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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bob Zacks who wrote (1133)	1/13/1998 11:47:00 AM
From: Melissa McAuliffe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29970

After slowly reading SI messages today, I decided to try once again w/@home. I am sharing my experience because I think this company has to improve a few things and then will take off. So..do not perceive this as a negative message because I am very very high on this but am sharing this more for informational purposes. I know that as time goes on all these issues will be addressed(at least I think/hope so). As desperately as I want this service after my last experience I decided it was too much trouble to sign up so I did nothing for the last three or four weeks but today tried again. I called Comast. Not even a mention of @home in their recorded list of options. So @home falls into the "all other requests" category. Not the way to market a new concept! I talk to the person at Comast who tells me the service is available in my area and gives me the number for @home. I still think they should have call forwarding for these requests. I call @home and they tell me the service is not available. The guy on the phone was very helpful and explained that the nodes are not yet available or something like that. I told him I went through this before and called Comcast back the last time and they absolutely said the svc was available and to call @home back. (Which I didn't at that time because the wait was 18 minutes). So I told him I would call Comcast again and try to get to the bottom of this. I called Comcast back and the guy there said he couldn't tell me for sure but would have to check with the installation department. I said I would call them myself if he could give me the number. He said they had no phone and he would call me back. (by tomorrow). My only point here is that you have to really want this service desperately to go through this. In each of these calls though I asked a few questions. When I spoke to the person at @home, he confirmed that the only way to get cable internet access in my home is through @home. Thus confirming my thoughts that there is no competition here. When I spoke to the person at Comcast, I asked him why they don't mention @home in their recording and he said they tried it but they were inundated(his word)with calls from people where the service wasn't yet available. Shows a very high level of interest. My whole point here is that they don't quite have it together yet because this is a fledgling company/concept. If I hadn't persisted and asked this person to call me back with either a)a confirmation that it is available or b)a date when it will be, they would never know I am interested because neither person appeared to enter me into any type of follow up system. I also think that if they want to add customers they should be on the phone doing telemarketing as soon as service rolls out into each area. Maybe they are and I just haven't been called because it may be that it's not available here after all. It's funny but I was thinking last night that I could telemarket this and probably get a 70% sign up ratio. Not that I am interested in telemarketing or have the time for it but that's how much I believe this is the way to go. But I know that there are millions of people out there who are not desperately dying for this service and would not pursue this as I have. So they have to get it together here. No doubt they will but the sooner the better. Again, I am not sharing this because I am down on the company and/or the stock. If anything, this should point out the potential since all of the issues I raised are easily fixed. So, in the meantime, I will continue to use my SLOW telephone line. For some reason it seems even slower because I know there is something faster. It never seemed to bother me quite this much before. But now I find I dread hitting enter and waiting. BTW, is anyone else finding SI very very slow these days. I keep thinking it is a problem here but maybe everyone is experiencing this?? Melissa