I had AOL once...never again.
Posted on 07/15/2004 5:23:02 AM PDT by kattracks
And .. proves why people should dump AOL.
There are better and cheaper services. And .. other sources for instant messaging.
Steve Klein returned my call this afternoon.
He says the robot's software was changed about a week ago and now gives no political messages.
He claims that they had no idea it was saying negative responses about Bush until they got complaints. He said the robot was only supposed to make positive statements.
He also claims this news story is 'inaccurate'. And he was very upset with the reporter.
In any event he now knows that many people are angry that the robot was making such biased statements. He says he's getting permission from AOL to do a media campaign to get out the whole story.
Well, if nothing else this whole episode on the 'biased robot' demonstrates that if enough people complain about something....it will get noticed.
FWIW I was impressed that he got back to me so quickly.
OK. Well, my complaint was explicitly based on the CNS piece, so if the piece is wrong, they'll just throw out my complaint.
You can call him at the number in my post #56. If you leave your name & phone number he'll probably get back to you.
AOL is the "thing that wouldn't die".
AOL stinks. I dumped them 3 years ago this October for AT&T Broadband Internet (now Comcast).
LOL ! And that looks exactly like what I imagined the person on the
other end of the phone looked like when I used to call AOL. haha !
I just read your post more carefully, and my response to this claim is "?!"
Is he claiming the robot broke out of its programming and is able to form opinions and judgements on its own?!
AAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!
Is the lead programmer's name Forbin?
Or is he claiming that his software engineers don't know what they're doing?
Or that he has a rogue programmer screwing around with the code?
I was actually starting to feel bad about filing my complaint and was thinking about looking into withdrawing it, but after rereading what you said he said, I think I'll just let the FEC process run its course.
The smoking gun, as far as my complaint is concerned, was the claim that the robot was "originally programmed to oppose Bush." If this is untrue--or even if it's Schmidt's word against the reporter's--then the FEC should, and undoubtedly will, throw out my complaint, even if the rest of the article is accurate. If it's just the robot equivalent of "Google-bombing," then there's no corporate expenditure involved.
And if I got suckered by CNS, then I will apologize for that. (Sigh. Are conservative news sources no more trustworthy than liberal ones?)
I called aol CS, and asked for a corporate number. That got me nowhere. So I looked up their Press contacts, which has a 703 number over East and got Communications. Now, I have belonged to aol with at least a screen name (let go of the full account long ago) since it began. I reported this Smarter Kid instant messanger situation and said I am not happy. I promised to influence everyone I know....which covers a lot of territory. I spoke to a young woman who wanted to know where I got the information and was indicating that she was interested in replicating the situation. Am not too hopeful, but I registered my voice.
Perhaps you should have registered your voice with the owners of the site instead of aol.
See post #56......the CEO of 'Smarter Child' is the best one to call.
"I made the mistake of signing up for AOL's 'free 45-day trial' in January, because I thought we could use it while on vacation. It's now July, and they still haven't complied with my several written and telephoned requests - all done as per their instructions - to terminate the account. AOL is evil, pure evil!"
Years ago I worked in the billing dept. for AOL (a call center--one of AOL's seven centers in the country at that time). I was shocked to learn the tactics they used on people...ignoring their requests to cancel. In my department we were SUPPOSED to transfer a cancellation request to the SALES dept. (where often they said they would cancel an account but really wouldn't). After I learned about this, I stopped transferring calls to Sales and would just cancel the account myself for the customer.
I can't tell you how many upset customers we talked to at that billing center. Like I said, I was shocked to hear their stories.
Your best route is to find a sympathetic customer service rep and ask them to please just cancel the account for you. (If they are playing AOL'S game, they will claim that they cannot cancel the account themselves.)
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