AOL

I hate AOL with a fucking passion! I wouldn't use AOL if it were the last ISP on Earth! I am addicted to the internet and can't go a day without using it and if AOL was the only way I could access the internet, I would quit cold turkey. I would rather stick pins under my fingernails then talk to one of their ignorant, non-English speaking, shit-for-brains agents. If AOL was a country, I would say bomb them. If they were a bug, exterminate them. But they are a company and I will be sure to never, ever use them for as long as I, my spawn and theirs, shall live.

5 years go, I did use AOL. That's when AIM was cool, AOL was cheap and easy. I quit after a few months, while still in my free trial. Sissy2124 has ALWAYS been my screen name. For 8 years now, that's what I have used.

So, a couple of years later, I download AIM because that's all one of my friends would use. A few months later, I receive a bill for $14.95, urging that I pay immediately or they will come for my organs. Of course, there is no phone number on the bill to call. So, I go to www.aol.com to find a few numbers. After 45 minutes of calling different numbers, I get some bucket head that seems to think that I should pay them $15 a month to use my screenname. Fuck that! I promptly told him he could shove the screenname up his ass and that would be the last $14.95 they would get from me!

Fast forward a few more years to today. My mom is receiving my mail right now and she tells me I have something from a collection agency. WHAT?!? I am in the process of buying a house and am watching my credit report like a hawk! I ask her to open it and she says it's for $14.95 for AOL; no date, no explanation, just $14.95. Now, I have refreshed my credit report twice in the past 5 days and there has been no mention of AOL or $14.95.

So she gives me the phone number, and I call. And a recording says for better service, to call another number. So I do. And it rings....but a weird ring like when calling overseas. Then, it sounds like an alarm going off and after about 2 minutes, it just hangs up. I call the first number again to make sure I wrote down the 2nd number correctly. I call the 2nd number where Ha-fucking-beeb answers. I tell him about the letter and he looks it up. He says I had an account from 2001-2004 and I owed $14.95. It took everything I had right there not to put my hand through the phone and strangle the ever loving life out of him. He asks if I would like to make the payment.

I said no. I don't think I owe it. But I will, because I don't want you all trying to put that shit on my report. So I give him my card number where he repeats it back wrong 3 times. He finally gets it and asks if a certain address is my address. No, it's my moms. Which, I'm not sure how he got because I only have my stuff forwarded there, but haven't changed my address to that address. I start to spell out my new address. I kid you not, this takes 10 minutes. He would think I said "D" after a "T" and weird crap like that. Finally I told him to stop and listen and spelled it out with an example of each letter. He still got it wrong.

We finally get it finished and he says he is going to charge $14.95 plus a $5 payment fee to my card. You've got to be fucking kidding me! He then transfers me to his supervisor who also repeats my card number and address to be sure it is correct and lets me know of the $14.95 plus $5 that will be charged to my card.

It took 30 minutes to make this payment, that I didn't even fucking owe...and that was with no hold time!

And I'm a little paranoid, which is unlike me. They asked for my 3 digit security number on the back of my card. Now, I know online they will often ask for that, but I have never been asked for it over the phone. To be safe, I have transferred all of that money to a different account because I am in fact, paranoid of the AOL Nazis.

And that is just one reason why, not even if my life depended on it, I would not ever use AOL.