Damn Those AOL CDs
AOL. How much do I despise them? The stupid adverts on the TV trying to fool the fools in to thinking they offer something unavailable elsewhere. The CD that falls out of every magazine I buy. The way they bully you when you ring to cancel an account. Trying to make the internet seem like it all belongs to AOL. Everything about them!
Today my hatred went to another level. My girlfriend Karen, who I live with, is a psychology teacher. To bump the wages up a little she marks A-Level exam papers and has been doing for the past week or so. They arrive every couple of days via Royal Mail and are treated with some importance. My job as the man at home most of the time is to answer the door and sign for them. Some days I am lazy and can't get out of bed that early. When this happens I come down to a little paper slip telling me they are down at the sorting office.
So today I got on the bike and headed in to town to get what I though was a missed batch of papers. Imagine my disdain when they handed over a free 180 hour trial CD for AOL 8.0. Why? Because it was too big for the letter box:
Needless to say I got back and was straight on the phone to get the house off their mailing list. Why is it that I have to end up feeling guilty about taking it out on the person who is obviously just doing their job answering the phone and probably hates the damn things as much as we all do.
I know what you're thinking - get a bigger letterbox. It's not down to me though. It's Karen's house and she's keen to keep it's original character, including the original door. Obviously the Victorians never planned on receiving DVD-sized packages through the mail.
Others have taken their concern for the world they live in a step further. Good on 'em! Anybody got any suggestions as to what I should do with my unwanted "pop-culture artifact"??
Note: If you're in the UK and you get them too. Here's the number to call to be removed - 0800 279 1234
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Here's somebody else who hates them almost as much as you: {Link}
Thanks for the reminder Andy. I'd forgotten all about that ;o)
Collect all your junk mail together and when you feel you have enough to do so select one of the protaganists and use their FREEPOST address to post them back the whole lot including your delightful AOL CD.
nice of them to include the website of the guys who are collecting CDs.
I thought I'd try to find it and post it here, but can you imagine HOW MANY sites are listed when you search (an Escher-inspired) google for "AOL HATE" ?
'xactly.
Just for you Patrick {Link} suppose I should have included it in the blog in the first place...
Not to mention that these CDs aren't bio-degradable... They'll be around longer than several generations of our offspring.
I think for each CD its data should printed out and posted to AOL, by 2nd class of course.
Dom - surely that's no better for the environment than what they are doing with all the plaggy.
AOL?
In England
Should'nt that be EOL or LOL
I presume the 'getting online' bit of the AOL disk is only say, 100Mb max. If AOL created the rest of the CD as recordable, people would actually use them for something practical, rather than sending them straight to /usr/bin. The disks would become self distributing as people sent their own data to friends and colleagues, and people would stop hating AOL, too ;-) etc, etc,
I'm glad they have started using DVD boxes. Now I have replacements for the ones I have broken in my personal collection.
A friend of mine uses a very large dog to fend off junk mail. The dog stops the mailman from actually delivering the junk mail and electronic billing allows him to keep up with his creditors. Of course not everyone can do this because of various reasons like being Amish and not being allowed to use electronic gadgets. I just thought he came up with a clever solution.
I've never had too much trouble with AOL CDs. My junk mail nightmare is credit card offers. I like to stuff their free business reply envelopes with junk (like free subscription offers for Playboy or used toothbrushes) and send it back to them using their money. For the record, I have never successfully bankrupted any credit card company using this method.
Tom, Karen has got a dog but, unless the postman is delivering food, he would have no interest whatsoever.
Good idea about using their reply envelopes. Might start doing that ;o)
It's all good! So you got disc, I got solution. I buy old/odd AOL CD's/Floppies. Keeps them out of land fills and I enjoy collecting, send me an email and I will hook you up. deregulator@acninc.net
I have the largest personal collection in the world! Over 100,000 items! Check my web site out
start collecting today
start collecting today
OK, I have 140,000 or so in my collection and have sold over $21,000 worth to collectors in the last 3 years. And if they take off as collectors items one day I, like several others that have been collection will have a small fortune!!!! But If you have any old AOL 5.25 Floppy’s let me know, I will buy them from you. Happy AOL hunting!