AOL Wins Anti-Spam Case

saikou writes "CNet writes in this story: 'A Virginia federal court awarded America Online nearly $7 million in damages as part of the Internet service providers' legal victory over a junk e-mail operation, AOL said Monday.' Now, given tough times we should see more and more ISPs sue (and, hopefully win) the evildoers if not for their users mailboxes sake, then for their own budget. How long until there will be a major ISP whose plans include discounts for spam-fighters? (Help us to sue every spammer than sent mail to you and get $9.95 disount on your next bill :) )"

Comments

DMCA? Not evil?

[yerricde]

They are a media conglomerate, but they are about as non-evil as they get.

Time Warner was one of the biggest backers of the DMCA.

Re:i'm so confused Crack Smoking confusing you?

[Arker]

You ever try to cancel an account with them? Good three monhts before you get any results. Plus the asshole who gets rude on the phone with when you try to cancel
Yes, in 1994 when I actually used the service. It was cancelled immediately. Why is it that whenever a person speaks to a rude customer service representative, that they assume the entire company is a collection of assholes? Perhaps it was just my limited experience in tech support, but believe it or not, it is possible that out of hundreds or thousands of good representatives, there are a few bad ones.

While it's true that a single asshole rep shouldn't be taken as a smear on the entire company, they do have a big problem here, not just one rep. It's a structural thing. They have taken it upon themselves to make cancelling very difficult, on the apparently accurate assumption that their subscribers are rather easy to manipulate. They have a cancellation department, and those people are the only ones that can cancel your account. If you ask someone in another department, they can't transfer you, they can't even give you the number normally (unless you tell them you can't get online at all) rather they are to send you to 'keyword cancel'. There you find the number to call. There are one or two other choices, I think you can snail mail them (certified mail!), and maybe send a fax. Most people will call on the tollfree number, and it's set up to encourage that. When you call the tollfree number, you wait on hold for a fairly long period of time normally. If you hold on long enough, you eventually get a 'cancellation representative.' Now these guys are trained and expected, not to cancel your account as asked, but to find some way, any way, to talk you out of cancelling! In fact, their job performance is rated by the percentage of calls they 'save' from cancellation, and if that percentage dips below the goal, they are out looking for a job again. This can be turned to your advantage if you really didn't want to cancel, as they can and will give you free service for a month or sometimes more in order to get you off the phone without cancelling, but it's annoying as all hell if you really don't want the service. And given the pressure these kids are under to 'save' you whether you want to be saved or not, and the training they receive (adapted from the training developed for hard sell telemarketing) it's not surprising at all when one gets rude. She may, in fact, be fired for cancelling your account, so why wouldn't she be stressed out?

Your experience is somewhat dated btw, AOL in 1994 was a very different company. I don't know exactly when the system I described was put in place, but I know it's been this way since '99, and almost certainly a bit earlier, but probably not in '94 - there was a huge cultural shift at AOL after the huge expansions of the mid to late 90s.