Jason Calacanis, the CEO of the blogging network Weblogs, Inc., a company operating within AOL, has posted his thoughts on “Black Tuesday.” He does not speak in an “official” capacity for AOL, but definitely has a message to them:

“I’m in favor of taking the ads down for now, figuring out a way to determine who’s a paid member or not, and then adding the ads back to free blogs with something like 15 days notice. This way folks can either a) pay us and get no ads or b) take advantage of the free product with the ads. We should also apologize to the members and contact the folks who’ve left and offer them something to come back.”

It’s almost shocking to read something like that when you consider that this is someone who purports to be within AOL.

Here is the comment I left:

Jason,I first want to thank you for addressing this situation in such a candid manner. If more people WITHIN AOL would have provided something close to this soul-searching a response, I suspect that many people who have chosen to relocate might have stayed. Regardless of whether corporate listens to you…and at this point, I’m assuming they won’t…your remarks are well-taken and appreciated.

The reality of the situation, as has been mentioned in earlier comments, is that the SINGLE item listed as what AOL did RIGHT actually NEVER HAPPENED! It was supposed to be part of a patch to fix myriad other problems that the same software update that brought the ads also caused, but early in the install process, when it was clear that more and more errors were appearing, this upgrade was cancelled. There are no disclaimers.

Then, kindly add one MORE thing to the “What we did wrong” section: after pulling out the planned revision, the entire AOL tech support team left for a FOUR-DAY WEEKEND, during which there were still customers who COULDN’T UPDATE THEIR JOURNALS. Re-read that last sentence! I’m not talking about just the disclaimer: there were still people having trouble posting ANYTHING, and tech support shut down for the holiday.

I tend to look for patterns of behavior when I have a problem with a company: anyone can make a mistake, and one mistake shouldn’t be the end of the world. But this is the latest in a long history of mistakes, and THAT is why many of us have chosen to relocate.

For example, I’m a Mac user. Mac users might as well forget AOL…there’s virtually no support for Macs. When one complains, AOL’s standard response is that “less than 10% of our customers are on Macs.” They do not respond to the obvious follow-up question: If you’re not supporting Mac users equally, why are you CHARGING them equally?

Now, just as with the Mac issue, there is this standard response that only a small percentage of users have any real problem with the ads, which completely ignores the REAL issue.

In the past, AOL has deleted entire FTP spaces and entire journals over complaints of TOS Violations. In at least one case, AOL acknowledged that the deletion of AN ENTIRE JOURNAL should never have happened, because the TOS violation did not exist. But there was no one to go to complain about such actions — which even violate AOL’s OWN standard operating procedure for dealing with TOS Violations as they explain them! Following the firestorm over this problem, and suggestions that AOL Journal members needed a “face” of the editors, they created “Magic Smoke,” a journal written by “Joe the Journals Editor,” with the purpose of keeping us informed. It was a good step to make sure all of us knew what was happening.

Then came the banner ads. And Joe, the person who started a blog from INSIDE AOL Journals to keep us INFORMED, wasn’t even told when the ads would appear. Back to square one again: no communication, even when we’re assured that there is plenty of it.

This is not the way I expect to be treated after ten years. AOL either values me as a customer or they don’t. There’s no one to ask, so I can only judge by their actions, and those actions speak volumes.

I wish all of the people behind the types of problems I’ve described could encounter for one month, everywhere they go, the SAME level of service some of us feel we’ve been getting. I wonder how THEY would feel.

And one more thing: the saddest part of this entire situation — sadder even than the bickering between people who previously considered themselves friends in J-land, is the fact that those of us who have relocated, are in the process of doing so, or are seriously considering it are often the ones feeling GUILTY about it…as if WE’RE the ones who’ve done something wrong!! We’re the paying customers! We’re the ones these things have been done TO, not the other way around! Extraordinary!!

It might be nice if AOL would listen to what he has to say. If more people had behaved the way he has, I imagine a lot of people would have been happy to stay put.