Rumors light the kindling that may turn AOL snafu into the bonfire of the ISPs
infoworld.com
I love to fan a flame. For proof, look no further than my neighborhood's annual Burning of the Greens celebration last week. Every year we start by setting the torch to dried wreaths and needleless evergreens. There is singing. Someone always passes an ancient flask. Before long, the bonfire is raging, and a couple of well-liquored fellows are lassoing an abandoned easy chair and throwing it into the blaze. (Do Barcaloungers grow bark?) Anyway, it's an annual rite, a metaphor if you will, for the flames of discontent so easily stirred among this audience.
Take, for example, a little mention about America Online in last week's column. A good-natured potshot now burns like turpentine as frustrated readers throw more fuel onto the fire. After days of busy signals, one bloke dropped AOL and went to Prodigy's Internet service. Desperate times indeed. Another fellow tried to reach customer service at "America Offline" to cancel his service. After hours on hold, he called American Express to de-authorize the AOL charges. The AMEX representative told him she'd received more than 30 calls that day from equally dissatisfied customers.
With its new all-you-can-eat pricing, you can imagine that AOL is eager to drop idle lines. Step away from your desk for a few minutes, and the service times you out. This usually happens after you've tried for hours to get a connection. The trick is to open a chat room window in AOL and leave it running in the background while you launch your browser. That should keep it from timing out when you take a break from FTP sessions.
If you're having trouble getting on, in the first place, there's a freeware AOL redialer utility at members.aol.com.
With the fire of discontent burning in the bellies of some 6 million or so AOL users, you'd think it would be wise to short the stock. But word circulating in a couple of AOL and CompuServe forums is that the two companies may be talking merger.
Just a rumor.
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