254. Goodbye AOL

Thursday, December 29, 2005

Last night, after seven years, my AOL connection was no more. I had canceled my service last week. I no longer needed it with my new high speed connection. What is the point of having both? I wasn't all that interested in paying a lesser fee to just keep their broadband service. When I called, the customer service rep I spoke to was quite nice, and he did do his best to keep me on as a user, but once he could see the only way I'd be ending the call was by canceling, he stopped pressing and did just that.

I actually noticed when my AOL died because the connection to my email to my email client stopped working. When that happened, I checked the website and sure enough my email had been switched to their AIM service. Since AIM users now get free email by creating a screen name to use on AOL instant messenger, AOL is letting those subscribers that cancel keep their email account alive and accessible through web mail.

Now I'm solely a COX HSI user. My only problem with the service I've had is with my signal dropping at random times at least once or twice a day. I actually have another tech coming out tomorrow morning to look at the problem. The last two techs have been helpful, but the problem keeps happening. The customer rep I talked to today said she thinks it might be an outside wire causing the problem, and I agree with her. I've actually thought it was an outside wiring issue the entire time, but now we have a supervisor coming out to check both the inside connections here and the outside connections as well.

I'm not sure why the connections outside weren't checked before. I'd mentioned it possibly being an outside issue to the two techs that had come before, but they said they couldn't do much outside. Hopefully, the tech won't say the same thing tomorrow. The problem is intermittent, and the dropping of the signal only lasts a few minutes, and sometimes not even a minute, but it seems to happen at the worst times.

For those other cable Internet subscribers is this the norm? It isn't a huge problem. I could probably get used to signal going out once a day for a few minutes, but it is just a bit on the puzzling side to me.