AOL- The Saga Continues (AOL Flat Rate)

Member Name: kimgraham

Product:	AOL Flat Rate
Date:	24/11/01 (411 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: no phone bills

Disadvantages: read op

Hurrah! I am, after a week reconnected on AOL. However, it has been a very bumpy ride back! Many of you left some very encouraging comments on my warning opinion of last weekend. As the saga has developed even further I decided I should let you all know how things have developed.

If you have not read my AOL op some of this might not make sense. As this is a very serious matter it might be a good idea to take a peek at it.

For those of you who have been following the story here is what has happened this week.

You may remember that last Sunday our passwords were scrambled. AOL would not tell me why until I could give them the last four digits of my Electron card (which they kept on insisting was a credit card). To remind you, I did not have the number as the ATM had eaten my card and I had a nice, shiny replacement.

We have struggled by all week and I discovered that I had missed out on one or two vital e-mails to do with my sick mother. This of course, is the trouble with an integrated browser and e-mail service. With other ISP's you can get hold of your e-mails as web mail.

I was unable to contact the bank to get the number until today, as things have been really busy at school. As the week has gone by I have become more and more frustrated. I racked my brains to think of a reason why AOL would lock me out. The real sting in the tail is that I was still paying for the service! To be honest, I have had a really broke month. I began to wonder if the direct debit had bounced. I did not think it should and I had had no letter from either the bank or AOL. I did not know what to think.

Finally, this morning I had an hour off work. Right, time to phone the bank and get the number of the old card. Well, the bank said they did not keep records of old cards and nothing could be done. I was exceedingly fed up!

I poured out a cup of tea and sat down with great trepidation to telephone AOL's helpline. The onl
y good thing about this whole sorry mess is that at least the helpline has no phone charges!

So, I explained that the bank could not give me the number for the card. Surely, with the information I had given them they could now discuss my account with me?

"I am very sorry Madam, but you have to get the numbers".
"The bank say they do not have them,"
"That isn't our problem Madam. You will have to get them or I cannot speak to you."
Here we go again. Keep calm Kim, drink your tea, think of your blood pressure.

"The bank cannot give me the numbers. They do not have them."
"They do"
"They tell me they do not"

And so it went round and round for a good five minutes. My blood was boiling. The operator would not or could not help. I tried really hard not to lose my temper, but I did raise my voice a bit! I asked if I could close my account and was told yes, I could do that but they could not tell me about my account. This seemed to me to be outrageous. If someone had hacked into my account as happened in the summer then they could close my account as seemingly you do not need the 4 digits for that. Have you ever heard anything so stupid?

I needed to get some important e-mail, which had been sent to me, so I needed to get it up and running at least for a time to retrieve them. Eventually when I threatened legal action I was told that it was not a billing problem but a violation and they could say no more. I came off the phone feeling even more worried. It seemed evident that someone HAD hacked into the account and there was nothing I could do. Goodness knows what was going on in there whilst I was locked out.

I finished my cup of tea. Then I was so angry that I phoned them back. This time it was a different operator, a male one. This one seemed to have a bit of common sense. I started by saying that I was very irate, but that I realised it
was not his fault so not to take anything I said personally. I explained the whole shebang. I explained that as I could never get the four digits required it would NEVER be possible for them to discuss the problem with me. I told him that we had previously had police involvement and that I thought AOL security sucked!

This guy had a brain. He could see where I was coming from. I knew far too much to be anybody other than me. Off he went to speak to a supervisor. He was gone ages- possibly ten minutes, but they do pipe some very pleasant music through when you are on hold. I sat there, ladi da di da along to the music, such was my boredom, and I am a singer! Suddenly he was back. Whoops. How embarrassing. Have you ever been singing along full blast when somebody comes back? I am always doing it, I never learn! Anyway, I digress.

"I can't find a supervisor. There aren't any on today, but I have just reset your account and here is a temporary password"

"Excuse me? Just like that?"
"Yes, you will be back on in 10/15 minutes"
"Thank you very much. Please could you tell me what has been going on?"
"It seems that your account was locked because of spam."
"Spam? We do not send spam."
"No. But it seems a large amount of something dodgy might have been bulk mailed out of one of your screen names"
"Which one?"
"We don't know"
"Why were we not told our account was to be locked? Or contacted to tell us what to do?"
"Because we did not know"
"You didn't know? That is ridiculous"
"yes"


I then asked if he would be able to take the number of my replacement debit card to prevent this nonsense happening again. Yes, that would be fine.

Great! We were getting somewhere! Or where we?!
I gave the number!
"Do you have another card? We do
n't take Electron"

At that point I lost it. Totally. I laughed and laughed.
I said, "I told you that. I told everyone I have spoken to that I never registered with a card and I pay by direct debit. You have just proved everything I have said all along, and in the summer!"

This chap, as I said, was nice. He used his common sense. He agreed with me. At last, the corner was turned. He took all my bank details down and the new card number so at least one was logged. I am not sure how this was possible, as they do not take my card! Never mind. I did, however ask for a guarantee that I would not end up making two payments a month, one on the card and another on direct debit. We will see.

So, there we have it. The first thing I did was transfer all the card details to my diary (let's hope my diary is secure!) so that if my card gets gobbled up again I can get logged on to the help line. If you are with AOL I suggest you do the same!

I am going to ask for a weeks refund on this month's instalment.

And what about the spam?
Well, we checked all six screen names. We found it in my fourteen year olds account. She had been sent a very dodgy porn link, which had been forwarded to a vast array of people, none of whom were known to us. It had either been done by a hacker or a virus. We will probably never know! I had removed the parental controls from her screen name, as she could not get onto Hotmail to check her e-mails when they were set. Needless to say, she has 24 hours to inform her friends that she cannot use Hotmail anymore and that parental setting will go on!


I do hope this rather drawn out two-part epic has been of some use to some of you!

Summary: