[OT?] True AOL story.

[tburdett]

I know Habib, YOU ARE A VERY BAD MAN, very bad!

Tell him, when he gets ouf the hospital, that I am sorry. I will send him a years wages to compensate him for his trouble. He is working at a help desk in India for a major US corporation, so that would be, what, around $6.50?

 

[tburdett]

I know Habib, YOU ARE A VERY BAD MAN, very bad!

Tell him, when he gets out of the hospital, that I am sorry. I will send him a years wages to compensate him for his trouble. He is working at a help desk in India for a major US corporation, so that would be, what, around $6.50?

 

[Enforcer]

Nah, he's probably a graduate of an Indian University, so at least $12.

(FYI: the Indian tech support/customer service people that US companies are hiring are all profoundly over-qualified for their jobs--many have college degrees. That's why there's been such a large export of those jobs to that country.)

 

[Dimwhit]

Nah, he's probably a graduate of an Indian University, so at least $12.

(FYI: the Indian tech support/customer service people that US companies are hiring are all profoundly over-qualified for their jobs--many have college degrees. That's why there's been such a large export of those jobs to that country.)

And the competition is fierce. Our company hired 60 or so people and set up a location in Bangalore. There were over 18,000 applications to sort through. And this was for call center reps. It's insane over there.

 

[Enforcer]

Well, they do have over a billion people in that country. Pretty insane indeed.

 

[kingpaul]

Well, they do have over a billion people in that country. Pretty insane indeed.

And I read in Business Week several months ago, an article related to Indian outsourcing, that the avg. US Software Engineer makes $60k/yr. The avg Indian Software Engineer was, IIRC, $5k/yr.

 

[RangerWickett]

I feel a little bad about this, but I kept a free trial for AOL's online service for two years. After my freshman year of college, in May 2001, I got one month of free service. I tried to cancel in June, and it got extended to August. I tried to cancel in August, and they extended it 'til October. A few days later, I told them to suspend it, because I was going back to college, and thus, come Christmas break, I have another month and a half of free service.

I reactivate my account in mid-December, keep it 'til mid-January, then suspend it again until May 2002. In May, I reactivate for a month, then try to cancel, and it gets extended until August. The process repeats, and finally this past August, the representative I talked to commented, "Mr. Nock, I see that you've been using our free trial service for over two years. I'm sorry to hear that you'll be ending your time with us. You can continue to use AOL for the low price of . . ."

My time had ended. So yeah, now I'm just gonna cancel for real. Maybe I can milk MSN for a decade or three. Or use a realistic internet service provider that costs only $10 a month instead of $25.

 

[thatdarncat]

I have seen a few stories on various online tech sites (mostly the Register) about AOL in the last six months. It seems they're getting in trouble with the govm't over their tactics to hold onto customers

Sorry, no links, I've never used AOhelL so I didn't care that much

 

[MojoGM]

That is the most hilarious thing I have ever heard.

I just read it out loud to Djeta and she is laughing so hard she is in pain.

You know, we both work for a division of AOL Time Warner that is so proud of our parent company that we just removed AOL from our letterhead (ok, actually the whole company did).

 

[2d6]

Here is an article that discusses the AOL freebie concerns

I bought a notebook back in '99 and got a free year of AOL with it that lasted about 18 months and would have gone further if I hadn't forcefully refused more free time.