I have a number of email accounts - too many really. So there's one for work, another for this blog, a Google one for travelling and so on.But my main home account I've had for about 20 years from is from Compuserve, now part of AOL, and its been frozen for the last two weeks. The story that the "mailbox not available due to temporary maintenance" is plausible for an hour or two, not for a day or two let alone a week.
What started off as annoying is becoming incredibly frustrating. This was made worse by there being no obvious way to get in touch to say something was wrong. In the end it was the much aligned Twitter service that got the wheels in motion. Apparently AOL's webmail development team is on the case but to date no joy.
Hence this post to anyone who is wondering why I've not replied to their messages.
Normal service will be resumed when normal service is restored.
5 comments:
My first e-mail account was with Compuserve, too, years ago when they were one of the few major providers.
When AOL bought them out, it seemed like they were doing everything they could to scuttle CIS and move everyone to AOL. Their customer 'support' couldn't explain how to upgrade my mail to the 'new' web-based service.
And the AOL discs made great drink coasters.
I first signed onto AOL when it had only 7000 members (yes, really). At the time, existing members were complaining about how letting in too many new members was causing service to suffer. When the number went above 10,000, there were system crashes, and everybody complained about how the infrastructure wasn't keeping up with the new enrollment. Why, the 12K baud connections were seldom up to that speed!
Eventually, AOL got its act together, and it was actually a pretty decent service for a few years.
Then other services came along that cost less, including the local service that I use now that provides dial-up service in parts of the world that I go where AOL doesn't. Shortly after I left AOL, it made its service available for free -- but it still isn't available where I go, so I didn't go back to it.
If you already have too many email addresses, why keep one whose service provider has been so unreliable? Or if you keep it, make it the one that you give to potential spammers and bill collectors.
Yep, the "sacrificial" e-mail is a decent trick.
I got compuserve as at the time (around 1990? - it was the old DOS based CIM) there wasn't much else. Then it was great for travel as it had the world wide dial up network.
Of all my email accounts its the most used for various reasons so don't won't to have to cut it off but there is still no joy :(
What a funny old world this is. I had AOL, Compuserve, Genie and Delphi so I could communicate with all my friends. AOL was bundled with a Pre-Windows GUI called Geos. I thought it was the bomb.
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