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AOL again under fire
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January 23, 1997: 1:33 p.m. ET
Attorneys general representatives meeting to assess company's service
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) -- Representatives of attorneys general from 20 states are meeting Thursday with officials of America Online Inc. over user complaints.
The meeting came at a bad time for AOL as the service was also hit with another brownout resulting from a technical problem that halted e-mail service for two hours Thursday morning.
America Online said the outage was caused by the installation of hardware meant to increase the service's capacity.
AOL was taken offline at 5 a.m. ET while the equipment was installed. When they attempted to restart the equipment about two hours later, a problem with the power supply kept e-mail service from being restored.
The officials scheduled the meeting with AOL to get the company's response to two main complaints: that flat-rate customers cannot access the service and are paying $19.95 for something they're not getting and that AOL makes it difficult to cancel.
Reuters news service reported Thursday the chief of special prosecutions for the Florida Attorney General's office expects the officials "to take measures to satisfy frustrated users with or without AOL's cooperation."
The official was particularly concerned that reliability problems continue although more customers were paying the higher-priced flat rate and the company's profits had increased.
AOL angered some of its users when, in a letter to members, company chairman Steve Case asked users to help the service cope with the usage surge by not tying up access lines for extended periods.
Case said he did not mean to give the implication that the unlimited accounts should have a time limit, only to ask users not to tie up lines when they were not actively using the service.
Last week, a group of subscribers filed a class-action lawsuit seeking damages for what they call fraudulent and malicious misrepresentation.
The suit, filed at the Superior Court of the State of California in Los Angeles, alleges that AOL offered subscribers unlimited access, but did not have enough equipment in place to meet the surge in demand -- meaning users could not get connected. 
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