Communicating with AOL (Impossible)

You know how every business web site in America (except maybe porn sites possibly) have a little link usually at the bottom of the page or near the top that says "contact us" ? Even my own person web site has a link that says "email me"

Well, don't try to find that little GEM at AOL.

There is no feedback that I can find unless you want to take a poll of questions that only they wrote that only applies to the problems they want to know about. Anybody with a problem can apparently piss off.

There is no mechanical way to write a person or a department, that I can find.

If you call them, you get India or Pakistan. Now no disparagement on those fine countries, but hey, remember me? America English speaking customer that I am ? I do not speak the language. I do not want to repeat myself 5 times only to say "What?" 6 times.

It pisses me off.

I don't care who answers the phone, just insist they speak English, Or the language of the country that you are doing business in , so your CUSTOMERS can understand your CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVES. I'm not racist or uni-cultural. I just want to communicate in a normal tone of voice and not get mad at the person talking to me because they have such a heavy non-American accent that I cannot understand them from the word hello. Is that too much to ask?

All of my friends criticize my decision to remain at AOL.

They have all since left.

Here's why.

1. It is almost impossible to speak with a live person who speaks your language.
2. There is no effective way to access specific help files.
3. The automated programs are intrusive, unreliable and assume AOL is the only thing ever going to run on your system. They are all resource hogs , every last one of them.
4. Their CSR's are rude and arrogant. They must have been trained by Wal Mart. You cannot know anything, I suppose that presumption is because you are an AOL customer, you must be stupid. It is the only logical line of thought that makes sense to me.
5. There are no customer service email addresses and even if there was or is, it is so well hidden, that you will not find it. If you find it, it does not work, if it appears to work , the link is broken. Start over. Back in the 80's we would have called this "GIGO", (garbage in garbage out"), they call it "software". It's crappy coding and it doesn't work.
6. When you do finally get through to a live person, the first thing they tell is "Hold on please", and you start all over because they are incompetent and hang up on you.
7. Newly introduced products, ie- their Netscape browser, the AOL video player, their association with real player, etc, NEVER work as advertised. NEVER. EVER. NOT ONCE. Not until you fiddle with it and make about 5 calls to the helpless desk. NEVER.
8. They are owned by a large corporation that cares about "metrics", stock prices, licenses, negotiations and culture. They could give a crap less about customers. They seemed to be bothered by customers. At least when we criticized Steve Case , we knew who to criticize. Hell, now it doesn't matter, because they belong to the Microsoft, Wal mart school. The one that says "Screw em first, ask questions later" and who cares. Ignore em and they'll go away. Fact is, we are.

In short, although I have been with them since about 1995 , since the first floppy disk versions of their software, I have had enough.

The main reason I kept them, was I didn't want to give up a long established email address. Now I just am tired of the money grubbing, non- responsive BS and am over it.

Feel free to tell AOL my story.

Good luck getting in touch with anybody who gives a rats ass. It's disgusting.

-bigmike