Success Is A Mess

The slowdowns, brownouts, busy signals, and disconnects at America Online in the past month have been one big headache for its eight million subscribers.

The nation's largest commercial on-line service has no one but itself to blame for the mess. It adopted aggressively reduced prices in December - unlimited usage for under $20 a month, replacing the hourly rates of up to $3 - with no real idea of how consumers would react, and not enough equipment or personnel should there be a surge in demand. There was, and the result is chaos.

Individual subscribers are said to have doubled or even tripled their time on line since the plan took effect, while many businesses that depend on AOL for E-mail and other services are simply not bothering to hang up at all anymore. The confusion is worse during evening hours and on weekends, when available lines are most overloaded. Thousands have been unable to connect.

Until a week or two ago, AOL was adding fuel to the fire with telemarketing, disk-mailings, and TV advertising designed to bring in still more customers. A series of lawsuits, including one by the Attorney General of New York, have put a stop to the campaign, but the horse is long since out of the barn.

To give America Online its due, it probably offers more features - financial services, TV networks, games, national newspapers and popular magazines, lonelyhearts "rooms," et cetera - than all its competitors combined, and its E-mail, when it works, is so much easier to use than anyone else's that even technogeeks in Silicon Valley keep AOL accounts.

Many people are new to computers and may not know it, but AOL is not the only game in town - certainly not in this town, which has two or three local "providers" whose dial-up costs a lot less than a call to Islip, AOL's nearest connection.

Just a thought.