Comments About That Unusually Helpful AOL Tech Person

Comments came up about how unusually helpful the AOL tech was and that she didn't want company recognition...

I had dealt with at least 6 AOL techs over the last couple months.  I'm not saying they weren't helpful to the degree required for their jobs.  But if there was something I couldn't do or understand, they lost patience quickly.  So they didn't go out of their way to help.  They were following AOL rules.  One is paying $5 per month per email account that they could verify.  Another was that I had to know the previous passwords which were on the dead Mac Mini.  They pretty much just tried to get me off the phone to get to the next customer.

I should mention that the previous ones might have had trouble because I didn't have a 2nd phone for sending a code to, or call waiting set up.  I did contact my service provider (Verizon) to set that up.  It just took a button click on My Account and then discovering there was a button on my phone labeled "call waiting'!  Well, you don't see what you aren't looking for...

When I talked to this latest one, it was obvious she was not so concerned with AOL rules.  She didn't ask if I had an paid account for each email address.  She asked if I had passwords, but when I said I didn't (and explained why) she said "then we will set of new ones".  She was patient after asking questions that I didn't fully understand.  She answered some questions she didn't have to bother answering.

An example was "what is the difference between POP and IMAP accounts"?  She explained that POP was easier for AOL but did not allow recovery of email files while IMAP took a little more work, but allowed recoveries.  When I mentioned that my working email account was POP, she said "well let's fix that first".   And she did.

She was on "remote control" over my computer by then.  She explained what she was doing at each step.  After changing my primary email account from POP to IMAP we went to the marksmews email.  She didn't ask if I had a monthly payment account, she just went about setting it up as IMAP.  To do so, she generated a master password on her end and told me to enter a password of my own afterwards to change it.  And she specifically said at all such times that she had turned off her vieing so that she couldn't see my new password. 

OK, that might have been untrue, but I was trusting her.  I think she was being honest.  Besides, I'm sure anyone at AOL could see my passwords if they wanted to.

So she had my cavebear email changed to the safer IMAP format and the marksmews email set up the same way.  She asked if I needed further assistance.  I mentioned a 3rd email accounnt.  When she asked why have 3 accounts, I explained it was one general email and one each for 2 blogs (cats and gardening) just to keep them separate.

She laughed and said she admired organized computer files.  I didn't mention that I keep so many folders of various kinds that I used to drive the computer guys nuts at work when they had to solve a problem.  They make sense to me and that is all that matters.

So she went about setting up my yardenman email (gardening) as Imap and went through the process of creating a temporary new master password at her end *sending a temporay code to my call-waiting) and then going off-viewing while I created a new one for myself.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience.  I have never in my life had a better experience with a computer company tech.  So why did she decline to let me thank AOL on her behalf? 

Well, during our hour-long chat, I mentioned that she was unusually helpful and did she really enjoy doing this?  OK, I would expect any company agent to express a positive attitude whether they actually enjoyed their job or not.

She seemed actually happy to help people get problems fixed and to be the one to fix them.  So parts of being happy at what you do are hard to disguise.  She seemed to REALLY enjoy what she was doing.

I get that.  When I visit my favorite gardening forum, the first thread I go to is the "Questions" thread.  Some guys love cars, some like sports, I was gardening as a preteen.  So it has been 60 years...  I love to answer gardening questions!  I get positive pleasure from helping other people garden well. 

So, apparently, the AOL tech rep I spoke to feels the same way about computers.  I think that she knows that she is breaking AOL rules by helping people without asking for payment programs or pushing add-on "pay-for" services.  It just gives her pleasure to help others with her expertise.

An aside...  The internet has been the greatest opportunity for people to share their individual knowledge since the invention of the mass-printed book.  Before the printing press (invented in symbol-driven China, but much more applicable to European letter systems), scholars had to write individual letters to the few others they knew about things they had discovered (expensive, slow, and uncertain of delivery).  After the printing press, scholars could write whole books available to all who could buy one (it still wasn't cheap).  But 1,000 books reached more people than a dozen short letters.

With the internet, we can reach a Billion people if they are interested and nearly for free.  So sending answers to questions (whether computer, gardening, cooking, etc) into the internet is basically "books cubed".

The AOL tech woman is one of those.

New Computer 3

Ah changing computer systems is SO much fun. 

My Corel Photo processing software arrive in the mail today.  I will save installing that for later.

I am obsessed with the email problems tonight.  I finally CAN access cavebear2118, marksmews2118, and yardenman2118.  My problem now is that I have to log into one, read it, log out, log in to another, read it, log out, log in to the third and read that.  And each time, I had to look at "AOL Today" newsfeeds which are mostly clickbaits for ads. 

So I called AOL with 2 questions.  I had a tech support person on the line immediately; no complaints about that.  First question was "can I arrange my AOL mail display so that I go directly to my inbox"?   Apparently not.  I wasn't surprised, they make their living off ads.  They even admitted they understand that I may not read any ads and just go to the inbox, but they want their shot at my attention, so they won't let me  change my scene.

My 2nd question was about the annoyance of having to log in and out of accounts in order to read the mail in the 3 email accounts.  I had tried to log into one, save it as a bookmark, log into the 2nd and save THAT bookmarked.  It doesn't work.  The only AOL email address is non-specific to account names. 

They do have a solution to that called AOL password manager so that all 3 accounts (for I am already paying $5 per account per month) would show on a single menu for easy switching between email accounts.  For another $5 per month.  That might be total or per account, the tech guy wasn't sure.  OK, he's not in Billing...

And THEN, he surprised me.  My AOL help is free only for 30 days.  And guess what they want after that?  $5 per month.  They are obsessed with $5 per month charges. LOL!  He DID tell me (on prompting by me) that I can get a lot of the tech help for free if I call AOL in the US during their normal business hours. 

I'm going to look for a better email system.  I wanted to keep the verizon.net addresses for convenience (and I'm sure that is part of AOL business plan).  And I have to question the value of having the 3 email addresses.  I set up 3 on the Mac mail from verizon because it was free and convenient.

I discovered I had 12,000 saved emails.  Mostly cat blog and personal blog comments forwarded there.  I deleted those down to 500, mostly so that I kept at least one who has every emailed me.  Those are stored on the Mac.  I can look those up anytime and just retype them into the PC mail as needed.  I might just try to print them out, probably only 12 pages and stick them in a binder.

One lesson I've learned from all this is to just never call tech support during non-working hours.  I'm not saying anything bad about the overseas tech support folks.  They do their best.  But they don't have full access to the US corporate information about my accounts or  ability to change things as freely.

As an example, I spend 4 hours one night with an overseas call center about email passwords and they could not solve the problem.  A US AOL tech the next morning did it in 15 minutes and it worked. 

So at night, I'm going to just gradually transfer files from the Mac to the PC 8Gb at a time with the flashdrive, and leave the tech questions to daytime hours. 

So I think I will end this post and just go install the Corel Paintshop photo processing program and see how that works... I sure want to post cat blog pictures again!

7AM update:  It was a struggle to load the Corel Paintshop CD.  I kept asking me about Drive E and I couldn't find a Drive E.  The solution was disgustingly simple.  My Mac CD loader is centered and you can't drop a CD without it falling into place properly.  The PC CD loader is off centered slightly and you have to push it down onto the holder. 

A new user of computers would have done that. I fussed around for 2 hours before I caught on to the difference.  I think I will wait til tomorrow to try and load any pictures.

My new driver updater tells me I need to upload new ones every few minutes.  It's hard to say "no" but I stopped that when I noticed a small box that said 0 new drivers required.  So many new things to learn. 

My learned Mac movements are all wrong on the PC, but it is hard to unlearn them.  I am.  I've noticed a few correct movements to different corners of the screen are becoming familiar.  And in fact, when I turned to the Mac to get some files, I went to the wrong spots already.  I had to stop and think.  I don't know how anyone uses both.  I guess that is why tech support folks hate Mac users.  They have to stop and recall all the different moves.

So I've successfully transferred some .doc files to the PC.  In small doses.  It took some time to do the first few, but more get easier.  I could probably get all of my documents transferred tomorrow, but I need to plant some seeds inside, so I may just take a break from the computer.  But I'm obsessive and may not.  Once I get a process working, it is hard to stop.

I really want to get the cat blog up and working again!