The Outsource of My Problems

Yesterday I was in AOL hell. I've been there before, and each time I swear it will be my last, that I'm going to follow the urging of my husband and sons and son-in-law and go AWOL from AOL.

It started last week with a small annoyance: a pop-up window that, well, popped up in the upper left-hand corner of my flat panel screen every time I logged off, and informed me that AOL was removing art files so that my Internet experience would be faster.

I wasn't sure what "art files" AOL was talking about. I decided to ignore the window, which wasn't threatening me with red alert triangles, or warning me that I was low on memory (a remark I take personally now that I am eligible for AARP).

Then, yesterday morning, my husband reported that AOL kept knocking him off as soon as he logged on.

"Probably just a temporary glitch," I told him from my hotel room in Palm Desert, where I was eating lunch after giving a talk to the Sun City Hadassah chapter. "Reboot and try again."

Several hours later I was at my desk, attempting to check my e-mail. I logged onto AOL, typed in my password. A brief flicker, then a crisp, take-no-prisoners "Good-bye" from AOL.

Was it something I said? Had AOL heard me making a disparaging comment about it?

I tried logging on three more times, was rebuffed three times. Then I rebooted my computer. That seemed to solve the problem, but I thought: Why not report it, and the pop-up window?

Big mistake.

I reached Raj, a young man in India who attempted to articulate my complaint in barely understandable English.

"Do not worry," he promised. "I will solve your problem."

I like a man with confidence. Raj walked me through a labyrinth of steps and advised me to delete a file.

"Are you sure about this?" I asked.

"Absolutely. You do not have to worry. We will restore the file and all will be well."

I deleted the file, then pressed the "restore" button. That didn't stop the pop-ups.

But it did shut down AOL.

"Let me check into this," Raj said.

I pictured him at his desk, thumbing through his AOL manual.

"You will have to reinstall AOL," he said a moment later. I think he was sad. I know I was.

"All right," I said. Actually, I said something less kind.

"What's up?" my husband said. He had come into my office.

I told him.

He sighed. "I told you to get rid of AOL."

I found a CD-rom of AOL 9.0, inserted it into the CD drive, and listened to the whir as AOL installed itself. Finally, a wide, narrow box popped up and informed me that AOL would now install the remaining files and would restart my computer to do so.

Success, I thought, as I clicked YES.

But the computer didn't restart. So I restarted it, manually.

The box popped up again. And again.

Raj was perplexed, but still confident. Then he was strangely silent.

"If you'd like to make a call," an operator's voice informed me.

We had been disconnected.

I phoned AOL again, spoke to a man who said his name was Tim. (A New Yorker article I recently read about outsourcing revealed that many Indian and Pakistani techs are asked to give American-sounding names to their U.S. customers. Bill, Ted, Jim, John.)

"We will have to uninstall AOL and reinstall," Tim told me, almost chipper.

Biting back an unkind remark, I uninstalled and reinstalled AOL.

Same box.

"Get rid of AOL," my husband said.

"Give me a moment, please," said Tim.

I gave him several.

"The problem is not with AOL," Tim announced. "It is a problem with Dell. Your Winsock and RAS files are corrupted."

"Corrupted" is a strong word, I thought, one that shouldn't be used lightly.

I phoned Dell. A tech helped me install a new Winsock file. "You don't need RAS if you use cable," he said. "RAS is for dial-up and modems."

The newly installed Winsock file didn't solve the problem. I still couldn't complete the AOL installation.

We contacted our local son-in-law, who knows just about everything there is to know about computers.

"Why are you still on AOL, Mom?" he asked. "AOL is the worst. And RAS--that doesn't apply to your system. You have cable."

He walked us through several attempts to fix our problem. This involved temporarily disabling Norton Security, Spy Sweeper, and other programs that might be interfering with the installation of AOL.

Nothing worked.

Four hours had passed. I had missed "Joey," which I don't mind missing, and "Will and Grace," which I do. I set the VCR and taped "The Apprentice."

Back to AOL, where I repeated my woes to three people, each of whom disconnected me. Then I spoke to Leba.

"It is RAS," she insisted. "RAS."

Like the head of a Greek chorus.

I returned to the family room and switched channels to CBS, so that I could tape "Without a Trace." (With our old analog cable box and timer, we used to be able to program the VCR to tape shows on different channels. With our newer, more expensive digital box, we can't. Progress...)

Back to Dell, where a lovely woman named Anna (she was in the Phillipines, she told me) repeated what my son-in-law and the first Dell technician had said about RAS and dial-ups.

But Anna, bless her, advised doing a "system restore." Which, with her help, we did. And that must have restored the file Raj had asked me to delete, because when we tried installing AOL, the dreaded brown box didn't appear.

Success.

I still didn't have my Favorite Places, my Address Book...the files in my Personal Filing Cabinet, files that contain important correspondence.

I phoned AOL. After getting ineffectual directions from one person and being disconnected from the following two techs, I decided to leave my filing cabinet for the morning.

It was 12:30. My husband and I watched "The Apprentice" and went to bed.

This morning I phoned AOL and was disconnected two more times before I reached Allan. Allan (probably not his name) is in India. He knew exactly what to do.

"Thank you," my husband and I crooned into the speaker-phone.

"You are most welcome," he said.

I think he meant it.

"So when are you going to get rid of AOL?" my husband inquired.

"Soon," I said.

Comments

[Rochelle]

George--you, too? I keep getting that dumb message again!

[George Heyman]

Seriously - Is there a simple way to get rid of the "Removing Art Files" popup?

[Pearl]

From the sounds of your AOL issues, perhaps the service should not be called AOL, but rather COL, for "cryin' out loud!"

[Barbara W. Klaser]

Um, so are you getting rid of AOL? :)

[Guyot]

AOL is of the devil.

It cracks me up that they are promoting their anti-spam network now when AOL is basically where spam was invented.

AOL is awful.