My post was in regard to pgilberts by the way.

:-)

PS> Jason, do you have any thoughts on this? Surely something can be done about this kind of thing?

I joined up with AOL for their broadband and calls last year on a 2 year contract. I was very disappointed with the service that I received from them as a Company. My Broadband was set up pretty much straight away but i wated 10 months for them to set up the calls - which they were still taking the monety out of my account for. I called them on numerous occasions each time getting told that they would sort this out within the 10 months I waited. I got fed up of speaking to the Customer care team who tried to help but just couldnt and asked to speak with a Manager or Team Leader. When I spoke with the person and explained that for 10 months I had been calling to get the call part of my plan sorted out and that they had been taking money out from my account for a service I had not been receiving I was asked ' What do you want me to do about this' to which I got a little annoyed and asked for this to be sorted out..

Still no luck with this 11 months down the line and my complaint not answered! I called again to see what was going on and was given a date for the calls to be added to the line. They are a rubbish company in my opinion - this from the experience that I have had from them and will be moving away from them as soon as my contract is up!

AOL customer service is truly awful.

I am happy to say, I finally got a refund, not the full total I was due, but at the end of the day i was actually surprised to get anything at all.

You get to a point where you say, "right I have had enough I want to speak to a manager", and then you think, he could just put me on hold and pass me to his mate next to him, give me more lies, and i would end up phoning them back, on hold for another 40 mins racking up more charges.

I was hung up on several times, had several promises broken, and was continuing to pay £29.99 a month.

I am just glad to be out, and I will never go near them again.

With Sky now, fiver a month, working fine, had a techie problem with bandwidth but got it sorted fairly quickly...

Cheers,

Ally

So what have you (or others) done about your AOL.com email addresses?

If I knew I could break with them but keep my & my family AOL.com addresses I would do so at once.

Any advice very welcome!

Ted

You can keep your AOL email address by accessing the email webpage of AOL using a standard internet browser such as Internet Explorer as follows https://my.screenname.aol.com. If you use this site to access emails before you leave AOL(UK) you will keep your email addresses, this gives you the bonus of being able to acces your mail account from any computer i.e. as opposed to requiring the aol software. The use of this email facility will not incur any charges after you leave. Please see my recent posting to the "MAC code issues - name and shame!" general broadband forum which gives further example of AOL's shoddy practices.

Further to my questions, I have joined a thread running on the AOL forum and hopefully will get the answers and post to this thread in due course. The messages so far run as follows and may be helpful.

I've finally had enough of AOL lousy download speeds and non-existent "customer Service" so will be changing ISPs. Is there any way to keep my email address though?

Thanks

Maggie
>>>
Yes, just let them know that you want to retain your email addresses when you reing up to cancel your account
Mark

Yeh, well I don't know if the rules have changed, but I was going to leave last year and asked them the same question and was told it was going to cost something like #6 a month to keep it otherwise you lose it. I ended up staying as they made me an offer I could not refuse. I find the speed not bad at all in the evenings (after 11pm). I do get 8mb on an 8mb line, but during the day it's something like only 1mb. My problem is constant sporadic disconnections, but I am living with it !

TLeverton wrote:

I'm planning to move to broadband access only, discontinuing my dial-up account.

Can I keep all my current screen names:

a) if I move to AOL Broadband?

b) if I move to another ISP?

If so, are there any necessary steps to take?
>>> AOL have and will have you on record as 'existing user'.
This will be seen as you download the Broadband software. Your existing screennames will remain intact when you log on as 'existing user'.

AOL will have to make sure your line is enabled for Broadband. After which you'll receive your starter pack (router etc) to create subsequent contract as 'existing user'.
http://help.aol.co.uk/broadband

http://help.aol.co.uk/broadband

>>> Sorry misread your post.

A good question perhaps the guys here know but as it's called 'keeping account open' it may be accessible through IE.

Barrybee

this has been the worst service i have ever been with its slow the router wouldnt work half the time tiscali is whole lot better tiscali is faster more reliable

Re: Move from AOL subscription:

Just to confirm I did as suggested by Fatherof2, making sure myself and all my other usernames (family members) had been accessing AOL through Internet Explorer for over a month. I then cancelled my AOL contract.

We all still have AOL access through http://webmail.aol.com and are happy.

Also AOL stopped the direct debit promptly, though I did take the precaution of sending a couple of emails and making a phone call, The following was the reply, with links which might help others.

=============

Thanks for contacting AOL Broadband. We aim to help you have the best possible online experience. You can get further assistance at any time from the dedicated Help Channel.

Thank you for your query today. I appreciate that you've taken the time to allow us an opportunity to handle this for you.

With reference to your query, I have checked in our billing system and it shows that you had an AOL dialup account for £19.99 per month which has now been cancelled. I would like to inform you that AOL Broadband is the name of the company and it does not mean that you have any broadband account.

You can still use your AOL screen names even after your account is cancelled. You can check your e-mails using the web site www.aol.co.uk

In case you come across any issue/concern or have any doubt, you can always revert to us or contact our Technical/Billing Support @ 0844 499 5555. The CallCenter is open Monday to Sunday, 08:00 am to midnight.

Kind regards,

zz zzz

AOL Broadband Member Services.

AOL Broadband provided by TPH Services Srl, a company registered in Luxembourg under number B122 040 with a corporate address at Green Office Park, Parc d' Activites Syrdall 6, L-5365 Munsbach, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

==========

I am another one that joined AOL around 1998 on the dial up service and later moved to broadband.

I am emphatically against anything to do with Carphone Warehouse; I avoid them wherever possible. I was dismayed when they took over AOL UK.

Here are my pro's and cons:

Pros:

The seven screen name/email address thing is cool as mentioned by another poster up thread.
The e-mail part of the software is quite neat and good to use.
I pay around £15 a month I think, I don't think that is too bad for unlimited usage. (I actually seem to have this deal but that says 10GB but I signed up ages ago and mine is unlimited)

Cons:

The customer service sucks; if you are reasonably tech savvy you can mostly avoid it though. Its not bad if you can get through to Ireland, but if you get connected to India or somewhere - forget it!
The software as a browser is the most useless piece of bloat ware ever devised! I only use the software as an email reader; browsing I do on Google Chrome as it is much faster.
As with many companies, they have no interest at all in you once you are paying - unless you want to pay them more.
The only way to be sure you have cancelled is to report your card lost and get a new one. Yes really! They will keep sapping money from that card! They use some non standard system to debit cards that even the banks have difficulty stopping.

Verdict: I have tried to use the email service through Outlook - it is unreliable. I am looking at keeping my email addresses (which I think you can do free) and moving to another provider now. I considered getting this £5-62 Line Rental and the actual connection from someone like Madasafish; who I keep hearing good things about. (My Father is on with them too and reports seamless service)

I am not keen on the idea of having broadband/talk/line rental deals all with one firm - if you have an issue with them, it all goes off. It may be a bit more expensive to separate them, but I prefer the user control it affords.

I wouldn't actually recommend anyone to AOL any more. There are so many other deals out there now that actually finding the right one for you is the hardest part.

---

Landsbanki Guernsey Savers Information Site

I have used AOL dial up since May 2001. Service has been very variable, tending to poor - and I do not use the service very heavily, which is why I have stayed with dial up. Some of the telephone advisers were very difficult to understand. I was charged a standard tariff of £9.99 until February this year, when it suddenly shot up to £13.99 without notice. Now I see from my credit card bill that it seems to have been raised to £19.97 from August - again without notice. I can see no justification for this rise for providing an inferior connection to broadband - and still less for doing so without prior notice. What poor treatment for a long-standing customer. Others be warned! Of course one only finds out about the rise just after being billed, so presumably they will claim you can only cancel from the next period, although when I started with AOL no notice period was required. I do find this sharp practice from a large organization. I wonder if the exorbitant rise is designed to get dial up users to levae? This is pretty shabby behaviour from a large company - the worst kind of sharp practice extracting petty amounts from small customers and relying on the fact that the forms of redress in the UK are too unwieldy/time-consuming and/or expensive to merit pursuing them. So I have to agree with some of the less flattering appraisals on this thread.

Hi TedL I am also about to cancel. You mention emailing AOL a couple of times to confirm. I think this is a good idea, as I don't trust to telephone conversations! I am wondering if you remember what email address you used for this purpose. AOL are not the most transparent in providing non-telephone details!

Hope you get this message and can help. Thx.

M.

michelangelo:

Hi TedL I am also about to cancel. You mention emailing AOL a couple of times to confirm. I think this is a good idea, as I don't trust to telephone conversations! I am wondering if you remember what email address you used for this purpose. AOL are not the most transparent in providing non-telephone details!

Hope you get this message and can help. Thx.

M.

The following is a note I wrote for another user.

>>Lots of people want to give up their AOL account. Mainly because dial-up is so slow, and most people have a direct internet connection. If you don’t have broadband yet I would recommend changing to that and giving up the dial-up connection to pay for it. AOL and lots of other firms like BT offer phone and broadband together. A good source of information is http://www.moneysupermarket.com/c/broadband/reviews/ - this is generally independent and thoughtful. Their best buy for phone plus broadband is the Post Office at £24.42/month for their top package, which includes the BT Line Rental. Other people in the village have recommended them to me.

I already get my broadband elsewhere, so I was keen to give up my AOL but didn’t want to lose the screen name.

Is there any way to keep your email address though?

Yes: First you need to start to access your email using Internet Explorer.

Go to http://www.aol.co.uk

Click on Email

If you look at the top line at this point it will show something like myscreenname AT aol.com which is the crucial thing.

Now enter your user name, for example, in your case you would enter joebloggs and then your password.

To make it easy to log in using internet explorer, at this point open the Internet Explorer “Options” (at top right of screen) and where it says “Home Page” click on “Use Current”

Now read your emails on line, and save any you want to keep to the filing box at the left side of the screen.

Once you have done this at least once, you are OK to discontinue your AOL dial-up account.

However:

1. If you have more than one screen name, for example if husband or children use the same subscription, you must make sure they have accessed their AOL email in the same way as above, before you discontinue the subscription.

2. You will not be able to access your old email from the internet, but it will still be available to read by opening your old AOL program. It will disappear if you delete your old AOL dial-up program.

Once you are happy:

To cancel your Dial-up Service phone AOL Broadband Member Services between 8am and 9pm on 0844 499 5555 - option 5

They will try to sell you their broadband service - let them know you already have a provider.

Also (just to make sure) tell them that you want to retain your email addresses when you ring up to cancel your account, and ask them to confirm that they have discontinued your direct debit.

<<

Following the above, I waited to see if my Direct Debit was discontinued.

I soon received the following email:

>>From:

Broadband Management System [AccountUpdate AT aolbroadband.co.uk]

Dear AOL Member

We can now confirm that as requested, your AOL Broadband line has been disconnected and your Internet access has reverted to a dial-up connection. If you are still within your 0 minimum contractual period, any outstanding amounts due under your AOL Broadband Agreement will be debited from your payment method on or shortly after your next billing date, unless otherwise agreed.

Please note that this does not affect any order you have placed or subscription you currently have for the AOL Talk service, unless you have specifically asked us to cancel this at the same time.

Please remember if you would like to keep your AOL Screen Name and continue to access the AOL software, your AOL Email account, Address Book and Buddy List you can continue to do so for free even though your subscription to AOL Broadband has ended. To do so, sign on to the AOL software as usual, or go to www.aol.co.uk to access your emails when not at home. For more information visit http://aolbroadband.co.uk/free-email

We're sorry you've decided not to continue with AOL Broadband at this time. If you have any queries, please visit http://aolbroadband.co.uk. Alternatively you can contact our Memberr Services team on 0844 499 5555**, or online at http://aolbroadband.co.uk/contact.

Yours sincerely,

AOL Broadband Team

** BT landlines calls cost 5p/min; calls from mobiles/other network providers may cost more. Please go to http://myaolbroadband.co.uk/supportme for details of call charges on this number.

AOL Broadband provided by TPH Services Sàrl, a company registered in Luxembourg under name B 122 040 with a corporate address at Green Office Park, Parc d' Activités Syrdall 6, L-5365 Munsbach, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

---

*** Please do not reply to this email - this email is generated automatically and replies are not monitored ***

<<

As I had only a dial-up subscription, not the Broadband as in their email, I emailed back. After a couple of inadequate emails, I received the following email, which made sense of my query.

>>

Dear Ted,

Thanks for contacting AOL Broadband. We aim to help you have the best possible online experience. You can get further assistance at any time from the dedicated Help Channel.

Thank you for your query today. I appreciate that you've taken the time to allow us an opportunity to handle this for you.

With reference to your query, I have checked in our billing system and it shows that you had an AOL dialup account for £19.99 per month which has now been cancelled. I would like to inform you that AOL Broadband is the name of the company and it does not mean that you have any broadband account.

You can still use your AOL screen names even after your account is cancelled. You can check your e-mails using the web site www.aol.co.uk

In case you come across any issue/concern or have any doubt, you can always revert to us or contact our Technical/Billing Support @ 0844 499 5555. The CallCenter is open Monday to Sunday, 08:00 am to midnight.

Kind regards,

Raj Singh

AOL Broadband Member Services.

AOL Broadband provided by TPH Services Srl, a company registered in Luxembourg under number B122 040 with a corporate address at Green Office Park, Parc d' Activites Syrdall 6, L-5365 Munsbach, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

<<

Hope all this makes sense, and answers your question!

Good luck!

Dear Ted,

Thanks for contacting AOL Broadband. We aim to help you have the best possible online experience. You can get further assistance at any time from the dedicated Help Channel.

Thank you for your query today. I appreciate that you've taken the time to allow us an opportunity to handle this for you.

With reference to your query, I have checked in our billing system and it shows that you had an AOL dialup account for £19.99 per month which has now been cancelled. I would like to inform you that AOL Broadband is the name of the company and it does not mean that you have any broadband account.

You can still use your AOL screen names even after your account is cancelled. You can check your e-mails using the web site www.aol.co.uk

In case you come across any issue/concern or have any doubt, you can always revert to us or contact our Technical/Billing Support @ 0844 499 5555. The CallCenter is open Monday to Sunday, 08:00 am to midnight.

Kind regards,

Raj Singh

AOL Broadband Member Services.

AOL Broadband provided by TPH Services Srl, a company registered in Luxembourg under number B122 040 with a corporate address at Green Office Park, Parc d' Activites Syrdall 6, L-5365 Munsbach, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

<<

Hope all this makes sense, and answers your question!

Good luck!