AOL - any good or not?

[hunny]

Hi everyone,
Just thinking of changing from freeserve to AOL they seem to be offering a good deal on internet & unlimited talk (free phone connection) Has anyone has good or bad experiences with them? Or can anyone recommend any other provider?
Your comments much appreciated.
Thanks,
Anne :D

[Jayne]

Hi,

Don't do it, i'm on aol and have loads of trouble, it keeps turning itself on and off and i'm thinking of swapping when my contract runs out. Plus there's tones of ads on and pop up, drive you up the wall! Help etc isn't too good either.

Jayne :D

[Russ]

for gods sake don't do it! AOL is a nightmare... It will take over your PC and give you the right hump within minutes and will then take a life time to get rid of...

Get skype if you want cheap phone calls (free skype to skype) and check out which ISP is offering the best deal on ADSL. Pipex have been great for me.

Good luck

Russ

[Magsite]

The worst thing about AOL I found is when the internet connections breaks - all the info you have on the screen is lost. (if you use the aol viewer)

The best thing about AOL used to be free help line. Not sure if they now charge though

Use internet exployer or one of the others as your viewer to avoid this.

[hunny]

Hi,
Thanks for all your replies - I think enough said - I won't be going in that direction, but really glad I asked. :D
Cheers,
Anne

[Rob Holmes]

AOHell :)

Rob

[directmarketingadvice]

AOHell

Yep.

I'm seriously thinking about ditching it. The downside is that I'd have to contact everyone to let them know my new email address.

Decisions, decisions....

Steve

PS BTW the helpline is no longer free. However, there's rarely any point in calling it as the person who you'd finally end up talking to doesn't have much in the way of technical knowledge.

[Ravenfire]

I agree with the others! Know so many problems that people have had with AOL. Jayne how much longer do you have your contract for?

[Alpha]

Heres a sheepish reply

i have AOL as a service provider and have very few problems.

I have kept AOL purely through the fact that I wouldnt want to go changing all those sites that I added my e mail address to as well as the children having to notify their friends as well.

That said in the main AOL is only the provider, I usually use firefox as the browser and outlook to connect to my e mail server.

I have only had two problems ...one last week when AOL managed to prevent anyone sending e mails to an e mail server (Apparently there were a lot of complaints that morning and I had to revert to using my AOL e mail to contact clients).

I 've never had problems with pop ups or those annoying IM's because I simply block them, although I must admit it isnt obvious in aol where you go to change the settings!! :D

[Eagle]

*
If you have an email account with AOL, you can often miss important emails due to their over-zealous IP blocking. They get a complaint about spam from one sender and they then block the entire IP address; blocking potentially thousands of people's communications.

I wouldn't touch AOL with a barge-pole!

[Jayne]

I agree with the others! Know so many problems that people have had with AOL. Jayne how much longer do you have your contract for?


End of Feb I think.. After reading all the others though, I think I may keep it, don't fancy having to move all my stuff, just got it all organised. When i've complained, i've been told it will all be fixed soon, they are updating the site they say!

If I'd known what I know know, I'd have chosen a different one :D

Jayne

[Ozzy]

Ah!!! AOL are a nightmare, the amount of friends and family PCs I have had to clean and repair after having AOL installed on them.

As an ex ISP owner I know now how to stop your servers from being blocked by AOL, but its a closely guarded secret in the ISP world (get in touch Matrixx if you don't know and want to know ;))

Personally I would recommend any ISP over them, even if the other ISP costs a bit more.

[hunny]

Thanks everyone for your help - think i'll be sticking to freeserve which doesn't seem all that bad now. :)
anne

[Hayles]

I like the simplicity of AOL and until recently I didn't know any better..!

One big problem I've found is that it took 4 days for changes on my site to show on AOL.

My contract is up soon and I'm not sure what to do!

Hayles

[cjd]

AOHell

Their servers are all in the US so you get latency problems if you use realtime services (like VoIP), they block emails, they try to keep you inside their 'walled garden' and if you use a service that does clever security checking by matching IP address against credit card address it will decline you (because you IP address is US)

<shudder>

[Astaroth]

Whilst I would absolutally never have AOL on any of my computers they are good for their simplicity and the fact their technical support team are a free phone number and open long hours (24?)

I would only ever recommend them to people who are technophobic and basically want a plug and play solution with a human at the end of the phone when they need help.

If you have any knowledge of computers there are better options out there.

[Alpha]

the fact their technical support team are a free phone number and open long hours (24?)

Make that were a free phone number.............................they are no longer!!

[Enigma121]

Funny enough, people who start on AOL seem to have massive problems with moving to anything else. If users start on any other provider, changing providers is a doddle.

I'd recommend staying clear of AOL having shared some of the woes mentioned in the previous posts.

If you were with freeserve, I'd recommend one of the following instead:

free-online (or Plusnet)
Tiscali
supanet

There are even better providers, but chances are you'll pay a bit more than AOL. Those listed above will work out cheaper...