Calacanis Mopes

What I didn’t see in any of the AOL response is that the data was released by a ‘rogue agent acting on his own.’ Nor did I see anything stating that whoever (either individual or a team of peoples) did this leak of information was terminated. Why? Because AOL allowed it and something like this was definately approved by upper upper echelon of AOL corporate monkies and you can’t just fire them of course. So what is the greater sin? Following your retention requirements and someone tapes the call an releases it on the web or AOL willfully and knowingly releasing thousands of pieces of information that not only identifies but potentially releases critically damaging information about their members. Something they vowed never to do and pitched that they don’t do in all their commercials and even retention pitches. Absolutely incredible. Calacanis laments this as if it is something that happened without any of their control – he acts like AOL is JOB from the bible and all this bad stuff happens out of the blue – one big difference AOL did this all to themselves. So for him to whine and cry is insane – he should be saying “i don’t know what the hell anyone was thinking by doing this and we are investigating this and harsh punishments will ensue.” Let’s take their ‘can the spam’ campaign. THey had no problem at all making a public spectacle of spammers. I remember they even caught one guy and somehow in the settlement AOL got money and his porsche – they then gave away his porsche to some aol member in some drawing. So they obviously have no problem doing something like that to a spammer – and they obviously don’t have a problem slitting the throats of Chalupa and John and throwing them out in the street much like the Mujahadeen. So let’s see what they do to the people who willingly released MEMBERS SEARCH DATA. Probably nothing because obviously bigger fish let that cat out of the bag.

Also: I agree with Bonejob than AOL should acknowledge that they made the bed they are in. They should not explicitly or implicitly blame “bad publicity.” They seem to continually avoid any kind of hard look at the culture of their business. “Fight the good fight?” What??? Tell me, how are you defining “good”??? That’s a fundamental question that needs to be asked. I’m talking about soul-searching. No superficial knee-jerk thing having to do with short-term revenue, quarterly earnings, shareholder value, etc.

A fact that sometimes has gotten lost is that there *were* reports of egregious practices regarding attempts to cancel AOL prior to Vincent’s call. Vincent recorded the call to confirm things he had heard. Radio show host and consumer advocate Clark Howard publicized the difficulty in cancelling AOL and gave advice on how to do so well before Vincent’s call. There is stuff on epinions about it that also pre-dates Vincent’s call. There are probably hundreds of other references to AOL cancellation horror stories pre-Vincent’s call. It’s just that Vincent’s recording and some well-placed publicity caught fire, big time — fire fueled by hundreds of “It happened to me, too”s. The point, again, is the AOL’s product is/was not “the call” — a.k.a. “we finally got caught” — it was the dreadful things they’d been doing all along.

You are exactly right Bill – they seem to treat all of this as if all this happened out of the blue. No it didn’t happen that way – somewhere many years ago this practice and culture was started. Just like on the farm, we plant seeds – and if we want them to grow we water them and cultivate them and fertilize them so that the harvest is great – it takes alot of planning and work to produce a bountiful harvest. In terms of AOL Retention, they planted the seeds and plans to keep members and this created a culture of WIN AT ALL COSTS – they even hired outsides sales people (OUTSELL) to create the Retention Manual – now if you look at the time line this manual was created not too long before NY won the lawsuit and after AOL had gotten in trouble with the FTC and had signed a consent decree. NY wasn’t the first to win something against AOL – the FTC made them sign a consent decree to change their practices about 5 or 6 years ago as they were threatened that if they didn’t change then they would basically have to provide the equivelant of a cancellation process that was as easy as providing a ‘button’ online that they click and it cancels their account. But they didn’t change even back then and the call shows that even now or even with ‘the call’ they didn’t change. They just make a little trim here or a nick there to make it look like they are complying. They would have to completely overhaul the way they do things – just like we did on the farm when we wanted to plant new crops on the field – we had to plow it up and completely turn the soil over – then disc it – and spray it with chemicals so that all the weeds and no trace of the old crops is there – it is only then can you replant and have a successful crop- AOL is trying to plant good seeds in a field so choked full of weeds they cannot be successful.

Isn’t it amazing that despite having all the necessary means to make itself a good company from the start and then also having the means to make a decent turnaround that it continually seems to muck it up. Not a product of bad luck but more a product of not having good enough people in there to ‘get er done’.

Well AOL has been investigated on atleast 2 prior occasions due to numerable cosumer complaints to the FTC and each time they sign one of those consent decrees where they admit no wrong and agree to comply – both times it had to do with cancelling the accounts and handling call volume – one of the other problems aol was having is that they weren’t handling their calls – if I remember right they only had a 50% handle rate so basically people were calling in and never getting through to anyone. now they must maintain somewhere in the 95% range – what AOL has done is they only change the little things that people are complaining about – if people complain about not getting through and AOL gets busted for it – they only change that part of it. If someone complains about multiple saves attempts then they go from 3 saves attempts to 2 – if someone complains about call time taking too long the institute the automated voice thing (loop hole because you can’t count the amount of time a person spends with the automated voice thing as part of the call time – the call time starts when you get a ‘live person’) – the IVR is now some indiana jones type maze that is horrendous to navigate. What they need to do is listen to everyone and take all the feedback they can get – make the changes WE want not what will barely keep them out of hot water and get it done. Then come out with a a campaign strategy of “we listened to you and this is what we have done” – point blank. They make this huge deal about making things free but when you call in you have to go through saves attempts where someone is trying to get you to pay $4.95 or whatever. It is like 25 monkeys trying to hump a football over there. Utter chaos !!!

What I didn’t see in any of the AOL response is that the data was released by a ‘rogue agent acting on his own.’ Nor did I see anything stating that whoever (either individual or a team of peoples) did this leak of information was terminated. Why? Because AOL allowed it and something like this was definately approved by upper upper echelon of AOL corporate monkies and you can’t just fire them of course. So what is the greater sin? Following your retention requirements and someone tapes the call an releases it on the web or AOL willfully and knowingly releasing thousands of pieces of information that not only identifies but potentially releases critically damaging information about their members. Something they vowed never to do and pitched that they don’t do in all their commercials and even retention pitches. Absolutely incredible. Calacanis laments this as if it is something that happened without any of their control – he acts like AOL is JOB from the bible and all this bad stuff happens out of the blue – one big difference AOL did this all to themselves. So for him to whine and cry is insane – he should be saying “i don’t know what the hell anyone was thinking by doing this and we are investigating this and harsh punishments will ensue.” Let’s take their ‘can the spam’ campaign. THey had no problem at all making a public spectacle of spammers. I remember they even caught one guy and somehow in the settlement AOL got money and his porsche – they then gave away his porsche to some aol member in some drawing. So they obviously have no problem doing something like that to a spammer – and they obviously don’t have a problem slitting the throats of Chalupa and John and throwing them out in the street much like the Mujahadeen. So let’s see what they do to the people who willingly released MEMBERS SEARCH DATA. Probably nothing because obviously bigger fish let that cat out of the bag.

Also: I agree with Bonejob than AOL should acknowledge that they made the bed they are in. They should not explicitly or implicitly blame “bad publicity.” They seem to continually avoid any kind of hard look at the culture of their business. “Fight the good fight?” What??? Tell me, how are you defining “good”??? That’s a fundamental question that needs to be asked. I’m talking about soul-searching. No superficial knee-jerk thing having to do with short-term revenue, quarterly earnings, shareholder value, etc.

A fact that sometimes has gotten lost is that there *were* reports of egregious practices regarding attempts to cancel AOL prior to Vincent’s call. Vincent recorded the call to confirm things he had heard. Radio show host and consumer advocate Clark Howard publicized the difficulty in cancelling AOL and gave advice on how to do so well before Vincent’s call. There is stuff on epinions about it that also pre-dates Vincent’s call. There are probably hundreds of other references to AOL cancellation horror stories pre-Vincent’s call. It’s just that Vincent’s recording and some well-placed publicity caught fire, big time — fire fueled by hundreds of “It happened to me, too”s. The point, again, is the AOL’s product is/was not “the call” — a.k.a. “we finally got caught” — it was the dreadful things they’d been doing all along.

You are exactly right Bill – they seem to treat all of this as if all this happened out of the blue. No it didn’t happen that way – somewhere many years ago this practice and culture was started. Just like on the farm, we plant seeds – and if we want them to grow we water them and cultivate them and fertilize them so that the harvest is great – it takes alot of planning and work to produce a bountiful harvest. In terms of AOL Retention, they planted the seeds and plans to keep members and this created a culture of WIN AT ALL COSTS – they even hired outsides sales people (OUTSELL) to create the Retention Manual – now if you look at the time line this manual was created not too long before NY won the lawsuit and after AOL had gotten in trouble with the FTC and had signed a consent decree. NY wasn’t the first to win something against AOL – the FTC made them sign a consent decree to change their practices about 5 or 6 years ago as they were threatened that if they didn’t change then they would basically have to provide the equivelant of a cancellation process that was as easy as providing a ‘button’ online that they click and it cancels their account. But they didn’t change even back then and the call shows that even now or even with ‘the call’ they didn’t change. They just make a little trim here or a nick there to make it look like they are complying. They would have to completely overhaul the way they do things – just like we did on the farm when we wanted to plant new crops on the field – we had to plow it up and completely turn the soil over – then disc it – and spray it with chemicals so that all the weeds and no trace of the old crops is there – it is only then can you replant and have a successful crop- AOL is trying to plant good seeds in a field so choked full of weeds they cannot be successful.

Isn’t it amazing that despite having all the necessary means to make itself a good company from the start and then also having the means to make a decent turnaround that it continually seems to muck it up. Not a product of bad luck but more a product of not having good enough people in there to ‘get er done’.

Well AOL has been investigated on atleast 2 prior occasions due to numerable cosumer complaints to the FTC and each time they sign one of those consent decrees where they admit no wrong and agree to comply – both times it had to do with cancelling the accounts and handling call volume – one of the other problems aol was having is that they weren’t handling their calls – if I remember right they only had a 50% handle rate so basically people were calling in and never getting through to anyone. now they must maintain somewhere in the 95% range – what AOL has done is they only change the little things that people are complaining about – if people complain about not getting through and AOL gets busted for it – they only change that part of it. If someone complains about multiple saves attempts then they go from 3 saves attempts to 2 – if someone complains about call time taking too long the institute the automated voice thing (loop hole because you can’t count the amount of time a person spends with the automated voice thing as part of the call time – the call time starts when you get a ‘live person’) – the IVR is now some indiana jones type maze that is horrendous to navigate. What they need to do is listen to everyone and take all the feedback they can get – make the changes WE want not what will barely keep them out of hot water and get it done. Then come out with a a campaign strategy of “we listened to you and this is what we have done” – point blank. They make this huge deal about making things free but when you call in you have to go through saves attempts where someone is trying to get you to pay $4.95 or whatever. It is like 25 monkeys trying to hump a football over there. Utter chaos !!!