AOL recently fucked me over, big-time. I'd been having computer problems beginning a few months ago, and was forced to re-install AOL 9.0 with 9.0 Optimized after receiving error messages everytime I tried to open the program. When installing it, I clicked "yes" when asked if I wanted to transfer my old e-mails. However, for some reason it only saved e-mails through 2003 (which is when I upgraded from 8.0 to 9.0).
This was all in April. Over the weekend I finally contacted AOL's customer service to see if I could retrieve the 2 years of missing e-mails. The tech support guy told me to uninstall all my old versions of AOL, which will give me the option to save my Personal Filing Cabinet files to the desktop, and sent me this link describing how to restore those PFC files to my current version of AOL. You cannot be connected to tech support when uninstalling AOL, so I trusted his expertise and followed his (and the article's) instructions.
BIG mistake.
When I signed on to AOL for the first time after following this, I not only still could only access those pre-2003 e-mails, but also lost all new e-mails I'd received since April. I connected to customer service again, where a tech support woman apologized but said those files have been permanently lost. She told me that I shouldn't have agreed to replace the current PFC folder, but instead should've added the older files to it.
I refer you to step 8 of the link I was given:
8. Click YES TO ALL to replace the existing ORGANIZE folder.
Nowhere does it say "unless you want to lose all new e-mails." Or give any sort of warning about this issue at all.
When I pointed this out to the woman, she apologized again and there is no way to recover the lost e-mails, and to please fill out a customer service evaluation.
So now I have lost e-mails that contain friends' contact info, flight and hotel confirmations for my vacation, correspondence with my friend stationed in Iraq, e-mails that simply made me laugh, and who knows what else. I don't know why I was still using such a crappy internet provider for my e-mail, but I thought it would be too big a hastle to switch to a new one.
Now I know better.