Complaint Review: AOL

Anyone considering going to work at AOL Jacksonville, Orlando, OKC, Salt Lake City in the retention/inside sales department THINK AGAIN.

They have to run ongoing ads to get people because:

AOL has consistently and historicaly ripped off their subscribers and your job, if hired, is to try to keep these people, who are pissed because AOL has overdrafted their checking accts., pushed their credit cards over the limit, and in many cases overbilled them by hundreds of dollars, to stay. Thinks it's next to impossible, it almost is.

When your start, you'll invariably be put on a shift that's either 3pm to midnight or the ungodly work hours of 5pm until 2am. During your day or night shift you will be bombarded with call after call after call of people ranting raving and cursing at you for something AOL has screwed up. The initial anger that the member has because of billing issues, etc., will be compounded by the fact that they've had to stay on hold for typically 20 minutes to 45 minutes waiting to talk to someone.

Then, generally, the only tool that you have to help people and keep them as members in to give them one month of free service, or if they're pushy 2. Sometimes you can even give back one month in cash but it is frowned on by your supervisor even in cases of gross over-billing. The thing that is most humorous is that they expect you to keep these people by telling them things about the AOL service. Credit is always a last resort. You are expected to wow the members by telling them about great KEYWORDS that are relevant to their likes and dislikes. This should be their incentive to stay. Yeah right! Most people who use the internet know what their looking for online, don't need keywords, and most of the people who call to cancel know that AOL offers absolutely zero that you can't get somewhere else for a lot less. The Pop-up blockers firewalls, etc. that they tout can all be downloaded from many sites, Download.com for ex. for free.

The coup de grace of the program is, since they constantly advertise for employees, if someone is a performer, they slowly but surely build a case against her or him so they can let them go when it becomes economically unfeasable to keep them. They don't want to pay five or six thousand a month to someone when they can get flunkies that make two or twenty five hundred a month to replace them. I saw it happen time and time again.
I started with a group of about twenty and a year later when I left only three or four of my initial group that I was hired with were still there.

My point is, if you are planning to leave your current job for this don't do it. The only rationale for working here is if you have been out of work for a long time and you are desperate. Even then, keep sending your resume to other companies because you won't want to stay. The law of averages is highly against it.

David
Amelia Island, Florida
U.S.A.