AOL

[Abarbarian]

Well I was going to write a glowing report on AOL. I have been with them since 2004, dial-up then slow broadband an then fairly decent broadband, that is for the wilds of Cumbria.
In the main I have had trouble free service. Apart from the three week fiasco that developed after my router had been fried by lightening. The silver lining to that was a very cheap deal and a monthly rolling contract.
Recently I have had a couple of broadband losses usually for a couple of hours or so. So when the last one occured I rang AOL on their freephone number. Whilst taliking to the AOL representative me connection resumed. This of course put me in a good mood so I listened to the nice lady as she outlined a new broadband deal that was available for me. This was some impressive offer and being in a such a good mood I took up the offer detailed below. bear in mind that BT the Uk's main telephonic ripp of supplier charges £14.50 just for the line rental alone.
AOL offfer
Unlimited broadband
24/7 free UK telephone calls
24/7 free calls to 37 international destinations
voice mail
caller id
free wi-fi router
no set up fee
line rental

This comes to £16.47 a month if paid monthly. However if I pay the line rental of £114 up front for the whole year this offer will now cost me £8.70. Yep you read that right £8.70 per month. Now as I will have paid my line rental up front that means that I wil have a monthly charge to my bank of a whooooping £2.10 yes you read that right £2.10 a month.
So i took up the offer and arranged to pay the line rental forward fees on 15th March. This I did. An guess what, within half an hour of paying the line rental my phone line and broadband went down.
An is still down today.
Now I should be hopping mad but I ain't.
AOL have free phone numbers for tech support which is good and I have called them a few times for free to see what is going on from my neighbours phone, which is working by the way.Also i have called them via my mobile which I was not happy about due to the cost. I did not fancy spending pounds on mbile fees. AOL however much to my supprise took my mobile number and rang me back, so no big mobile fees.
It seems that AOL are not to blame.It appears that there has been some major fault at Kendal exchange and BT are trying to fix the fault which has left over three thousand folk without phone or broadband. Shame on BT for taking so long to fix the fault.
An a big well done to AOL for a great deal and decent service support.
So I will get back to you all when I get reconected.
That is if the snow and floods do not cause some more outages.

Trouble is I am chewing me arm of without the net and am at a loss as to what to do.

Posted from my local library.

 

[Anon_F]

Muckshifter likes AOL.

 

[Abarbarian]

Well I'm back on line again.

 

[TriplexDread]

AAhhh AOL, Many moons ago left my net on downloading stuff on dailup 56k pmsl

 

[exmoor]

Are they not nicknamed AOHell?

 

[Taffycat]

Glad to hear your internet is up and running again AB. Hope it continues to function smoothly for you Sounds like a great deal you've got with them too, so good luck.

 

[floppybootstomp]

AOL, the ISP all those who think they're in the know like to sneer at.

Let me say this - Mr Flops thinks AOL are actually pretty good.

I was with them on dial up from around '97 to '03 and they were pretty much faultless. My Mum was with them (she's no longer using a computer) and my sister is still with them. My sister was paying £20 a month for AOL and when she phoned up to leave them for a different ISP they offered her the same deal for £15 a month so she stayed with them. That was some years ago now, I don't know what's she's paying now.

Abarb, what's your download speed? Any bandwidth limit? And if no limit any experience of them 'throttling' your download speed?

 

[Abarbarian]

I'm right at the limit, or I was in 2004, of the reach of broadband up here, on a dead end spur from the local village. So my speed is not great, 1.5 MB down and 0.50 MB up on a good day. My friend in town with AOL gets over 2 to 3 MB down.
Service slows a little at peak times.
Download limits have never been a problem. I tend to download 20 to 30 GBs in a chunk and then do not download for a while. Up load all the time in dribs and drabs as I keep distro iso's alive with torrents.
Some online vids and the iPlayer type stuff run ok sometimes and sometimes you have to let them pre load for a while.

All in all not too bad for where I live. I guess gaming might be hit or miss but I have never done the on-line thing yet.

I can surf sedately and be very happy for £8.70. Must rush off now as I have to make my daily call to the USA. That would be a 59 minute free call by the way.

 

[muckshifter]

OK, I'll bite ... I remember the late 80s.

AOL, America Online, was, in the beginning, a 'closed garden' where you were spoon fed whatever they wanted to feed you. You didn't actually get on The Web unless you knew how, and, were charged by the hour.

They later changed to a monthly fee, this is about the time where people started to have 'problems' and got long memories ... ever tried getting in on an MMO on day 1 ... same thing hit them.

AOL was bundled with Windows, well, it was there, maybe they did an Ask stealth style install.

They had some very innovative ideas, some shady practices, and the 'franchise' for the rest of us was, err, abysmal. But you got a free install CD with anything.

Ripping AOL out of peoples PCs was my pleasure ... you all have a nice day now.


It's only recently that AOL have tried to re-invent itself.

YMMV



ps, and they use the same BT gear as anyone else.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Aha, I see Mr Mucks, I see. Luckily I missed all that, I think my first ISP was Cable & Wireless which came bundled with the Netscape Browser which I think is now known better as Firefox - correct or not?

I do remember one bad thing about AOL in them thar days though - it wouldn't work with Mandrake and as this was dialup, Linux was pretty crude and I didn't know much, I did actually get Mandrake installed and running but could not get online with it with AOL.

 

[Abarbarian]

The AOL software was pretty dire with crashes and reboots needed often. So I was grateful when you folks told me I could connect through me router with no AOL software needed. So I have never used the software since 2006 I think.