Internet - AOL question

By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics and access other forums reserved for members. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today by clicking here.

Master Baiter Joined: 23 Sep 2008 Posts: 236

Is there anyone else here on the forum who lives in the UK, and uses AOL as their ISP?

Have you noticed any difference in their service over the past fews days? We've gone from 7mbps at lunchtime to 3mbps at about 6pm, and then to barely 512kbps at 8pm and then back up to 7mbps at 11 or 12.

I've sent them an email, and they were worse than useless in their reply.

We are seriously thinking of changing provider as well, would any forum members have any advice as to who is a decent ISP?

Thanks Smile

Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2009 10:09 am

I use them.
I had the same problem a couple of months ago.

They put it down to my telephone exchange being upgraded (which was correct). My speed has now stabilised and I'm a bit faster.

As for Customer Support?
Worse than useless. I spent over two hours on the phone to some call centre in India being given all sorts of excuses (about 10% of which I could understand), only to have them eventually put me on hold and then leave me there. I finally managed to get through to the Dublin call centre where they told me about the exchange upgrade.

Moral of the story: If you need to speak to someone on the phone at AOL, go through Ireland - not India.

Master Baiter Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 114

I've used aol for years (more through lethargy than anything else). my speed stays pretty constant at a lowley 2mbps, but thats down to the distance i live from the exchange

Slightlyoutofit wrote:

Moral of the story: If you need to speak to someone on the phone at AOL, go through Ireland - not India.

As for customer service I rarely call them because they are so bad, I didn't realise they had a call centre in Ireland, how do I ensure I call Dublin rather than India?

Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2009 4:47 pm

well first of all I would get rid of AOL because it sucks...

I'm so angry as to why people all throughout the internet, except me it seems, get like 2 mpbs lines an complain about them... I mean my internet is through yahoo dsl and it *says* it can get up to 1.5 mbps and yet I only get like 300 kB/s max... but it looks like I will be upgrading to a 6.0 mbps line...

does anyone know if yahoo having their own router is better to use with their own wifi than with a third party router, like linksys?

Adamu's soulmate Joined: 23 Nov 2007 Posts: 337

Sadly - and due to pure laziness on my part I still use AOL.

The service is diabolical - often cant connect at all and other times so slow I believe someone is inside the computer winding it up.

The only number I have for customer services is 0844 4995555 and that connects to India - I can barely hear or understand any help being given - the connection is always poor and the advisors speak v quickly and in techno speak. I would love to have a dublin number - I call so often they should be on my friends and family plan Smile

Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 2:08 am

I originally went with AOL because they were offering what seemed to be a decent Broadband package at the time.
However I felt that the service gradually deteriorated and I finally left them when I wanted to construct a domestic wireless network and found that I would be restricted to using a very limited range of equipment recommended by them (at what I thought were unnecessary high prices). I changed to BT who had a good offer going and have been quite satisfied with them although I know some people have not had happy experiences. No problems with the networking at all - mixture of systems using 98SE, XP and Vista.

Interestingly AOL let me keep my Email addresses with them. But I now find that I get a lot of spam in my inbox which I didn't get when they were my provider. They are not and never have been my main Email service.

Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 2:33 am

Quote:

Moral of the story: If you need to speak to someone on the phone at AOL, go through Ireland - not India.

When I had a Gateway computer they had a call center in Canada and one in India and there was no way to predict where the call would go. I would just keep call the 800 number until I got a curling fan on the line.

Master Baiter Joined: 23 Sep 2008 Posts: 236

Thanks for the all the advice folks! I spoke to AOL yesterday and got a foreign lady on the phone who was quite helpful and said that there were no flags on our account for high bandwidth usage. Technical support were useless though as they refuse to get off script.

I'm going to try ringing BT and see if its something to do with them (thanks, Slightly!)

And then ask about their broadband packages, or try Tiscali Smile

*waves bye to AOHell*

Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 10:21 am

You might find this handy as regards your telephone exchange:

http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/

Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2009 12:18 pm

Meridian if you are in a cable area I would highly recommend getting that.
No problems with distance from exchanges etc and best of all 50MB broadband Shocked