In the meantime, AOL is offering a credit refund to users who cannot get on-line, "so people could at least get their money back," Nerzig says.

To alleviate the back-up of users for the time being, Nerzig says AOL has been asking users to try to vary the time they log on so the lines are not as busy at the same time.

Additionally, AOL has been making efforts to appease its customers.

Steve Chase, chief executive of AOL, sent an e-mail message to users last Thursday, explaining the refunds the company plans to give its customers.

"Naturally, we anticipated more usage, and prepared for it, but we seriously underestimated the surge in demand that actually occurred," he wrote in the message.

Chase says that AOL has four goals for improving its services.

The first goal of AOL, Chase says, is to expand the "system capacity" as soon as possible.

"Our $350 million system investment program, more than we spent in our first decade of existence, will add 150,000 more modems to AOL-net and give us the capability to handle 16 million member sessions a day--five times more than we handled last year," he says.

Chase also says AOL plans to cut back on its advertising campaign and focus its efforts on improving the services for its current customers.

"We've cut back our recruitment of new members until we are sure that you are being served properly, holding membership at the current mark of approximately 8 million," he says.

In addition, AOL plans to give refunds to customers who have complaints about the service.

"We're also offering credits or refunds on request to members who don't feel they have gotten sufficient value from AOL due to our capacity problems," he says.

"I think the AOL services that they have on the Internet already are probably the most refined," says Gaurav A. Upadhyay '00, who used AOL for a month over the summer. "It offers the most services for users, but, at the same time, it comes with a lot of baggage and restrictions."

Upadhyay says one of the problems he has found with AOL is the limitations it places on the resources which users have direct access to, such as the Web.

Users can explore the Web through a browser on AOL, but can only reach specific sites. If they want to reach other sites, the users must download Netscape and search for the address on their own.