AOL subscribers reportedly weren’t the only ones surprised by the portal’s recent decision to start for the first time in its history delivering ads with e-mail.
The company apparently sprung the ads without warning on its own tech support people, as well.
When Stefanie Pont, managing partner of marketing consultancy Pont Media Direct, noticed the ads in her AOL e-mail account last week, she called AOL to complain.
“It [the ad] literally left a third of the screen to read e-mail,” she said. “I called them and got a guy on the phone who said it was a software glitch when they did the last update.”
The tech-support rep showed Pont how to restore her original settings, and the ad disappeared.
However, the e-mail ads appeared again several days later. When she called AOL tech support again, Pont said, the tech-support representative told her that AOL had begun inserting the ads in paid subscribers’ e-mails without telling anyone in his department
“The guy said, ‘We’ve been resetting people for two days,’” said Pont. “He was pretty cranky. He said people had been calling him up all day telling him they were going to cancel their service.”
Way to go, AOL.
AOL subscribers reportedly weren’t the only ones surprised by the portal’s recent decision to start for the first time in its history delivering ads with their e-mail.
The company apparently sprung the ads without warning on its own tech support people, as well.
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