Warning: Vision username changes and AOL Instant Messenger

I've learned "the hard way" that authentication into AOL Instant Messenger
from a Vision handset is at least partially tied into the Vision username.
On Tuesday I had occasion to change my Vision username due to some
problems with Vision and also some spamming on my @sprintpcs.com e-mail
account.

I didn't think to sign out of AOL Instant Messenger first. Now that AOL
allows you to be signed in to multiple locations simultaneously, I now
have a 5-day-old connection to AOL Instant Messenger.

It shows up as a "Mobile" connection, which it is... er, was... and
apparently these never go Idle. By nature of the new multi-login feature,
messages are delivered to all non-idle logins. So, for five days, I've
been showing up as signed in, and have lost who-knows-how-many IM's. I
have tried everything to get the connection bumped off, including warning
myself repeatedly, in hopes of getting kicked off the network. Well, I
shot my warning level right up to 100%, and apparently thanks to the
multiple logins combined with one of them being a mobile connection, the
warning level has no effect. I can still use the service just like I could
with no warning.

AOL has chosen to make the multi-login feature one that you cannot
disable, and they have also provided no tool for removing stale logins.
Since the Mobile connections apparently never go idle, I presume it will
never time out and sign off on its own. Since AOL provides no means of
obtaining support for the Instant Messenger product, I'm pretty much
stuck.

So, I logged in to PCS Account Management to try to change my username
back. No luck. In talking to Vision Support, I found out the usernames are
reserved for a certain period of time, but a higher tier of support
"should" be able to change it back anyway. Since the systems were down for
the night, the support rep couldn't verify that it could be done, and
couldn't submit the ticket. Such a shame, too... he spoke english and
seemed to have a clue what was going on. At least he knew what day of the
week it was.

Soooo.... anyone know how long a Vision username is reserved before it can
be reused? Or, better yet, anyone found a way to kick off a stale AIM
connection?

Steve

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Steven V Crow wrote:

> Soooo.... anyone know how long a Vision username is reserved before it can
> be reused? Or, better yet, anyone found a way to kick off a stale AIM
> connection?

This might be similar to what I was experiencing. I was running my
primary AIM user name and logged on to www.mymobile.aol.com and it
detected I was runing AIM and used THAT name as the mymobile login.

I turned on the AIM to my phone for my primary AIM name. When I
logged on to AIM with my secondary IM user name, I could see my
primary as a mobile user. Since nothing was connected to my primary
user name, I lost a few IMs.

Two ways you can turn it off - login to AIM using the user name
that you want to turn off and then go to mymobile.aol.com and it
will detect what user name is running on the AIM client. Or,
if you have AIM running with some other user name, login to
mymobile and it will ask you which user name you want to use.