In an interview with Matt Lauer on MSNBC, Ferrari, who purposedly remained polite to prove a point, decided to record the conversation since so many visistors to his blog had expressed their frustrated encounters with customer service representatives, but never did anything about it.

"One way or another, it was going to prove a point," Ferrari told Lauer during the interview.

Since the video's release and discussion on his blog, Ferrari's site has been flooded with traffic in addition to blogs of all kinds discussing the subject and similar problems with AOL.

AOL did issue an official apology to Ferrari and stated that the employee in question no longer works for the company.

"At AOL, we have zero-tolerance for customer care incidents like this — which is deeply regrettable and also absolutely inexcusable," Nicholas Graham, executive vice president of communications at AOL, told Ferrari in his letter.

Ferrari has used his blog to provide video clips of interviews, letters from AOL and discussion from commenters on the problems of the Internet giant's customer service. This case is another great example of how blogs and bloggers can use their soapbox to take control of situations where they might have felt powerless in the past. Unfortunately for AOL, having the tape circulated around the Internet isn't helping win any sympathy points from frustrated users. Ferrari's call to AOL and blog response are setting themselves up to be textbook examples of how to handle customer service in today's new media age.