I can understand someone wanting to not support AOL customers. I think the site is a little dated. AOL 5.0 caused massive problems at ISP's and anyone else who wanted to setup an alternative dialup connection from Windows 98. AOL actually changed the OS to default and only allow their dialup connection. Hence the lawsuit. At the time with tons of outstanding customer issues I would have relished being able to spotlight AOL like this. I do not think pushing the problem to user would have helped anything. My solution was to replace the specific AOL files with the original windows files and break AOL. We had to let many customers know that their AOL access would no longer work.
Rock -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael Thompson Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 12:01 PM To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list Subject: Re: [TriLUG] OT: Earthlink Tech Support -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Christopher L Merrill wrote: | Maybe you've missed the point. Anybody insulted by that statement is | not a potential customer. They don't want them (you?). They want | people who laugh at AOL users (me, for instance). Don't get me wrong, I laugh at AOL and their customers all the time, but not in their faces. Computer illiterate people put food on my table. I try my best to treat all my customers with respect and always try to remember that just because I'm a computer geek it doesn't make me smarter than anyone else. I do my job, they do theirs. If they did know how to do my job, then I'd have to find another line of work. I've had customers that have proven too illiterate to work for and waste too much of my time, I just politely refer them to one of the local computer shops for service since my schedule is "full", which is true in most cases anyway. Regardless, people who laugh at AOL customers may also have problems with their access due to failures at the ISP end, and I expect attitude problems with a company that starts the business relationship with a "we don't want idiots as customers" message on the signup page. This may be an incorrect assumption on my part, but thats a failure in their marketing. There's nothing wrong with being selective about the customers you want to service, but in my opinion there is something wrong with the "we're doing you a favor by allowing you to keep us in business" attitude. Luckily, I don't need dialup access or hosting anyway. I'm just fed up with dealing with attitudes from businesses that expect my patronage, whether its an ISP or the McDonalds up the street. Those guys may be the nicest people in the world, but their site tells me they think they're smarter than everyone else and if I were in need for dialup service I'd shop somewhere else. Whats wrong with providing good technical service and showing some simple respect? Guess I'm just old fashioned. But hey, thats just my $.02. :) - --mike -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin) iD8DBQFCJfEvuxlRkoWKZoMRAsMhAJ904Rd9Uhn5Pf7+qvtjSRJSze0fpwCgoHlT eDo1JOD1LbfX/j2va5mt74o= =RZuH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
