It can almost be said that beat-downs from AOL are like noses; everybody's got one. Thing is, many people have more than one. I don't know too many other things in the cyber-world that have so thoroughly outlived what usefullness it might have at one time had.
Yeah, I know their service is very easy to use and has some nice content and all that. The problem is, they are like that bad girlfriend whose face pops up at your window on rainy nights, and who fills up your answering machine with queries about when the two of you getting back together or who leaves sad, begging notes under the wiper blades of your car at night. You know, the kind who just cannot see when it's OVER.
I was an AOL customer several long, dark years ago (I'm OK now; I don't wear the bag over my head any longer). At first, it was pretty cool. Then the spam came and wouldn't leave. Almost every day, I got just as many messages from AOL, going on about the "winning battle" they were waging against spam as I did spam messages, and I am not exaggerating when I say every week or so it just got worse. That's a beat-down. They obviously thought I was gullible enough to believe that an increase in spam was evidence of their success in fighting it.

Next, I decided that I was sick to death of being beat down by the banks that held my credit cards (don't get me started on THAT beat-down!), so I cancelled all of them. Oops! I forgot, AOL was billing against one of those cards. So I contacted them and switched things over to my checking account, which they were happy to do. They were also happy to abscond with an additional $5 a month as a punishment (I think they used a different word, but a rose by any other name...) for using a checking account. With the rate increase that happened right around that time, I was getting beat down to the tune of twenty-seven bucks a month!

Next, I bought this rather nice, hardbacked paper appointment book thingy from AOL. If I bought it, they said, they'd give me a free month of service, so I was like, OK, sure. They charged me I think it was $25 plus shipping for it. Then two things happened: One, they sent me a $22 check (instead of just not billing me for a month), and lo and behold, I swear to you the check BOUNCED! Not only that, my bank charged me six bucks because their check bounced. When I called AOL about this, a squeaky-voiced lady said ," Oh, yeah, that check was written against a dead account. We'll try to send you another as soon as we can." I am still waiting for it. The second thing, a year later they just took it upon themselves to send me another one of these things, which of course they took the liberty of charging me for automatically. Only, by now I had a PDA and was done with paper. I managed to get that junk reversed, thankfully. Still, it was overall a big, fat beat-down.

Finally, I'd had enough. My phone company said that, since they enjoyed beating me down (they said it like, "as a loyal and valued customer", but I knew what they REALLY meant!), they would let me have their dialup Internet service for just $16 a month. So I called AOL to say goodbye. Copious tears flowed and I had to explain that, "...hey, you're a nice service, and any Internet surfer would be lucky to have you, and you're going to make some lucky person an excellent ISP and you'll be happier than with me. I know it's hard now, but you'll see, it's better for both of us"
So this guy named Bruce (I think) offered me 3 free months, just to think about it. "If you decide to stay with us, just call back before that time runs out." OK. The following week I was using the other service and forgot about AOL. Oh, but they had not forgotten about me! I wasn't a very budget-minded person then, and I was making pretty good money (remember when computer techs could actually do that?), so I wasn't keeping too close a watch on the goings on in my bank account. Almost a year later, I just happened to be reading my bank statement (which is designed, I think, by the bank in hope that that's exactly what you will NOT do), and what do you think I see? Right! $26.95 for AOL!! I checked, and found that they had started billing me again automatically after that 3 free months. I called, and some girl (that's right, girl, sounded about 17) checked and was able to show that I hadn't logged on in nearly a year, and I explained what Bruce had said, how he seemed to infer that the service would cancel after 3 months unless I specifically took action to prevent that. Unfortunately, she could only give a maximum of 4 months credit, and she gave me a number to call for the rest, which I called about eight times, got a different, convoluted lie--I mean story--each time, and finally figured it wasn't worth it. They got me for about $120 in all. Beat down.

So you see, I don't need to generalize about the usefullness and/or silliness of AOL, or join a crowd of malicious bashers, I have enough real bruises from being beaten profusely about the head, neck and shoulders to be able to tell you truly that you don't want to start a relationship with that suitor. And if you're in one, get out while you still can (or maybe that's IF you still can?).