Subject: AOL Overbilling Investigated
From: [email-masked] (David Cassel)
Date: 30 Jul 1995 19:25:39 -0700
Newsgroups: alt.aol-sucks

"In, Around, and Online" reporter Robert Seidman, a big booster of AOL, 
investigated the overbilling practices on AOL which are the subject of 
the class action lawsuit.
 
   I am not happy to report that the problem definitely still occurs, at
   least with regard for how time is subtracted from a subscribers "free"
   time. I went on for 50 seconds...it subtracted 2 minutes from my   
   "free" time. I went on 1 minute and 50 seconds and it subtracted 3    
   minutes from my "free" time, etc. 

   I didn't want this to be true. But that doesn't change the fact that
   it is true. People don't see what they don't want to see. But I made
   myself look. There's no way to ignore it. The disappointing thing to
   me is the realization that this has been happening for 2 years now,
   give or take a couple of months. Members have been complaining about
   it that long. Since members have been complaining about it for 2 years
   now, it is probably reasonable to assume that Steve Case has known
   about it that long. That disappoints me even more. 

How do AOL's practices compare to other online services?  Earlier in the 
newsletter...
 
   This would be no big deal if AOL tracked seconds and then added it all
   up at the end of the month. Believe it or not that is exactly what  
   Prodigy, yes PRODIGY, does. They track seconds, and then at the end of
   the month add all the seconds up and round up to the nearest minute --
   and that is very cool. In a world of rounding, you won't be screwed   
   out of more than 59 seconds per month.            
 
   Robert Schafer, publisher of the Star-Tribune Online on AT&T's      
   Interchange assures that Interchange bills by the second.         
   
   "...it's billed by the second: 0.082 cents per second, which, if my   
   math is right, works out to $2.95 per hour," said Schafer. Then with a
   wry grin, Schafer added, "Of course, if you use it for 2.1 seconds,  
   you do get billed for a full three seconds."
 
He couldn't get a definitive answer from CompuServe, but if nothing else,
the fact that AOL has been stealing extra money from its users for TWO
YEARS explains one thing:  now we know where they got the money to send
out all those free-trial disks. 

SOURCE:
"In, Around and Online"-A Weekly Summary of Consumer Online Services
 Robert Seidman          http://www.clark.net:80/pub/robert/home.html

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