when it went to a live person I swear I heard someone pick up then hang up.  I then called back and then used the payed customer even though I have not technically paid them anything, they got my info and then just asked for my first 3 letters/numbers of my ID instead of the full info and it understood it right away.  Eventually since I was canceling it had to go to a live rep, but since it was like 2AM it was with an Indian rep and I could tell he couldn't care less what I decided unlike the rep that was badgering the guy back when.  All in all it wasn't bad besides my initial call when even though I kept saying my ID it kept coming back as it didn't understand...

[RayB]

RTS you're going about this all wrong. You don't know the Teach Georgia password and you don't know the AOL email password. Instead of calling up AOL, call up Teach Georgia. THAT's the account you need to get into!

[RTSDaddy2]

Uh, Ray, I don't know how to say this, but about five posts above yours, I believe that's EXACTLY what I said.   

[RayB]

Uh, Ray, I don't know how to say this

You said it quite well.