AOL selling Ogden office

AOL announced Wednesday that it is in negotiations to sell the assets at its 400-employee Ogden call center to a Utah-based company.

AOL spokesman Nicholas J. Graham told the Deseret Morning News that the company is in talks with a local business in the "member services industry" that is interested in acquiring the Ogden operation. AOL did not disclose the identity of the prospective buyer, but Graham said the company is hopeful that the 400 workers will find jobs with the acquiring entity should the deal pan out.

"We are in the process of working towards an agreement," Graham told the Morning News. "We are hopeful about it, but it is by no means finalized. We have shared the news with our employees, as much as we can say about it right now. But stay tuned."

AOL's news about its Utah operations came on the same day the company, based in Dulles, Va., said it will lay off about 1,400 workers and close call centers in New Mexico and Arizona as part of its previously announced restructuring plan. The Arizona and New Mexico call centers each have operated for 10 years and will close in mid-December.

The restructuring plan, announced in August, called for significant work force reductions — a quarter of AOL's global work force, by some estimates — by early 2007.

Along with the recently announced sale of its access business in the United Kingdom, France and Germany, sealing the Ogden deal would mean that "a majority of (AOL's) previously announced, targeted worldwide reductions were accomplished not through layoffs but through a seamless divestiture of assets," Graham said.

"We believe we've been able to find a different process that will allow for continued employment for our employees in Ogden," he said. "We're not through (with negotiations) yet, but the Ogden process is one we're hopeful for."

No time frame for the negotiations was disclosed, though Graham said the company hopes to reach some kind of agreement "very, very soon." The member services industry provides "day-to-day customer care and customer support — helping customers to understand software, registration, billing, technical support and so forth," Graham said.

AOL laid off 125 workers in May at the Ogden call center, which once employed 900 people. The center opened in 1995.

In August, AOL decided to give away AOL.com e-mail accounts and software once reserved for paying customers, hoping to avoid further defections to rivals that provide free e-mail and other services supported through online ads.

The company looked to job cuts to help find $1 billion in savings, particularly in customer-service jobs, because live support — for technical issues, registration and billing — is available only to paying subscribers, many of whom were likely to accept AOL's free offer.

Despite the job cuts, Graham said customers shouldn't notice any changes.

"We may be reducing the scope of what we provide in terms of customer support, but we are absolutely not reducing the quality of that support," he said. "We are simply providing it in better ways, different ways, mostly through self-help tools."

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Contributing: The Associated Press

E-mail: jnii@desnews.com