Aol Moviefone

Remember 777-​FILM?
Owned by AOL, which also owns
.
In the good old day – the pre-​Internet days – 777-​FILM was a godsend. No more hunting for a newspaper with the Entertainment section intact, no more phone calls to your favorite movie house and wearily listening to their recorded show times, 777-​FILM was a free convenience at a time when things tended to be neither convenient, *nor* free.
Flash forward (bzzzzzzzz, skim, skim, skim, STOP) and it’s 2010.
So, while I have a smartphone (Internet, 3G, etc), I also have AT&T (overloaded, slow, abysmal coverage), so when Al K. and I were driving along, thinking about going to see Avatar, I couldn’t handle waiting for pages to load in my browser and called 777-​FILM.
OMG, it is so annoying now. After every selection, they run a commercial – the «bumper» advert between entering a zip code and hearing a list of theaters was for Caribbean Cruises.
I want to see a movie – how does that make me a target market for a fucking cruise to the Caribbean? What the fuck *is* a target market for Caribbean Cruises? Well, it’s probably the old and the fat; that’s my guess. I just don’t see a connection between movie-​going and cruises.
Not only that, but it’s fucking *annoying* to listen to an advertisement when all you want to hear is «for Renaissance Grand Lake Theater, press one.»
I got the info I wanted (eventually), then hung up (now I’m crabby – great, here I was in a good mood, and now I’m pissed off, thanks AOL).
It’s saddening when a respected, useful service is bastardized by some corporate overlord into a frankly annoying «service.» Does *everything* nowadays undergo some calculus to determine just how annoying can it be before the ad revenue fails to compensate for the calving in the user base? I’m no financier, nor am I blessed with any meaningful business acumen, but I am *very* familiar with being «an end user,» and having a «positive customer experience,» and goddammit, company’s are really starting to convey an attitude of «we just don’t give a shit about you.»
Grrr. 2010’s Martin W – now with more bitterness!