Tim's "Why does AOL Suck?" Compilation
(by Tim Gerchmez)
Last Updated: April 15, 1995
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Note: This is not the FAQ for the Usenet newsgroup alt.aol-sucks.
This is a document prepared by me to help newbies to alt.aol-sucks
understand the venom and flaming that you may see from AOL haters. This
venom has spread to many Usenet newsgroups, not just alt.aol-sucks.
The following section consists of posts from former AOL members and
others. After you read it, you may find yourself beginning to understand
the extreme dislike toward AOL displayed by people on Usenet. Note that
other online services like Compuserve, GEnie, Delphi and Prodigy are
largely free of this hatred. That's because AOL is unique among the
Online services in many ways. For more information, see the FAQ
for alt.aol-sucks (posted at least once monthly). Also note that the
reposts in this document are unauthorized; please do not contact the
people listed herein unless you have something important to say. They
are busy people like you, and won't appreciate seeing a rash of Email
appear in their mailboxes asking them questions about this document. If
you have questions, you may contact me at future@eskimo.com instead.
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From: David Rice <drice@mbnet.mb.ca>
Date: 22 Mar 1995 23:38:12 GMT
After trying out AOL ( I know better now :-)
and their 10 free hour DEAL - from Canada,
I was hit with a $1000 US bill- no amount of eMail,
phone calling or letter writing has got me an invoice
or any explanation- just an AMEX bill for $1500 CAN.
I am refusing to pay until AOL explains-
I would appreciate any advice on fighting back or
dealing with Card Companies or just hearing of similar
problems with AOL would be helpful.
David
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From: Mimi Kahn <njkahn@hooked.net>
Date: 25 Mar 1995 00:56:41 GMT
Right...and I was hit with a TOS violation for using the word
"pee." Little children say "pee," for crying out loud, but the
Little Old Lady From Pasadena mentality of TPTB at AOL evidently
don't want to know that people go to the john.
And I was logged on as my dog at the time...so *she's* in jail.
Mimi
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From: Mimi Kahn <njkahn@hooked.net>
Date: 25 Mar 1995 03:08:40 GMT
From: destiny@crl.com (David Cassel)
> A doctor received a TOS warning for using the word "fentanyl"
> in a chat room.
I know someone who was TOSsed for using the word "pussyfooting."
Any words beyond the limits of the TOS police's vocabulary are
deemed vulgar, or at least suspect.
I once posted a quote from Robert Heinlein that referred to
politeness as the "lubrication" of society. That post was
pulled. I guess some moderator thought "lubrication" was a
sexual term.
Alas.
Mimi
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From: Roger Dietz <rogerd@rahul.net>
Date: 26 Mar 1995 07:00:06 GMT
My daughter has had an internet account with AOL for at least 1 1/2 and
has been trying very hard to cancel. She had no success in this
endeavor and AOL still keeps drawing money from her bank account.
I've tried sending email to jeanv1 and so far my email has been
ignored. The bank has no way to stop the debits unless it comes
from AOL (this is stupid). I am considering a class action suit
against AOL on behalf of my daughter and others who have been
wrongfully charged by AOL after making a good faith attempt to
cancel their accounts. If you are a potential member of this
class and can document your good faith attempt please let me
know about who you are and where you are located and if you are
willing to be considered a member of this class for this legal
action. Please keep in mind that I haven't decided to pursue
this yet as a definite course of action but am considering it
and seeking others of like mind. If I decide not to pursue it
I don't want to hear a lot of whining and crying as it is at
this point my choice whether to proceed or not. Furthermore I
want to hear from people who can document their efforts not just
from people who say "yeah, I did it too"! If we proceed you will
be expected to produce your documentation and may have to appear
in court to testify to the accuracy of your claims.
Thank you all for reading this and a special thanks to those who
reply. Please reply to class@rigel.com not to me directly!
--
********************************************************************
* Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human freedom. *
* It is the argument of the TYRANT, and the creed of the slave. *
* *
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From: TFXS42A@prodigy.com (D Boucher)
Date: 26 Mar 1995 20:42:01 GMT
Yes...I admit...I did try their 10 free hours offer.....
But when I tried to cancel at the end...I noticed my crediut card was
still charged! For the 'Free Hours'....!!! They continued to bill me for
the next three months... The bank also gave me grief when I tried to
get it taken off...
So in the end...I did *NOT* pay for it...but the grief of trying to get
it off my statement was not worth trying the 10 free hours.
AOL seems to LOVE (tongue in cheek) their customers Soooo much that they
won't let them cancel...
Kinda like the 'Hotel California'...
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A friend who is on AOL said she responded to the gajetguru or something
like that giving the information that Nuts and Volts magazine had ads
where you could buy cable tv equipment. She said the next day she had
mail from someonw at AOL saying they had to delete her messages because
they talked about criminal activities!!! What's wrong with this picture?
EnGarde...
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From: destiny@crl.com (David Cassel)
Date: 26 Mar 1995 20:52:02 -0800
AOL considers the following words vulgar.
transsexual - vulgar
transvestite - vulgar
Note that in the key, vulgar is defined as "UNCONDITIONALLY vulgar".
A disgruntled AOL employee forwarded a copy of AOL's "TOS" list from last
March to the alt.aol-sucks newsgroup. Note that this list was NEVER made
available to AOL users. Chat rooms are shut down and messages pulled
from
boards based on vaguely-defined "Guidelines"--yes, they really do say
"Use
your best judgement".
But it gets more interesting. There's a poignant story about some people
who wanted to *discuss* crossdressing on AOL. But as "transvestite" was
considered "unconditionally vulgar", AOL shut down every one of their
chat
rooms. They persisted, re-creating every TV chat room. AOL continued
shutting them down, at the rate of one every five minutes. TOS Advisors
also sent e-mail to the parties involved, making it a point to use the
real names behind the screen names. Complaints were met with the
response
"AOL has no plans to change their terms of service".
This is a good time for this excerpt from TOS:
America Online is a community oriented service. As such, our goal is
to
provide a useful and enjoyable place for all members. Using vulgar or
profane language is not allowed in public areas such as public chat
rooms
or message boards. Use your best judgment. Remember, there are
children
aboard.
But the transvestites were using "member" chat rooms. AOL has started
removing "member" rooms from the list of rooms, making them secret,
hidden
"private" rooms. Recent examples of member rooms AOL removed from their
non-public room lists:
F2Tutor Wanted
"Yes Ma'am"
FBI subpoenas AOL
That last room name is why they're so touchy. The FBI arrested two men
charged with gathering child pornography from other AOL users, as well as
selling their own.
"TOS Advisors" sometimes try to dupe their users by not notifying them
that
their room has been made "invisible".
Other words from the list of words not allowed in AOL chat room names:
boys
bound to tease
do me
dom
domination
cross-dressing rooms
erotic
fetishes
gay lovers
gay teens
gay youth
(gay young adult is okay)
girls
hot videos
insults
kinky
leather
lingerie
lust
men on men
oral
panties
pervert
shaved
shower
slave
spanking
sub
teen shower
teens wanted
ts
underwear
video
"who want"
women on women
youth (if the connotation is too sexual)
Note: this list is from last March. The transvestite story has a happy
ending. Though AOL dug their heels in for months--frightened by this
lack
of reverence for gender roles, apparently--they eventually started
getting
so much bad publicity in alternative and mainstream newspapers, that they
backed down, and removed "transvestite" from the list.
Epilogue: these are some of the words they considered vulgar in any
context.
bondage, defecation, douche, feltch, genitalia, horny, masturbation,
penis,
sadomasochism, semen, sexual devices, slut, submissive, urination,
vagina,
whips & chains.
destiny@crl.com /\ alt.aol-sucks FTP site
/ \ ftp://ftp.crl.com/users/ro/destiny/aol/
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From: frankp3897@aol.com (FrankP3897)
Date: 28 Mar 1995 09:32:58 -0500
The Gay Alliance in Ft Worth, TX was attempting to establish some gay
teen
chat counseling, and thought we could work with AOL. However, you cannot
create a chat room named "GAY TEEN CHAT" but you CAN create "TEEN QUEER
KILLERS"
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From: pilgrim@teleport.com (Vinyard J. Hrovat)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 20:06:30 -0800 (PST)
Walter Ian Kaye <boo@primenet.com> wrote:
>You have a brain -- you know what's acceptable and what is not. Don't
play
>dumb.
I was censored and threatened with discontinuance of service by America
Online for using the word "urinate" in a discussion on psychopharmacology
in a mental-health related forum. I said that lithium carbonate would
make
you urinate more frequently. After complaining i was told that it was ok
to
say "urine" but not "urinate" because it is a verb (?!). I was also told
that the very mention of lithuium could be considered a TOS violation
(even
though it was the nexus of the topic at hand) because it is a "controlled
substance." I was supposed to have intuitively know these things, i
guess.
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From: Evan Kay <evankay@delphi.com>
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 95 22:10:32 -0500
On 950330
Evan Writes
Two weeks ago my mother sent me an E-mail message which took five days
two arrive. I note that the AOLers seem to want to chalk this up
as some routine network glitch or old news, but "THE FACTS" are that
it has been my experience that for "mail" the USPS is even
a competitor of America Online. When I was an AOL customer, I
became so frustrated with the speed of the mail that I would
direct all of my vital correspondence to my free library access. That is
not to say that all mail was delayed but often enough to be very
frustrating
Evan
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From: chuckie@kincyb.com
Date: Sat, 01 Apr 95 12:00:23 EST
This is about the fourth, and most recently updated, in a series of
articles I have been posting (previously only on alt.aol) regarding my
inability to even GET THROUGH to an AOL employee to see if I could
re-activate my account via telephone.
Within the hour I again called the AOL 1-800 Customer Service # and
AGAIN was advised to "call back later" because all the CS reps were
busy. I actually merely wanted to see if things had improved from a
month or so ago when I had last unsuccessfully attempted to speak to
someone to see if I could get the new AOL software and re-activate if I
chose to.
Once again, I couldn't.
Based on this miserable record of non-access, how does America
NonLine expect people to subscribe/reactivate?
Now that the new "Worldgroup" bbs software is being sold, and the fact
that it apparently is an improvement over the AOL windows interface AND
can be bought by any would-be online service operator, I truly hope
some ambitious, CUSTOMER-ORIENTED entrepreneur out there takes advantage
of the atrocious lack of business sense of "the competition," AOL, and
gnaws into America NonLine's customer base.
Mr. Case, are you reading this?
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From: glgreene@cybergate.com (Gary Greene)
Date: 2 Apr 1995 17:18:36 GMT
Your Situation is unique in my experience. I have been trying to
cancel my account since December. It is now April. I went through the
correct procedures
on line and the next month, Billing Continued! I called AOL and was
assured that I would be credited and my account canceled. BILLING
CONTINUED!! I called them again and they told me they would cancel my
account but I will have to wait another month for for the extra month
of service they charged me for to be credited. BILLING CONTINUES TODAY!!
This is the second time they have done this to me. The first time I
assumed it was just a six month error and would never happen again.
They
not only bill me for six months after cancellation but they repremanded
me
for not checking my bills and refused to compensate me for several of the
six
months!
Needless to say, I will never join AOL again and I will do everything
in my
power to see that my friends don't either!!
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From: jdwren@aardvark.ucs.uoknor.edu (Is it weird in here, or is it just
me?)
Date: 7 Apr 95 18:57:55 CDT
AAAARRRRGH!!! They're fucking me over!!! The damn bastards! Don't
EVER EVER EVER try AOL for their """""""Free""""""" """no risk""" trial
period. They have fucked me around so much it is not at all funny.
The bastards not only make it virtually impossible to cancel your
trial period, they **WON'T LET YOU**. After a letter to the president, a
call to their cancellation number, and 4 attempts at getting a customer
"service" rep to help me (and being put on hold for 20 min at a time THEN
hung up on), the mother-fuckers send me ***ANOTHER*** bill for $9.95!
I told my credit card company not to pay the first one and to
tell
them I wanted to cancel and the BASTARDS sent me another bill! Oh, fuck
these people! They're driving me nuts. If this next attempt doesn't work
I will not only cancel my credit card, but I will begin posting to random
groups how badly AOL SUCKS!!!!!
Jonathan Wren
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From: sabercat@gate.net (sabercat)
Date: Sat, 08 Apr 1995 19:12:33
In article <D6qK91.L3M@eskimo.com> Tim Gerchmez wrote:
>This is just getting to be too much. AOL is destroying Usenet, and I do
>mean that literally. If the newsgroups continue to deteriorate, I will
>eventually quit using Usenet completely. It just ain't worth the
>headaches.
>>
Hell, the Binaries groups are so trashed...it's impossible to even
participate.
I used to grab all the files from a days posting and get mostly pictures
and
a few requests.
NOW, mostly Me too's and a few Picts.
It has become pathetic.
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From: revcoal@pcnet.com (Donna J. Logan)
Date: 9 Apr 1995 12:52:40 -0400
A friend of mine who is on AOL (but actively searching for alternatives),
emailed me yesterday to let me know that when he had tried to log onto
his AOL account this past Friday, he got an "Account is No Longer Active"
message.
After waiting on AOLs 1-800 number for awhile, he finally got a live
person, explained his problem, and was told that AOL had cancelled his
AOL account because my friend's credit card had been reported stolen. My
friend found this answer extremely surprising, as he was holding said
credit card in his hand.
AOL is unable to explain HOW this happened, and refused to reactivate my
friend's account until he provided a NEW credit card number.
So for anyone having problems trying to cancel their AOL accounts and who
keep finding monthly charges tacked onto their credit cards, maybe they
should try reporting to AOL that the card was stolen.....
Rev. Donna
;->
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From: Scotsman@ix.netcom.com (LdScotsman)
Date: 6 Apr 1995 23:21:21 GMT
I've had AOL in the past, and receiving a $125 bill for using the
Internet is hardly cool when I can pay $19.95 a month flat for
everything the internet offers. How about that AOL web browser? So,
has Steve Case pushed that back to July yet? Talk about service. Enjoy
your bill.
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From: Gordo@ix.netcom.com (Shorts)
Date: 7 Apr 1995 19:05:10 GMT
I subscribed to AOL for about one year. The only real entertainment I
got out of that year was the chat rooms they have. The AOL chat
function is good and there are a lot of participants. Otherwise, the
experience was largely a waste of money.
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From: kenone@ix.netcom.com (Kenneth Madore)
Date: 10 Apr 1995 02:11:36 GMT
AOL is so double-standard it's pathetic! AOL creates rooms themsleves
called "Gay & Lesbian"!! What do they suppose is going to be the topic
of conversation?.....basket weaving? Yet, AOL cracks down on
member-created rooms that have something to do with heterosexuality! (I
am not prejudiced against gays or lesbians...to each his/her own...just
using it as an example) If all these words AOL has declared to be in
violation of TOS, why do THEY continue to create these rooms for members
to enter? BTW, I was kicked off AOL one night for using the term "beat
off". One minute I was on, the next kicked! I was pissed and signed
right back on the find out why the hell I was booted and not the other
people who were also using that type of language. The guide responsible
for this ignored my IMs!! I promptly cancelled my account!
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From: genyosai@scsn.net (Nicholas Trevino Gallman)
Date: 11 Apr 1995 20:10:44 GMT
I was a member of AOL for 2 years! Now that I'm accessing the WHOLE
internet.... I see what I was missing! Using netscape as my Web browser
kicks the FU@# out of AOL. Connections to over 1400 news groups with
countless entries (like this one), IRC (if you AOL kids know what that
is), etc makes AOL NOTHIN'! Now... I do pay, but nothing even close to
AOL. $35 per month gets me 90 hours per month! That would be close to
$300 with AOL! And I STILL wouldn't have the things I need! Hell...
I'm sure AOL gets TONS of its stuff from the NET anyway.
GET IT FROM THE SOURCE....... THE INTERNET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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From: philly@clam.rutgers.edu (Philip)
Date: 13 Apr 1995 19:47:38 -0400
I had a post deleted for the use of the word "ass." You can say it on
TV, but not on AOL, apparently.
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From: marty@mindspring.com (Marty Robinson)
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 1995 03:58:12 -0500
I know there have been posts about this before, but for all of you AOLers
and new readers of this newsgroup, here's the deal:
If you really want to know how STUPID some folks from AOL can be, please
refer to the newsgroup "news.groups.questions". There, amongst other
retarded AOL posts, you will find the infamous "SEXXY GIRLES" or "Re:
SEXXY GIRLES" post. Within the past few days, there have been no less
than
18 messages added to the thread. I think that may bring the thread up to
near 500 replies from AOL-ers. Please read the thread to enlighten
yourself a little.
That particular newsgroup used to be a helpful place to post if you
needed
direction to a newsgroup about a particular topic. Now it is full of "me
too" posts, discussions of things that are WAY off topic, and....yes,
it's
happening...an AOL-er is even attempting to distribute a LAME chain
letter
in the newsgroup.
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From: smsmith@omni.voicenet.com (Steven Smith)
Date: 13 Apr 1995 21:36:00 -0400
>Why not kick the online service habit altogether and get a SLIP/PPP or
>shell account. That gives the USER the choice to have a text based
>or GUI-based connection to the internet.
Thanks.... I have done just that. I have both my UNIX shell and my
SLIP/PPP
access... This is much better, faster, and more reliable. And it *works*
as it should. Flies pretty fast too... <VBG>
Steve
smsmith@omni.voicenet.com
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From: pcrvrjon@aol.com (PCR VR Jon)
Date: 13 Apr 1995 23:55:56 -0400
There are a lot of little AOL vermin running around AOL and the Usenet,
wreaking havoc, and making life difficult for a lot of people, and I'd
imagine TOSEmail gets a *lot* of mail. I got this message the other day
after I sent off the 3rd MAKE MONEY FAST spam to TOSEmail. It went
through the 2nd time though...
-jon
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From: dobrecht@rmc.edu (David Obrecht)
Date: 12 Apr 1995 00:17:54 GMT
AOL SUPER COOL KRAL DESTROYER (kral@aol.com) wrote:
: ALL WHO POST AGAINST AOL SHALL SOON FIND AN END. I AM HERE TO
: ANOUNCE THE BIGGEST ALLIENCE OF AOL MEMBERS AGAINST THE REST OF THE
NET.
: ALL FUCKING ASSHOLES WHO HAVE BEEN TALKING SHIT ABOUT AOL WILL NOT MEET
: THEIR DESTROYER. YOU CAN FUCKING FLAMES, BOMBS,AND ANY OF THE SHIT YOU
: LAMERS SEND. !!!!!BUT BE WARNED!!!!!!!!! DO NOT UNDERSTIMATE THE AOL
: ALLIENCE CYBERCREW. YOU WILL ALL SOON BEGGING US TO STOP OUR MISCHIEF!
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