AOL Sucks

Yesterday, at about 2:30 PM, my AIM screen name, “unxmaal”, dropped offline. When I tried to reconnect, I got a message saying the account was “suspended.” I tried logging onto www.aim.com via the link provided in the message, and found that all the AIM account info pages lead to a dead-end at home.netscape.com.

I called AOL’s billing center, at 1-888-265-8003, and spoke with a rep. According to this person, that screen name was associated with a dialup account I’d cancelled last year. Since the account was cancelled, I could no longer use it for AIM, nor could I create a new AIM account and move the name ‘unxmaal’ to it.

At around 3 PM, while waiting on hold for one AOL billing supervisor or another, the account became active again. I spoke with the supervisor, who repeated much of what the first rep said. I asked her to verify the account status as being disabled, and she did. When I told her that the AIM account had started working again, she said that it was probably only temporary. She went on to explain that AOL has started to do account audits, and that their philosophy regarding AIM accounts is that if you “tie an AIM screen name to an AOL account, then cancel AOL, you’ll lose the AIM screen name forever,” and that the ability to keep an AIM screen name “is a perk that AOL gives its paying customers.”

For now, my AIM nick remains active. And after some researching, it seems that I’m not alone: Xkot had the same problems at around the same time yesterday.

Although it would annoy me to lose my ‘vanity-plate’ screen name, creating ‘unxmaal2’ wouldn’t really hurt my feelings. And I damn sure won’t pay AO[sinking ship]L a dime just to keep it.