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Comments:
i signed up to aol in july of this year for there home bradband package only only reason i went with them was that i have been using there services for 4 yrs without ny problems in the internet cafe but they signed me up for ther call package aswell without in forming me . i had to close my bank account due to my cards being stolen witch ment they were not able to take payment and cut my services off so i called themto pay it and was told that the bill was £69 for the monet i asked why this was and was told it was for my broadband and calls that were made on my line asked why i was being charged for calls with then when i had not agreed to them ... they refused to accept this and demanded i pay it .. i then asked i be transfered to a manager as i was not at all happy with this i ws put on hold and after being on hold for 5 mins they cut me of this happend 3 times and when i eventualy did get to speak to a manager they were rude so i had to call back yet again and speak to some one else .. .. i eventualy had my bill chaged and had to pay them 26.96 for my services to be re conected .i paid this and was told that my internet would be back on within 5 hours what a lot of carp that was i ended up waiting 48 hours and had to make several calls to them to get this sorted .. they eventual agreed that i could cancel calls witch i was happy with untill i found out that this would take 21 days , i called bt up who should have been providing me with my calls and they gave me a code to dial infont of all out going callls so i could use my fone as aol had not been given permision to take them over and would not allow bt to take over th line immediately ... i am tied to a 11 month contract with aol to run at my home still but as soon as this is up i will be getting rid off them i have already went canceled them in the inernt cafe and going with bt as they have offered me a much better deal and have been very helpful with the problems i have been facing .. i would not recomend ny1 to aol after this and feel that they dont care as long as they are getting money from customers
I HAVE BEEN WITH AOL FOR 6 YEARS OR MORE JUST FOUND OUT I WAS BEING ROBBED I WAS PAYING £24-99 FOR 2 MEG SERVICE CALLED GOLD PACKAGE.
WE GOT IN TOUCH WITH THEM TO ASK WHY WE WERE PAYING £24-99 WHEN IN FACT THIS GOLD PACKAGE NO LONGER EXISTS.
THEY SAID SORRY WE WILL DOWNGRADE YOU TO £14-99.
3 DAYS LATER I RECEIVE A WIRELESS ROUTER I THOUGHT WOW THANKS AOL.
NEXT BILLING DATE I GET CHARGED £17-99 SO ON THE PHONE WE GO AGAIN GOT TOLD SORRY WE WILL BILL YOU £14-99 NEXT BILLING DATE SO WE ASK FOR A REFUND AS WE WERE BEING OVERCHARGED FOR AT LEAST 2 YEARS THEY SAID NOT ON AS WE SHOULD HAVE DOWNGRADE OURSELVES TO SILVER RIGHT I THOUGHT IVE HAD ENOUGH GIVE ME THE MAC CODE IM LEAVING YOU.
SORRY SIR WAS THE REPLY YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY 11 MONTHS FEES TO LEAVE THEREFORE NO CODE TILL ITS PAID.REASON THEY SAID I HAD DOWNGRADED WHICH I AGREED TO A NEW 12 MONTH CONTRACT WHICH I NOW HAVE TO HONOR BEFORE LEAVING.
HAVE NOW FOUND OUT AOL NOW BELONGS TO THE INFAMOUS TALK TALK ALIAS CARPHONE WAREHOUSE WHY DOES THIS NOT SURPRISE ME WHEN THIS NAME APPEARED.
NOW AFTER AT LEAST 6 YEARS WITH AOL I HAVE TO PAY THEM 14-99 A MONTH FOR 11 MONTHS TO LEAVE THEM OR STOP PAYING THEM AND HAVE NO INTERNET BECAUSE THEY WONT GIVE ME THE MAC CODE I CALL THIS BLACKMAIL AS I NEVERDOWNGRADED I CAUGHT THEM CHEATING ME AND IM NOW TOLD 1000S OF OTHERS ARE BEING ROBBED NOW BY AOL.
HAS ANYONE ELSE BEEN THROUGH THIS?
Wow what a seless company! I have been an aol customer for 7 years now, and am finally about to leave them. I started with dial up, no real problems there, but switched to broadband. I needed a wireless network so opted for gold, bought all the right netgear equipment, couldnt install it. Tried phoning customer services, who could barely speak english let alone help, must have spent endless hours on the phone trying to sort it out before aol told me it must be faulty equipment and I was to take it back to the shop. I called netgear support instead and the problem was solved in minutes. All this time of course I was having to pay for dial up as my broadband account was enabled. In fact they were billing me for dial up before I even received my broadband kit as they sent it to the wrong address! Once I got online and it came to bill payment date, they overcharged me. They had billed me for a full month dial and a full month broadband even though I got broadband a week after my dial up billing date! After about six weeks of angry phonecalls and threatening them with the small claims court if I didnt get my money back, I eventually got a refund. However, I was then plagued with having my account suspended due to non payment! In the last three years I had my account suspended 8 times for so called non payment, even though the money goes out by direct debit every month, never bounced, never missed! Now they have got rid of aol gold and want to charge me £25 a month for silver, I have told them where to shove it. For £31 a month I can get 8mb unlimited broadband, off peak phonecalls and sky telly, guess where I am off to lol! Aol are useless, in this business with so much better on offer for much less money I dont understand why anyone would stick with aol!
It took me 6 weeks and numerous long phone calls to obtain a MAC code to move internet providers, I had been with AOL for over 6 years, but when I registered my business email address, AOL did not support it, and consequently I lost a considerable number of new leads. My son is now having the same problem in trying to obtain a MAC code, reporting them to Ofcom was of little use, although since the middle of February, it is now an offence to withold this code, so what do AOL do? they send you round in circles on their telephone switchboard, and at 7.5p per minute, it mounts up,
the sooner people migrate away from them the sooner they will sit up and take note, but for many this will come too late.
AOL charge for using dialup if your Broadband service goes down. Has any one had any luck in getting a refund for this was either AOL or BT's fault? I had to wait three weeks before AOL were prepared to refer my fault to BT Wholesale, during which time all they would do is ask me to perform the same checks over and over again. When they did eventually refer it, BT came out a week later and the fault was eventually traced to the local exchange. Meanwhile I have got a bill of £54.42 for dialup charges, most of which was used trying to use the live help for advice.
During this time I installed BT yahoo any time dialup and expected to o nly have to pay the £15.99 for using this, but I now have to pay both AOL and BT for the same service which I only needed to use because of BT's fault at the exchange and AOL's tardiness in refering it to BT.
On the positive side, when I was at least refered to the Waterford AOL centre, they were very helpful and pleasant and I have been offered a monthly reduction of £5 for as long as I use their service.
aol huh, been online for 4 years, mostly with aol so ive built up a good online community for myself and theres the reason i stayed so long, their customer service is terrible, foreign workers who cannot understand a word we say and we cannot understand them, i am not in any racist, but i need to be able to understand when im being given tech advice.
i had a reason to complain to them after many emails to the head office i stil havent after 2 years had any feed back, very annoying, i am now with another isp and have had no tech problems at all, compared with being on the phone nearly every day to aols tech dept..im so glad i got rid of them as my isp
Ive had aol broadband for a while, tried to get it on a wireless network, no such luck. Ive spoken to numerous people to try and sort this problem out, but guess what still getting nowhere. I followed the instructions to a t, guess what still cant get it on wireless network. Had so many problems with aol broadband, supposed to be value for money, well i dont think so.
My dial-up account with them started off okay but seemed to get slower and more unreliable over time, despite brand new PC and checking for viruses etc. Felt like they were more interested in flogging broadband than keeping their basic service running. Lost work when the service crashed mid-way through, painfully slow when it would work (sometimes upto two minutes to open a single webpage!), and forever refusing the open at all. Switched to BT instead and no problems since - just waiting to see if it's true that AOL are prone to keep taking the monthly subscription from your account afterwards now - hmm..
We've just upgraded to AOL Broadband and we are delighted with the level of service shown. Everything went according to plan and, when the BT Voyager 105 arrived, it was a doddle to install. We were on-line with everythin in place within 20 minutes! Excellent!
hi there, i took on aol so that i can play xbox live. i been with them for quite a while. at first i was on the gold plan. had alot of problems where i could not hold a room, hear or speak to some people. spoke to aol about this recommended us to upgrade to the platinum and also recommended us to get a dg834g router (cost us 60 pounds). we seem to be having more problems now. cant even play live without being kick of of xbox live. we spoke to xbox live about this and they told us that aol is not supportive to xbox live. you can play on aol but they are not compatible. they said the only companies that are compatible with xbox live is telewest, ntl, blueyonder and bt yahoo. they have a xbox compatible stamp on thier name. trying to cancel my aol contract as they are not providing me with the service i need. they are refusing to cancel my contract. i have now reported them to watch dog and would suggest to anybody with the same problems to report them as well. at the end of the day, we have not signed the contract and they are not providing us with the service recommended.
they are useless and unpleasant. they help them selves to bank accounts when they please. as i have experienced. my mother in law paid our account one month as a once off payment, and they have helped them selves to her account details they were not provided for example her sort code as well as her account number.they have now set her up as the account holder. they have set up a direct debit without her permission. she went to her bank to try put a hold on it and the bank said it wont help as they have her other details.
the bank had contact aol and told them that no payment is to go off her account or they will take things further. the bank has also written to aol informing them of the conversation. we have a copy of this letter sent.. i just think they are very cheecky and someone needs to get this company sorted out. there fore the more complaits watchdog recieved the better chance there is of something being done about this.
I am fairly new to the computer world, but the biggest mistake I made was changing from aol to Charter. There is so much more to explore on AOL than Charter and alot easier to access. Thank you very much for being there.
Sorry to hear you do not like AOL.... I have been with them for quite a few years and I love it. In fact, I wouldn't have any other one. I have tried other networks, but none as good as this one. Even though I only have dial up... I love the set up AOL has.. it's the easiest to get around in and you don't have all that other garbage around you.
as a small business, i have been with aol for about 7 years initially, they were much b etter than anything else in the market. recently, aol seems to be approaching melt-down. tried their broadband which was fine for a while,, made the mistake of up=grading to Platinum [because of a slowing service] to cut an awfully long story short, I cancelled broadband and will shortly be cancelling my aol dial-up as the connection now has gone back to the stone-ages. FOR ANY OF YOU PEOPLE WHO WANT TO HURT AOL, CONTACT OFTEL - THEY WILL TELL YOU THAT YOU HAVE TO WAIT 12 WEEKS FOR THE OPPORTUNITY OF COMPLAINING TO CISAS - THESE PEOPLE C H A R G E AOL FOR HAVING TO DEAL WITH COMPLAINTS -- GOOD NEWS!!! I WISH I HAD A £5 FOR EVERY HOUR I HAVE WASTED WITH TRYING TO HELP FROM AOL - ALL THE CRAP PHONE LINES I AM SURE LINK TO ONE EXCHANGE, ONE OF THE OPTIONS ACTUALLY CUTS YOU OFF - DOH! THIS NOW HAS GOT TO BE ONE OF THE WORST PERFORMING ISP'S THERE IS -
CAN ANYONE RECOMMEND A GOOD ISP PROVIDER FOR THE UK WHICH HAS A DEDICATED HELP LINE THAT WORKS - AND DOES NOT LEAD TO SOME DUMMY SOMEWHERE IN THE FAR FLUNG CORNERS OF THE UNIVERSE READING OF A CARD WITH A ''SUPERVISOR'' ????
HAPPY DAYS.....DEL
For those of you dissatisfied with a company, if you gave them your debit card number, here's a way to stop them from charging your account:
Go to the bank and ask to stop your debit card, just say you lost it or something. You'll get a new card. The contract was with the old card number so you're home free.
AOL ARE Sxxx. I USED THEIR DIAL UP FOR A YEAR, NO PROBS, APPLIED FOR BROADBAND, NEVER WORKED, THEY HAVE TAKEN MONEY EVERY MONTH OUT OF MY ACCOUNT AS I AM STUCK IN A COMTRACT, THE 12 MONTHS ARE UP, SENT THEM A LETTER RECORDED DELIVERY TO CANCEL STILL NO RESPONCE, NO REPLY FROM PHONECALLS, NO REPLY FORM LETTERS. THEY ARE CRAP, CANNOT STOP THEM TAKING IT OUT OF MY BANK AS THEY HAVE SOME SORT OF RIGHT ACCORDING TO MY BANK TO KEEP TAKING IT.
i used to be with aol and they are rubbish,had nothing but problems, could never connect and the technical team for aol was about as useful as a chocolate fireguard. after having problems with aol i could not be bothered with an isp until i found wanadoo which seem alot better and know how to get you connected if you have a problem. aol are CRAP
Signed up with AOL broadband to use Xbox Live. The AOL homepage clearly states that it was compatible if using AOL 8. This is complete rubbish. The service barely works, most features are missing and the majority of games do not work with the service. Worst of all they have now trapped me in a 12 month contract and refuse to release me.
AOL Broadband are sending out a CD to allegedly set up Broadband. The CD does not contain the correct drivers for the Modem which they supply (Voyager 105). They say they cannot supply the correct CD. They suggested I download the drivers from the internet. When I did this I lost all connection (narrowband, broadband and dial up with per minute charging). It took about 30 hours with five different technical support staff in Ireland, Scotland, UK and India to sort out the mess. Don't sign up with AOL Broadband for the moment
Want to know the name of the worst ISP ever? AOL. Unscrupulous business policies, awful customer skills, bad practice, you name it. Who else could take more than 8 WEEKS to re-activate your account, blame the telephone companie for it and refuse to offer any alternative or compensation. Then, a month later, they 'accidentally' CEASE your account again and tell you it is going to take another 3 weeks or so before they can reconnect it! In the meantime they charge you a monthly broadband fee for a rubbish 56k connection!! What's more they refuse to cancel the contract so that you can find an ISP which offer proper services, so you're stuck with them until the end. Outrageous. Be smart - NEVER use AOL.
We pay for Broadband at £27:99 pcm in the UK. Since AOL brought into being spam controls ours, as well as another 57 AOL members i know of, have been gaining greater spam problems. This has increased to the degree that one of my e-mail accounts i closed down as it became unusable.
That is one problem;
The main problem myself and 57 other account holders are aware of is that our e-mail accounts do not receive the type of e-mail's we want but rather spam. I have been contacted by friends who cannot mail me, as they say the e-mail 'Bounces Back' even business associates and companies i deal with have had to write and tell me.
Yesterday was the first time in 3 months an AOL member of staff agreed they had problems. It's a shame none of them no what to do.
Add a comment about this blagger
Visitors to the site are reminded that the details contained within user comments are uncorroborated and as such should not be read as fact but as the opinion of the person who left the comment.
Comments:
WE GOT IN TOUCH WITH THEM TO ASK WHY WE WERE PAYING £24-99 WHEN IN FACT THIS GOLD PACKAGE NO LONGER EXISTS.
THEY SAID SORRY WE WILL DOWNGRADE YOU TO £14-99.
3 DAYS LATER I RECEIVE A WIRELESS ROUTER I THOUGHT WOW THANKS AOL.
NEXT BILLING DATE I GET CHARGED £17-99 SO ON THE PHONE WE GO AGAIN GOT TOLD SORRY WE WILL BILL YOU £14-99 NEXT BILLING DATE SO WE ASK FOR A REFUND AS WE WERE BEING OVERCHARGED FOR AT LEAST 2 YEARS THEY SAID NOT ON AS WE SHOULD HAVE DOWNGRADE OURSELVES TO SILVER RIGHT I THOUGHT IVE HAD ENOUGH GIVE ME THE MAC CODE IM LEAVING YOU.
SORRY SIR WAS THE REPLY YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY 11 MONTHS FEES TO LEAVE THEREFORE NO CODE TILL ITS PAID.REASON THEY SAID I HAD DOWNGRADED WHICH I AGREED TO A NEW 12 MONTH CONTRACT WHICH I NOW HAVE TO HONOR BEFORE LEAVING.
HAVE NOW FOUND OUT AOL NOW BELONGS TO THE INFAMOUS TALK TALK ALIAS CARPHONE WAREHOUSE WHY DOES THIS NOT SURPRISE ME WHEN THIS NAME APPEARED.
NOW AFTER AT LEAST 6 YEARS WITH AOL I HAVE TO PAY THEM 14-99 A MONTH FOR 11 MONTHS TO LEAVE THEM OR STOP PAYING THEM AND HAVE NO INTERNET BECAUSE THEY WONT GIVE ME THE MAC CODE I CALL THIS BLACKMAIL AS I NEVERDOWNGRADED I CAUGHT THEM CHEATING ME AND IM NOW TOLD 1000S OF OTHERS ARE BEING ROBBED NOW BY AOL.
HAS ANYONE ELSE BEEN THROUGH THIS?
the sooner people migrate away from them the sooner they will sit up and take note, but for many this will come too late.
During this time I installed BT yahoo any time dialup and expected to o nly have to pay the £15.99 for using this, but I now have to pay both AOL and BT for the same service which I only needed to use because of BT's fault at the exchange and AOL's tardiness in refering it to BT.
On the positive side, when I was at least refered to the Waterford AOL centre, they were very helpful and pleasant and I have been offered a monthly reduction of £5 for as long as I use their service.
i had a reason to complain to them after many emails to the head office i stil havent after 2 years had any feed back, very annoying, i am now with another isp and have had no tech problems at all, compared with being on the phone nearly every day to aols tech dept..im so glad i got rid of them as my isp
they are useless and unpleasant. they help them selves to bank accounts when they please. as i have experienced. my mother in law paid our account one month as a once off payment, and they have helped them selves to her account details they were not provided for example her sort code as well as her account number.they have now set her up as the account holder. they have set up a direct debit without her permission. she went to her bank to try put a hold on it and the bank said it wont help as they have her other details.
the bank had contact aol and told them that no payment is to go off her account or they will take things further. the bank has also written to aol informing them of the conversation. we have a copy of this letter sent.. i just think they are very cheecky and someone needs to get this company sorted out. there fore the more complaits watchdog recieved the better chance there is of something being done about this.
Martha from Russellville
CAN ANYONE RECOMMEND A GOOD ISP PROVIDER FOR THE UK WHICH HAS A DEDICATED HELP LINE THAT WORKS - AND DOES NOT LEAD TO SOME DUMMY SOMEWHERE IN THE FAR FLUNG CORNERS OF THE UNIVERSE READING OF A CARD WITH A ''SUPERVISOR'' ????
HAPPY DAYS.....DEL
Go to the bank and ask to stop your debit card, just say you lost it or something. You'll get a new card. The contract was with the old card number so you're home free.
jobani at 2nd Nov 2004, 12:37AM
That is one problem;
The main problem myself and 57 other account holders are aware of is that our e-mail accounts do not receive the type of e-mail's we want but rather spam. I have been contacted by friends who cannot mail me, as they say the e-mail 'Bounces Back' even business associates and companies i deal with have had to write and tell me.
Yesterday was the first time in 3 months an AOL member of staff agreed they had problems. It's a shame none of them no what to do.
shackers at 5th Jan 2004, 01:23PM
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