Call It AOL.CON

By Rick Horowitz

The thinking -- let's assume there was thinking -- must have gone something like this: People like people. People like hearing from people. People even like hearing from people they don't know from Adam, people calling to offer them some product or service they might not have heard about before. Putting these people in touch with those people would be: a good deed.

Or maybe they just figured, "Hey, let's make a buck!"

Another buck, that is. We're talking about America Online, after all, eight million subscribers strong and already the destination of choice for humongous piles of ten- and twenty- and fifty-dollar bills. Did AOL get where it is today by being shy and retiring? Bite your joystick! AOL got where it is today by sending this message far and wide:

"The first try was busy, trying second number."

Sorry -- that's the other message AOL has been sending far and wide. The message AOL is trying to send far and wide (between the busy signals) is: We're here for you. Or as AOL's chief dweeb, Steve Case, put it just the other day, "We've built AOL by earning your trust."

And why is Steve Case talking about trust? Why else? AOL just got caught trying to slip one past the rest of us. Seems AOL's honchos must have decided that somewhere in America, somebody was sitting down to dinner uninterrupted -- they couldn't let that happen! But what if they made the phone numbers of millions of AOL customers available to telemarketers and direct-sales types? That would lively up the dinner hour, wouldn't it?

AOL would never do anything like that, you're thinking. In fact, you may even have some vague recollection that AOL promised it would never do anything like that.

You mean you didn't see the announcement? You didn't happen upon the one out-of-the-way outpost in the entire AOL universe where the new policy was actually mentioned? Gosh -- neither did anybody else! Not right away, anyhow.

I'm sure it was just an oversight. I'm sure AOL really wanted its customers to know they were about to become phone fodder for the calling classes. It's just that AOL was so busy pitching its latest voice-recognition software or whatever -- one more ad filling your screen in all its full-color, large-type, can't-miss-it glory -- that the people in charge must simply have forgotten to give this little policy tweak the attention it deserved.

Right.

Speaking of which -- unfortunate slipups, that is: Is there any good reason why, whenever AOL tries to sell something online (which it does, oh, every 20 seconds or so), it loves to offer only two choices, only two buttons you can click to get rid of the thing and get on with your life? "Order" or "Cancel" -- those are the options. "Cancel" what? My phone connection? My AOL account? My car insurance? You just know that "Cancel" is supposed to sound like a walk off a cliff, the better to force you into the arms of the "Order" button. How about a simple "No, thanks" for that second button? Or does "earning your trust" take a back seat to "squeezing you for another $29.95"?

Anyway, when word finally did get around about this new "phone home" policy, some folks were pretty angry about it. The rest were livid. Livid is not good for business. So the chief dweeb beat one hasty retreat.

AOL had never intended to "rent" anyone's phone numbers to telemarketers and direct-sales companies, Steve Case insisted -- not at all. AOL had simply decided it might "make the telephone numbers...available" to certain "quality-controlled AOL partners." Discount long-distance companies. Discount shopping clubs. That kind of "Quality."

Never mind. Upon "further reflection," Case says now, AOL won't be handing over the numbers, not even to its "partners." Of course, AOL itself may still dial us up to pitch the various products its partners are selling.

How lucky for us! Knowing the calls are coming directly from AOL will make the interruptions so much more bearable, don't you think? In fact, we ought to drop Steve Case a thank-you note for looking out for us.

Better yet, we ought to call him and thank him personally.

All eight million of us. Every night. Right after his salad.

8/1/97