an abusive relationship ends

we have official left aohell, after three months of trying.

this account has had an interesting history, i activated it four years ago when i was coming to meet vic for the first time. i was doing website management and needed an account i could dial up from anywhere with and so began a four year relationship than only soured when i tried to leave.

well that`s not quite true, when i came back to Trinidad in 2001, i wasn`t able to check mail with great regularity and discovered on of the many things that pissed me off about aol. if you don`t check mail via the aol client and save said mail, they dump it from their servers, but i stuck through because the account was useful to have, i got email accounts for my mother and daughters and vic.

in the last year i realised i wasn`t using aol to dial up and the real email we were receiving there minimal, so we switched to the minimum package and after i moved here this year we realised that particular $5 a month could be better spent on coffee or food porn rather than displacing electrons with spam.

now begins the saga, i called one fine day in May to say we wanted out; and this is where it begins to resemble an abusive relationship; i told them i had broadband and i wasn`t particularly happy with the service and i wanted to leave. the person on the other end of the phone, begged and pleaded and cajoled me into giving them another chance, for the next three months on their dime and to avoid the pathetic whining on the phone, i caved. about a month later we receive a letter asking us to confirm that we want out, on our dime no less. we fill out the letter and send it back, thinking it`s over and done with.

as if. about a week before our `free` three months for staying on up, we get another letter asking us if we`re sure we want to cancel. duh. on Wednesday night we get a call asking us if we want to return and i finally discovered the key to being rid of aol forever.

tell them you have mac, i told the guy all the software they keep sending is for a PC running windows and i have a mac, and the conversation went like this

“we don`t support that platform.”

“so i have no reason to come back then?”

“no, i guess not, goodbye.”

free at last. although as of this morning i could still use the newly implemented POP3 access to check my mail.

edit

as of today, monday, my account is disconnected including my access to the IM service, but luckily i had all my aim contacts saved in my mac.com account which supports the aim protocol.