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Technology Stocks : America On-Line (AOL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lyle Bean who wrote (5012)	2/13/1999 5:58:00 PM
From: Lee Martin	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 41369

I agree with everything you've said. I would also add that the direct result of Etrade's ad campaign and huge increase in customers was a huge drop in service. This has resulted in many old customers leaving. What do you think PRGY's aggressive ad campaign,(if successful, remember all those ads are a waste of $'s if they don't have a local access #) will do for their service? Do they have the resources in place to deal with a huge influx of subscriptions and the resulting net traffic? If not, what will happen, "Oh I switched to PRGY because of their ad campaign and find they are slower than AOL. I had to change my email address and website. My kids are PO'd because they don't have their buddy list's anymore and I miss some of the content AOL provided. What was I thinking...it's not worth saving $10 a month, I'm switching back." AOL has gone through the problems that come with exploding growth and has learned to manage those problems. I almost switched a couple of years ago. If AOL is adding a million customers every couple of months they must be providing a service customers are willing to pay for. Contrary to popular belief most people are not uninformed idiots. They have known about the alternatives to AOL for years. PRGY,MSPG,ELNK and thousands of other ISP's have been around since the beginning and AOL has blown past all of them. Why? It can't all be just advertising, there has to be some value there that the customer recognizes and is willing to pay for. I wish someone would list all the content and features you get with AOL and compare that with what you get from the pure ISP's. All it takes is one feature that a customer likes for them to say "yea I use it all the time, I think it's worth a few extra $'s a month." IMHO AOL's biggest threat is MSFT and their refocusing on the net. I think that competition between the two will result in improved service, more features, etc. which will benefit the consumer. In a couple of years instead of having bills for phone, internet, and cable we may have one bill from AOL (or MSN) providing all of these services combined at a lower price than what we are paying for them separately now. Regards,Lee