It’s true, I am. I don’t like to talk about it much, given the rampant anti-AOL sentiment that seems to be the opinion du jour… mainly because I don’t feel like I should have to defend myself for my choice. I actually joined in 1993, and have been a member ever since.

The initial reason that AOL was the right answer for me is no longer valid. And AOL seems determined to do whatever it can to encourage me to leave. Like their latest effort of adding their advertisements to my email messages. Before you ask, this post will not have a single thing in it related to phpBB, so you can stop reading here if you want.

In 1993, when I joined, AOL was one of the very few nationwide Internet Service Providers (ISP) available. I traveled a lot with my job, so I needed to be able to get online anywhere and everywhere. With AOL’s popular high-speed dial-up network I was reasonably sure that I could find a local access phone number no matter where I went. And for many years that was true.

Then hotels started offering high-speed internet connections that did not require dialup. Oooh, nice. Yes, there was often a charge (more often the higher-priced hotels charge for internet access, while lower-priced hotels offered it for free. Go figure. ). And today most hotels have jumped on the wireless option as they don’t have to run wires to every room. Nice. So it has been a long time since I have actually used AOL to “dial” into the internet.

So why do I still have my account? Simple, it’s been mine for so long I just can’t imagine giving it up. My email address is quite simple: it’s my phpbb user name “at” aol.com. (Okay, so phpBB did manage to sneak into this blog post after all.) There is some value in being able to maintain the same email address.

Not too long ago, however, AOL made it so that you can use their service for free. If you want to be able to use their dial-up service (which I still have to do at my in-laws house) then you still have to pay, so we do, but at a much reduced rate.

Fast forward to the reason for this blog post. I use AOL’s webmail interface to write my emails, so I don’t have to install their resource-hogging piece-of-excrement software on my computer. And the other day I got this back in an email from my mom, who is not the most Internet-savvy person:

The new AOL link you sent, I will look at later. You still need a way to get online though. Could we use Yahoo?

I don’t think we know enough to make the right decision.

My response was… huh? I had no idea what she was talking about, so I asked her. She sent back a quoted portion of my prior email… there was an advertisement for AOL in the footer of my email! And I am still a paying customer, not a freebie account! Oh, I was seriously steamed.

My wife’s computer still has the AOL software installed (and is therefore slower than molasses). I signed on last night and sent myself an email to one of my email accounts associated with this domain. No ad. Then I signed on to webmail and sent something to the same account. Ah, there’s the ad. Still steamed, I contacted their “live help” group.

It was a very short conversation. It seems that there is no way for me to turn off the advertisements that are tagged into my emails via the webmail interface. So my options were to live with the ads (not acceptable) or install the full AOL software (also not acceptable). I pointed out to the tech (who is only a tech, of course, and not in a position to change anything) that it should be a simple matter for them to detect whether I was a paying customer or a freebie account, and react accordingly. Who knows if something will ever come of that… I doubt it.

Ultimately the tech did manage to dig up that the “classic” webmail interface was still available for use, and they provided a URL for same. Using that interface does not offer all of the bells / whistles of the newer service, but it’s more than adequate for my needs.

And it doesn’t include ads.

I’m starting to despise AOL with the rest of you.