I've been with aol for over 9 years and every thing as been ok. In 2007 I even changed my phone line from bt to aol. Then they got bought out by the Carphone Warehouse that same year. then they teamed up with talk talk also part of the Carphone Warehouse, still so far so good, until 2 weeks ago. I started to getting phone calls and automated messages saying could I contact talk talks finance department. First I egnored it as I was not a talk talk customer and thought they may be trying to tought my custom. Then I rememberd that talk talk was part of CWP and the take over here in the UK. I decided to call them and that's when it started. I was now trying to find out what talk talk wanted. I was talking to an Asian in an asian call centre. He said my direct debit had been cancelled and that I now owed two months outstanding. I asked how did he know about my direct debit with aol. it appears that talk talk now handle the finance and billing for aol. I gave my details and he then asked for a password on the account. I said I don't have one and never had one with aol as they ask your security details. he then took my security details and brought up my account. I then ask how did my direct debit become canceled and why was I not notifide sooner, to which he could not answer the question. I was then asked if I could pay the oustanding.
I politly said no I could not as I wanted a reason first as to why my dd was cancelled. he then started saying that faliur to pay would result in my service being interrupted and a charge of £4 admin charge would be added daily till it was paid. We were not getting anywhere he eithe clearly did not understand me or did not want to. So when I asked to speak to someone else he wanted a password on the account or he could not transfer me. I then rang aol as I.had bit.my tongue long enough. I explaine everything again and asked them to reinstall the dd but still no answer as to why my direct debit had been cancelled in the first place. Now I was losing it and we were not getting anywhere so I gave up. later that week after recieving another call fromm talk talk. I then got straight on to aol got it sorted eventually after being told that it was a softaware/hardware issue,that I could believe. but when I was told it was beyond their control and that the machine was responsable for cancelling my direct debit and due to the non payment my service would be affected and there was nothing they could do it was beyond their control I now asked to speak to the manager. I finally got through after demanding I did not want to complain in writing because we know what happens to letters.
The direct debit has been reinstated according to the bank. and if this matter arises again I will change supplier: I have been thinking about this since what has happened previous.
AOL broadband Reviews
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I have been an aol customer for the past 10 years and like most people who have commented on here did not have any major problems with them until recently. The last contract I had with them which was for 18 months came to an end a couple of months ago, this is when my problems started. I started to get extremely slow speeds that it became impossible to use the internet and when I could use it, it kept disconnecting itself. Like other people on here customer services blamed the router and told me if I wanted a new one I needed a new contract. Well, because I had never really had any problems with them in the past I agreed to this. I was told I had 14 days cooling off period to change my mind and that my new router would arrive within 7 days. After 7 days I still had not received it so I called them back and they told me that a new router had not even been ordered. I was promised once again that I would receive it in 7 days. Another 6 days past and still no router so I phoned them again and guess what, yes I was told no router had been ordered. This time I told them that I wanted to cancel my new order which took 4 idiots and 1 hr to do. This still left me with the extremely slow internet so when I rang again I asked to speak to a team manager. Now the first time I asked this the person I spoke to refused to put me through to one and told me that they don't have team managers. I knew that this was a lie as I had already looked up on the internet aols complaints procedure. This stated that any complaints had to first be made to a team manager. It took me 2 more phone calls to finally speak to a team manager who also at first refused to send me a router but by the end of the call I was promised a new router free of charge with no new contract. She agreed to send me a new one after i told her that over the past 4 years I had renewed my contract twice and not one was I given a new router, which apparently you are entitled to with every new contract. I also told her that if she refused then I would take my complaint to the CEO office. I finally received a new router 4 days ago but, unsurprisingly the problem is even worse. I have now come to the conclusion that this problem will never be resolved so I will be going else where. For anyone who wants to know what the official aol complaint procedure is here is the link.
http://help.aol.co.uk/help_uk/documentLink.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=uk_814246984 -
I was with aol from the days of Compuserve and had always raved about them; their reliability, speeds, customer service.... oh how times have changed!!
My complaints began about 18months ago with emails I sent not being received and no bounce backs (this caused a lot of trouble and I lost business as a result). AOL blamed everything from filters to the router to Windows, basically anything else apart from them. I'm quite geeky so when I caught them out at each point they finally after many calls over 3 months offered to upgrade my service and send a new modem - all I'd have to do was sign up to a new contract. I argued them down in price instead and eventually got the deal I was happy with and (STUPIDLY) accepted.
Of course the problems were never resolved, the Indian based staff are clearly dragged off the street, given no training and are just plonked infront of a 90's era PC with a script to read from. They have no clue what to do, are unwilling to escalate and their two main functions are to:
A) get you to sign u for another contract - preferably with line rental.
B) get you off the phone by telling you any lie they can think of, or as a failsafe that you have come through to the wrong department and they can't transfer you.
My main issues were with email not being received, but this didn't worry them. I was promed call backs, escalations, UK based technical team visits..... nothing.
What really angered me were the constant lies, when you have been a loyal customer for 16 years, you expect better treatment that this. I left in March and have not looked back.
One of their original lies 18months ago was that if I left them they would also delete my screen name and I'd lose my aol.com email address - THIS IS A LIE. If, like me this is a reason to stay, rest assured, they don't. I went to the extreame of changing everything away from my aol email but when my cancellation was complete, my email and screen name have remained active. Basically the lesson learned is that they are a bunch of clueless liars who want your money and no longer care about the customer.
I'm now with Orange as I also have my mobile contract with them and although others may complain about them, I've found them good. Sky are attractive IF you stay on their good side, but my advice would be to go with O2 who seem to have the best customer support and that is what you need if things go wrong. -
After many years with AOL most of it trouble free I have just been informed that from May I will be paying £25 instead of £15 I have just ended my contract with them and gone with BT (I felt sad leaving them )
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I was with AOL for over 12 years then talk talk took over and it all went belly up poor service constant disconnects 3rd rate tec support they are always quick to blame your equipment i complained about the disconnects and speed to be told it was my equipment but guess what i went to bt and the same router lines ect has never gone off yet and speed went from 6 meg to 18.5
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Interesting. I get an email (after being with AOL since the days of Delphi and Compuserve(if you think aol are bad Compuserve were unusable)) telling me my package is going up £10 a month to £25 and that is only for 50-200KB service most of the time and does not include line rental and tel service. The fixed £5 discount was shrunk over the last two months against what my contract says but I am getting rid rather than suing. When called, they were not interest in keeping my business.
Going to BT (although a friend who works for them says don't touch with a bargepole :)) for everything is going to cost less than we were paying before the price hike!
Aol got bad when Hutchinson took over and was diabolical when Talk Talk moved in.
I recently talked to customer service and was told that the line rental charges they had to pay had increased significantly. This is diametrically opposed to what I read in the press from the MARCH changes introduced by OFTCOM. Someone is pulling a fast one for those who live outside the lucrative urban conurbations.
Branding and the selling on of services is very annoying; I have never found it to be beneficial.
At my previous residence I had NTL as well and despite them having a bad reputation it was trouble free until Virgin took over, upped the contention rates and the service became unusable. AOL has not got the worst customer service, I assure you.
Wish me luck!
Village dweller
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I had to pay extra for my AOL Huawei Echo life HG532 router. It doesn't support Airprint. It needs a regular re-boot. The Indian call centre had never heard of Airprint. Can anyone help ?
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I joined AOL in 1996 and until recently was not particularly concerned about speeds or the £19.99 cost until I received by e-mail on 10/04/12 notification that as of may the price would rise to £24.00 which caused me to check what offers were available.
Upon discovering that the current AOL cost for new clients to my type of service is £15.30 I immediately cancelled.
The moral is that anyone thinking of joining AOL should never allow their contract to overrun without checking if a better deal is available.
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I have been with AOL for over 10 years and have put up with slow speeds, cut offs (a lot)the most offensive call centre workers etc etc ...about 5 years ago they gave me a deal to have my telephone line with them giving me free uk calls and free international calls, over this time I have only used the international calls when my family went on holiday which was maybe 10-12 calls throughout the year, a month ago my daughter went to Egypt so I rang her there I now have a bill for nearly £300 (aol now tells me that Egypt wasn't an international call!!) after ringing their call centre and being spoken down to by one of the call centre staff I eventually got put through to someone else who spoke constantly over the top of me and would not let me explain my case, each time I said if I thought I was being charged do you think I would have rang as much he kept saying we will not drop any charges you made the calls. I think the caller centre staff are about the rudest ever and I will be leaving aol.
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Over the last 12 years or so I've had my fair share of ups and downs with AOL, the last major row being when they cut the service to upgrade the local BT line but then took 3 days to restore it. As for the customer service response & help during this period - **"!!**%*""**!! . CS seems to be still a massive problem area
BUT, and it's a BIG BUT, in December last year my download speeds increased from 5.8 to 8.6. Then in february this year they jumped again to 14.0 where they remain constant. (all figs. approx)
This seems to be as fast as anyone in my area, including Virgin subscibers.
My package price is fair enough and, apart from an occasional outage, all is just fine. Just hope I'm not speaking too soon but maybe there's light for all at the end of the AOL tunnel. -
To quote Mel Gibson in Braveheart "Freedom!" On April 10th my AOL Contract finishes. After 14 years as a customer and in the past five years (after a change of address in 2007) no more waffle when trying to understand why when having two connections to the house BT and AOL, Aol was consistently half the speed of the BT services despite sharing the local exchange and cable to the house. I had two services due to distance from the local exchange and sharing working from home with three sons addicted to Xbox. At no point in my numerous conversations with AOL did they ever offer an explanation as to why there was such a difference, despite my asking specific questions on contention. Trust me AOL is a Zombie Company ( died years ago but some how still stumbling on!)
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I have been with aol since 1999. As with other reviewers I had no problems until recently. Then suddenly I started getting an intermittent service. Having ensured that there was no problem at my end I emailed for technical support and got no response; this happened several times. When I telephoned they seemed keen to bind me into a new 18 month contract - they seemed quite surprised when I didn't seem interested!!! A change of provider seems the best option :)
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AOL are simply terrible full stop.
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Must agree with you all, I have been with aol for years without any problems.
Talk talk has undone all aols good work, they sent me a new router but the speed is worse than ever, Im sure they will ring me when they read this as I am out off contract (not sure how to use) -
I have been an AOL customer for nearly 20 years, but not for much longer. It makes me laugh when people are complaining that they "only get speeds of 3MB". Instead of the internet super highway, I am on TalkTalk / AOL's version - the internet bridleway with a superfast downlaod speed of 115KB/s. I used to get around 500KBs - 750KBs which was useable - but this is now down to 115. My wife has a business broadband service from Vodaphone which runs at around 4MB - so it is not an exchange problem. Customer service is useless and frustrating. Can't wait until I am out of contract in September. Avoid like the plague.
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I been since with aol 1999, i contacted aol this week , asking i was having modem problem , they we send you undate modem, but your you have new contract for 18 months .
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I have been with aol on and off for yrs they av always for me been the best isp...but i wanted to see how good the other isp`s wer but i always came back to aok uk...never had much prolems on the phones to them if i had a issue quick and friendly job sorted....its only recently since they joined up with talk talk that i seem to be having problems..like dead phone line slower bb access and speeds...with aol i got a stable conection an speed ...but now it fluctuates and really does my head in..ive never liked talk talk i think there service is the pits and there staff are an arrogant bunch of morons when trying to fix something due to them...but they always say its your equipment at fault ...wat tossers shud be allowed to run a phone and isp service when they act like tossers ...im sad aol did this to me never told me they wud be with talk talk..now i am about to move away from them it wasnt in my contract that i wud be moved to talk talk..so they can go to hell if they say you need pay a disconnection fee for changing isp`s..wen you treat your customers like crap then i`ll return the favour and give you crap back...my advice is stay away from talk talk
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I have nothing but hassle from AOL talk talk, buzzing on the line, constantly going offline, very slow loading and router problems. if someone else in your area had talk talk, you go offline . This should not be happening. I have phoned for help many times and have had the phone put down on me. This company shouldn't be allowed to do this to paying customers.....
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It's very easy to get hysterical about Broadband ISP's giving bad service and AOL/Talk Talk have certainly driven me to distraction over the past 5 months with almost daily disconnection issues.
After going through the normal procedure of being passed to technicians with a poor command of English, the problem might be briefly resolved, but eventually you will come to realise that this is very much a temporary situation, but the technicians aren't trained to engage in conversation such as discussing what is the route cause of the problem?
Now it's time to select the "quit" option when you next call, and for the first time ever you will be talking to a very polite and "helpful" person who will probably tell you that your wireless router/filters are definitely to blame. They offer free replacements, plus a £2 reduction in your monthly subscription, BUT you now have to agree on a new 12 month contract. Needless to say, none of this worked and you're now tied into 12 more months of near daily disconnections.
When I now called and demanded to be released, they sent out a Talk Talk Engineer, followed by a BT Engineer, and neither could find any faults, so they texted me on my mobile to say "the issue had been resolved" and would I reply with the word "FIXED" or "NOT FIXED". I replied "NOT FIXED" and heard nothing, but now when I telephone them I'm recognised as a nuisance because I have to key in my 'phone number, and they now keep me waiting for up to 20 minutes before telling me they are looking into the matter.
From this stage onwards I just receive automated text messages asking me to confirm that the matter is resolved, and when I say NO, we start all over again.
It has taken 5 months and about 50 telephone calls to get to this stage and now I have to find a way to get released from their contract, but where do I go from here? From what I read, all ISP's are much the same! -
I have been with AOL internet since dial up 24K modems were the bees knees and will probably stay with them for the foreseeable future. I was tempted away once with orange broadband a few years ago but quickly cancelled that using breach of contract as it was terrible. AOL technical support is based somewhere like India and on the whole is shockingly bad, so bad its nearly funny, but I have spoken to some very competent operators, ablet very rarely. I pay pay £10 for unlimited broadband with no restrictions as a reward for being with them since the orange debarcel. On the whole I have no issues with broadband but maybe once of twice a year I need to ring technical support with disconnection issues or super slow speeds (dial up used to be faster) and that can be torturous sometimes with numerous phone calls to the IMHO worst technical support in the world to resolve the problem. Recently had disconnection issues and after the usual terrible tech support I was offered there new premium router for free which turned up two days later and works very indeed (plays Call of Duty no problem). On the whole I would recommend AOL from my experince, I have had serious issues and major frustrations, but the good has always outwayed the bad and so I stay with them. Hope this helps others make an informed choice.
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i think AOL need to understand the value of our money which i think , they simply not interested in....they just like to earn money,not giving the good services to their customers...
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i think AOL need to understand the value of our money which i think , they simply not interested in....they just like to earn money,not giving the good services to their customers...
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Absolutely diabolical service. They could not connect me with their Desktop Browser and for months now I have had to log on through going through another external Browser. (Mozilla Firefox) I spent three solid days on the phone to people who I could not understand fully nor them understand me properly. I asked for an e-mail address so that I could complain and was told that there wasn't one. They said that the problem could not be solved and that I would hear from a Supervisor - good job I didn't hold my breath. I'm in the process of converting.
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I have been with AOL for years. A few months ago they rang and persuaded me to take out a bundle - voice and broadband. The price was attractive and the sales pitch, despite being done from a very long way away (!) was OK. But boy, oh boy, I wish I had never done it. Ever since, we have struggled to get decent bandwidth and have suffered dropouts ranging from minutes through to, in one case, three whole days. Broadband technology is easy and cheap - I ought to know, I used to work in the field. I am afraid these guys are doing on the seriously cheap and it shows.
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I would also like to add that the all the people who have called from AOL have not spoken English of a reasonable standard and normally I have been unable to understand them.
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I've been with AOL for many years. In the last 2 years it's gone from bad to terrible. I have a connector which is of the original design, I was advised by a PC Expert to ask for a new type wirelessrouter to be provided but this request has been repeatedly refused. Reporting Spam just sends it to the recently deleted file and the connection allways fails after about half an hour. I receive at least 2 calls a week from them asking to discuss my account and despite telling them EVERY TIME I will not discuss financial business on the telephone they still persist! They have told me numerous times thet they do not enter into correspondence. No replies to the complaints by email! and all this costs me nearly £20 per. month. Time to change.
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I have been with AOL for 6 years I generally got 5/6 MB download, pretty good. Before Christmas they offered up to 20 MB great - NO, I now get bewteen 2.5 and 4 MB and rarely up to 11. Wish I have never changed - time to go to BT Infinity...
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I have just received the following email from AOL. Following my experiences over the last couple of years most marks I gave (out of 10) were 0 to 3.
At AOL Broadband, we're committed to providing you with the best service possible. To do this, we need your help.
As one of our valued customers we would like to gain your views and feedback regarding your experience of being a AOL Broadband customer, so we ask for 15 minutes of your time to fill out our online survey. We have commissioned SSI to collect your feedback.
To view the survey just click on the link below:
http://survey.ssisurveys.com/scripts/dubinterviewer.dll/Frames?Quest=26105&resp=90038284&pw=36852&language=1&template=template_blank.htm
(If the link above is not clickable, please copy and paste it into the Address bar of your web browser)
Please note that AOL Broadband are doing research at an aggregate level and cannot respond to individual survey comments. If you require help on an unfinished query, please do not reply to this email, but instead use the "Contact Us" forms via these links:
http://help.aol.co.uk/contact-aol/article/20070131115209990001
Thank you in advance for your feedback.
Kind regards,
AOL Broadband
TalkTalk Group
11 Evesham Street
London
W11 4AR
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I went on contract with AOL in early 2000 having been with Compuserve, the company AOL boughtout prior to that. I was more than happy with AOL for ten years and would regularly recommend them. Then came the dark days of TalkTalk, the company that customer services forgot! I have had MANY issues the last two years; my account hacked 3 times, spam email throught the roof, loss of connection, email blackist...the list goes on. The only constant has been the complete lack of support. Customer services regularly lie to you, telling me my problems were due to my router and if I just signed up for another contract and put my line rental with them they could fix all my problems.... Thank God I'm not gullable, but a feel sorry for those who may be taken in by rediculous lies like this. I've been promised call backs, escalations everything, none of which ever happened. I'm now with Orange and couldn't be happier.
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It seems I am not alone. I am yet another long term AOL customer who is finding since switching to broadband and talk the service has deteriorated. Constant losses in connection, phone going down. Never had to call support before a few months ago I am now thinking of installing a direct line. Shame as it seems customer loyalty does not get rewarded.
