Poll: Nearly 60 Percent of Web Surfers Plan to Quit AOL
Tue May 21,12:20 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nearly 60 percent of Web surfers polled by ChangeWave, an investment and research firm whose clients include hedge funds, said Tuesday they planned to leave America Online for another Internet service.

"The findings of this survey point to a serious and ongoing hemorrhaging of AOL's Internet
subscriber base. Among members using AOL as their Internet Service Provider, two out of five rate it unsatisfactory -- by far the highest negative rating of any major ISP specified in the survey," the report said.

The survey comes at a time when AOL Time Warner Inc.'s management is struggling to get the online service "back on track" as it suffers from an anemic advertising climate and slower growth in its dial-up subscriber base.

Of the 402 respondents in the survey, 73 percent were still subscribers and 27 percent had left AOL in the past year. 

About 40 percent said they were clearly dissatisfied with the brand, service and customer
support. Some members resented the relatively high cost of $23.90 for the service, the report said.

However, 8 percent said a reason for keeping the service was AOL's content, which has been expanded to include everything from CNN and "The Sopranos (news - Y! TV)" to People magazine and music artists like Madonna (news-web sites) and Enya, since the
completion of AOL's purchase of Time Warner.

"We have done more than 100 surveys and reports since late 2000 and this survey has the most overwhelming, and negative, response to a company or technology we have ever seen," said Michael Shulman, director of research at ChangeWave, in a research note.