Tim's "Why does AOL Suck?" Compilation (by Tim Gerchmez) Last Updated: April 15, 1995 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Rice 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mimi Kahn 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mimi Kahn 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Roger Dietz 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. * * * ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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'... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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" ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: pilgrim@teleport.com (Vinyard J. Hrovat) Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 20:06:30 -0800 (PST) Walter Ian Kaye 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Evan Kay 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: sabercat@gate.net (sabercat) Date: Sat, 08 Apr 1995 19:12:33 In article 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ;-> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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... Steve smsmith@omni.voicenet.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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!