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Full-text of letter AOL sent customers via e-mail Wednesday explaining why its service was down for 19 hours
August 7, 1996
Dear Members,
Wednesday was a bad day for me -- and I know, for many of you. The AOL system was unavailable for most of the day, so if you tried to sign on and couldn't, you were, unfortunately, not alone.
Once or twice a month we take the system down for maintenance, and to install new software. Usually, this maintenance period lasts from 4 a.m. - 6 a.m. ET, so it is generally invisible. This morning, however, we encountered significant problems as we were installing high capacity switches within the local area network in AOL's data centers, and it took much longer than usual to get the system up and running.
I would like to be able to tell you that this sort of thing will never happen again, but frankly, I can't make that commitment, as we are building a new medium and breaking new ground. I can however, commit that we will do everything we possibly can to improve quality, and that when we do encounter problems, we will be candid about them. I am very sorry so many of you experienced problems, and, of course, we will credit your account for this lost day of service. (This means we will prorate your monthly fee and credit you for the equivalent of one day of your monthly service fee.)
This was a very unfortunate occurrence and I don't want to make light of that. But it did have an interesting side effect: it reminded all of us how important AOL is becoming in our everyday lives. When we started this company a decade ago, online services were on the fringe, used principally by computer hobbyists. Now, we have more than 6 million people using AOL in an increasingly habitual way, which means a day without being able to access AOL is disorienting and downright frustrating. So we have come a long way in terms of making AOL a part of everyday life -- and now we need to raise the bar in terms of quality and reliability of the experience. Today's outage reminds us that despite the recent progress we've made in expanding our AOLnet network and enhancing the responsiveness of our Member Services team, we still have a long way to go to make AOL as reliable as must-have utilities such as electricity and the telephone. But that's what we intend to do. I want to express my sincere thanks for your patience and continued support.
Sincerely,
Steve Case Chairman and CEO, America Online
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