AOL Raises Prices
Posted by Chris Leckness on 02/23/06 in The Internet
Arg, I have always hated AOL…they are the worst…so many think that AOL is the internet and in reality it is just a way for a company to spam you with tons of ads and make everything small, cluttered, and hard to find.
I still have to deal with AOL quite a bit as I have some clients that insist on keeping "The Internet (AOL)" on their machines as they have a @aol email or something, but it really is like spyware and it really really brings down your PC’s performance.
Well with all that being said, AOL is also one of the most expensive Dial Up services out there…and they even have the guts to now raise their prices even more!
From BetaNews:
AOL said Tuesday that it would raise the price of its dial-up offering by $2 in an effort to encourage dial-up subscribers to sign up for broadband services provided by the company. Both its traditional service and its new broadband offering will now be priced at $25.90 USD per month. The new price will take effect March 9.
So now you can either pay even more for a dial-up service, or get suckered into switching to AOL Broadband and add some more overpriced spyware to your PC!
Written by Chris Leckness · Filed Under The Internet
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I totally agree, even here in the UK, AOL totally sucks. I feel deeply sorry for those who actually sign up to it, especially when I find my relatives being scammed by it. Pff.
Great article! I hate aol too. there are so many inexpensive dialup services out there I don’t know how AOL survives.
Great article! I hate aol too. there are so many inexpensive dialup services out there I don’t know how AOL survives.
$25.90 is certainly a lot for dialup, but how much do people currently pay for broadband access? $30/mo? $60/mo? $25.90 is cheap for broadband access, AND you get access to AOL subscriber-only content, too. That’s real cheap.
The whole point is to make it really attractive for people to migrate from AOL dial-up to AOL broadband, and I think through the deals AOL has negotiated with the ILECs and the pricing structure, they’ve done it.
The only thing is that AOL for Broadband many times just goes over your broadband service…its not the actual service.
So you pay 25-50$ a month (or even cheaper with some of the great plans out these days) and THEN have to add an extra $25 for AOL for Broadband….
Gray Rentz:
What you may be thinking of is the AOL BYOA (Bring Your Own Access) where you get AOL subscription service on top of your own broadband connection. That should still only cost $14.95/mo, which isn’t cheap, but AOL does actually offer a lot of subscription-only content that if you had to pay for a-la-carte, you’d pay a lot more than $14.95/mo for.
The new AOL for Broadband offering for $25.90 *includes* the broadband service (as far as I can tell). AOL negotiated partnerships with the various DSL providers, so the $25.90/mo should include both an AOL subscription AND the broadband connection. Basically, you get broadband for the $25.90/mo you might pay normally and you get AOL subscription “for free” on top of it, by signing up for it through AOL.
Sounds like a win/win to me.
For a clearer explanation of the whole thing, read this AP article:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060127/aol_broadband.html
Now that you say that I think I remember reading about that. Still, I hate AOL and it really is spyware…I have done tests on machines with no AOL and then AOL installed…it is unbelivable how much AOL slows the machines down.
I don’t object to you saying that the AOL software slows machines down — especially when it’s running — but it’s not spyware. Spyware collects information off the machine and transmits it out, thus the “spying” connotation. AOL software doesn’t do that. I don’t think it’s fair to call it spyware when it really isn’t.
Thanks for listening, and I hope I’ve clarified the AOL price thing now. It’s quite a good deal, when you understand it.
Now, I’m hoping AOL does a good marketing job of educating consumers as to what the deal is, so misunderstandings like yours don’t happen for others. Would be a real pity.
AOL is spyware though….It hijacks IE and makes it so your search history is recorded by AOL. It also gets into your Network Settings and Hijacks itself into the connection settings so that it is REQUIRED to start when IE starts. Spyware can also include Hijackers, and that is what AOL does.
I have plenty of experience with that as well as for our work, one of our clients requires AOL to be installed on all the machines….and its a special AOL where we have to get into the nity grity and see all that it really does to your system.
It may be great that it is included in the broadband, but AOL as a whole is just something to slow down your machine and force ads on you.
Feb 27th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
AOL’s new pricing is good, not bad — pay attention!
AOL recently announced that they’d be changing their pricing plans with a $2 increase from $23.90 to $25.90 a month for dial-up, which of course isn’t going to be a popular change. However, the interesting part of this change is…