AOL 9.0 - I'm confused!

[slowjamz]

As some of you may have read in a recent post by me, I am upgrading to AOL 9.0 Broadband Gold 512Kbps service, at £24.99 per month. After the online sign-up, (which I completed last Tuesday) I was presented with a "Congratulations, you have successfully signed up......." screen, at the bottom of which it said that in the next few days I would receive a letter confirming my Screen Name, password and email address.

Today I received a letter thanking me for signing up with AOL Anytime and giving me one month free, after which I'll be charged £15.99 per month.... So I promptly phoned the AOL Tech Help line. After speaking to the dude on the other end of the line I came away with the explanation that they send that out as a standard letter to confirm my account being setup, and it will be upgraded in the next few days to broadband status, when I will also receive my broadband modem.

I was satisfied at the time, but the more I think about it the more confusing it is. I have never before been an AOL customer in my life. For the past 2 years I've dialed up using an ISP called Madasafish - they suck, and before that I was using the old BT Internet service. So knowing that, and the fact that I've signed up for Broadband, bypassing the dial-up access, WHY OH WHY have they sent me a letter thanking me for signing up for that service?

Any opinions? I'd like to hear especially from AOL users if possible, and if this is all just part of the process, should I start using the AOL dial-up access now, or wait til I receive broadband status?

I hope this all makes sense, thanks for taking the time to read it.

Craig.

[pow1983]

I wont say what I think of AOL.

However, that seems to be a big mistake they have made, and unless you correct the problem, I dont think you will be seeing a modem, at least not an ADSL one. I would give them a call, and make sure that they understand your problem. Also make sure both parties are clear on the service(s) that you ordered. Maybe there was an option on the sign up to have this as well as broadband. Some ISP's give you an emergency 0845 number should something fail with broadband, however, you dont pay extra for that service, unless it specifically says.

In the past when I have tried to contact AOL on behalf of a customer, they dont really know what you are talking about and many a time i have been passed on to other employees to attempt to deal with the problem at hand. Dont bother to E-mail them, I sent 10 emails regarding one problem, each reply that came back to me was a template email, i.e. no one actually replied as a personal message, in fact, they didnt really read what I said, as I repeatedly requested somebody looked into the matter seriously and I would not tolorate any more ready made email messages as they had nothing to do with the problem.

[vidster]

Having being a customer of A-O- HELL for 9 months or so, i would reccomend you cancell your subscription now!. Beleive me when i say i waited a total of 7 weeks to get connected to their broadband service. This was because they decided to disconnect my broadband line and then reconnect it. A-O-Hell is not very good when it comes to other software and hardware. I installed a wireless network at home and it took me 2 weeks to get it running properly thanks to compatibility problems. A-O-Hell helpline and live help decided it was not their problem due to it not being one of their reccomended routers.

You can also get a 2mb broadband service from Plusnet for less than A-O-Hell gold. If i had known this beforehand, i would have definatley gone with them.

Like i said in an earlier post, if you have any problems, you can always PM me .

[slowjamz]

Thanks for the replies.

I think I've heard just about enough "bad press" for AOL. I've held on because I've spoken to several AOL users who recommened them to me, and who spoke highly of their internet service. However, I think I'll cancel my deal and look for someone else. I'm looking for three major factors;

A) No download cap/limit. I want to be free to download as much as I please
B) Free activation
C) Free modem

Any recommendations?

[pow1983]

I personally avoid free modems.

Check www.adslguide.org theres 100's there, hopefully you can make your mind up.

I am with Nildram, and have to say they offer a great service all round. They Helped us in detail with DoS attacks and many other issues, they reply to each case as anindividual case, not template emails.