Thanks for changing my email address for E-Sylum delivery. It came through just fine on the "new" address I gave you. On AOL, it was still "unavailable". I sure don't know what AOL has done to me as I have used that address for many, many years with few, if any, problems until a month ago.

I note the discussion of AOL that included this phrase (and others like it): "Their system is set up to discourage anyone from talking to them on the issue. I fought AOL for over five years and finally gave up. "

The truth is that the AOL business model is moving away from individual customers. They would just as soon you go to a different provider. When I contacted them about a problem, the advice was to "switch to another provider". Simple and straight-forward. I was told they really didn't want people like me as customers.

I will be switching as soon as I get my act together. That means finding a way to transfer my email addresses, favorite places, and other history files to the new provider. I would be interested in hearing of the experience of anyone who has swapped and the details of how they did it.