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AOL-as useless as a chocolate teapot !!

As I was sick of tripping over wires on my laptop, I decided 6 motnhs ago to go wireless. Easy, so I thought anyway. Took me over a month after recieving the AOL router to get the stupid thing to work without the LAN connection lead, and their technical department couldn't help and had no desire to help either, so it was someone from a wonderful forum like this that eventually helped me get it going.

Anyway, 3 weeks ago, my internet connection just went, right in the middle of browsing, and I couldn't get it working again. I'm not an expert with pc's by any measure, but I'm not exactly ignorant either which AOL failed to recognise when I called their technical support line. The laptop couldn't get a valid IP address (although where the old one suddenly went to, I don't know !!) and my laptop couldn't detect the router, even with the LAN cable attached. After an hour and a half on the phone to their tech(less) support, as I like to call them, the Indian man with very bad English finally deviated from his script and passed me to someone else after arguing for an hour that I did not need to take my laptop to be repaired as I was confident their router was the problem, not my laptop. Their 'level 2' technition, with his slightly different script, did a winsock release which did fix the problem....

I then wandered out 5 days ago and bought a new laptop and connected this to my router and carried on happily playing daft games with my sister on msn messenger...until....the interenet connection suddenly went again !! Did the usual fiddle around, checked the wiring, rebooted etc, none of which worked and surprise surprise, my laptop couldn't detect the router, even with the LAN cable. Oh joy. So called their techless unsupport and nearly wet myself laughing when they told me to take my laptop to the repair shop. Erm, no.
Then, the woman just started repeating her script at me again, getting louder and louder everytime I asked her a question. Obviously she thought I had a hearing problem, not a connection problem. She didn't understand a word I was telling her about the fact this has happened twice in 2 weeks with 2 different laptops, so I suspect the problem is with their router, but she refused to accept this or send me out another one. Until I've spoken to someone more knowledgable than me who can confirm whether it's likely to be a problem with the router or not, I'm not going to shout at them....just yet. Well, so I thought....

I decided at 12.30am this morning to run a speed test as I had my suspicions for some time, and even though they are happily taking £24.99 per month off me for a service of up to 8mb, I am actually recieving 0.75mb - slight difference.

So have obviously retested over different times and the highest speed I am getting is 1.75mb, and it's not down to my phone line as I have checked with BT and it's capable of the 8mb speed. So called up AOL to tell them of my latest discovery and tell them I wanted the intermittent connection problem and download speed sorted, or releasing from my contract and...here's the good bit.....they refused to do anything about both issues !!! They don't care I'm only getting between 0.75mb - 1.75mb, wont do anything about it and are refusing to acknowledge there might be a problem with the router so are refusing to replace it. They said they will reduce my monthly payment to £9.99, but only on the condition I take out their AOL Talk and commit to a contract for that, otherwise they are not going to help me. So, politely told them where they could poke their AOL Talk and have been left with a stupid download speed whilst paying for a good one, when I can get online that is.

I've made an official complaint today (not to them I might add - It would be easier to get a non scripted response out of the frog in my garden pond) so will wait and see what happens, but in the meantime, I'd only recommend AOL to someone I really didn't like !! :D
 
i had a similar problem with the connection side in that in the middle of surfing or downloading files my connection would stop and wireless status showed limited or no connection. even when i connecyed with lan cable.

i solved the problem by switching off my comodo firewall.

i then set up my network as a safe and secure location with comodo and since then all is well

have you tried connecting using a usb modem to check if it is the router or borrow another router from a friend..
best of luck
 
Their 'level 2' technition, with his slightly different script, did a winsock release which did fix the problem....

If fiddling with the PC fixed the problem, it is unlikely that it was caused by a faulty router. Maybe it was spyware.

It is not a bad idea to have a cheapo spare wired router to test your connection, and a live linux distro that you can boot from and connect to the net if you suspect a software/Windows/virus issue.

I agree though AOL support is pretty dire.


As far as the speed issue goes, run the http://speedtester.bt.com performance tester to find out your IP Profile (if you are on IPstream). You'll probably have to do this late at night or early in the morning as it it usually busy. Also check your router stats.
 
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Thanks nodrog & Mel,

Had another incident last night, although I thought I'd rather let my 3 year old have a go at fixing it rather than call AOL support again.

I have gone through the firewall set up options and selected 'allow' on anythng I can find to do with the router, so hopefully it's not that, although when I was having problems, I did turn the firewall off and the laptop still couldn't detect the router.

Using the new laptop last night, the internet connection did drop again, but the difference this time was that I could at least detect the router and it was working with the LAN cable, so when I plugged it it and checked the router settings, I found that they had all been reset and were wrong, so after putting them back to what they should be, it's all up and running again....for now. I have no idea why the settings went, but I guess that was what was causing the problem last night.

Thanks for the BT site - I'll keep that and try it later when it's not busy. And I might buy a cheap router and keep it as a spare, for next time it happens (note the confidence that it will happen again :D )
 
so when I plugged it it and checked the router settings, I found that they had all been reset and were wrong, so after putting them back to what they should be, it's all up and running again

Just a thought, you are using WPA wireless encryption and have changed the default password on the router to prevent a neighbour accessing it by mistake.

Which router do you have by the way, Netgear, speedtouch?
 
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I've got a netgear one, and have gone through and changed all the passwords again because I don't like my neighbours very much so wouldn't want them getting free internet access :laugh:

Ran the speed test and I was still getting the 0.75mb, so called AOL and they passed me around 6 times before someone agreed to test the line, and apparantly there is a major fault on my line so they need to contact BT. Hooray - only 40 mins being passed around before they did their job, which is quite a result for their tech dept.

Don't think that whatever the major fault on the line is would cause my router to keep clearing itself, but I guess there is no point asking AOL about it any further because I don't think they've got a script to cover that fault. I'm still loving their initial solution to the speed problem, which was not to investigate the reason I wasn't getting the speeds I am paying for, but to down grade to the 2mb package on the condition I took AOL Talk - bless them !! :D
 
I was actually wondering if a neighbour might have been able to log into your router thinking it is their own and stuffed their own ISP's settings in it, I've certainaly heard of it happening!

I've also got the Netgear one, mine has never lost it's settings, although I have managed to crash it occasionally, I have aalso occassionaly found it necessary to switch the thing off for a few moments when it has played up as it still wouldn't connect after rebooting.

If it keeps playing up, maybe Netgear might provide better support, or even a replacement?

Hooray - only 40 mins being passed around before they did their job, which is quite a result for their tech dept.

LOl, that is quite impressive for AOL support. (well to be fair some of their tech support staff are pretty good, you just need to be very lucky or phone back a lot)

According to some posts I've read, if you report a line fault some AOL support agents have been known to use the BT adslchecker and tell customers that their line isn't good enough for ADSLmax and needs to be downgraded, what they don't seem to realise is the checker bases its rating on the current condition of the line!
 
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I was actually wondering if a neighbour might have been able to log into your router thinking it is their own and stuffed their own ISP's settings in it, I've certainaly heard of it happening!

I have had a similar issue in the past - I have a cheapy crappy Philips wireless router which lost all of the security settings I had on it (MAC filtering/encryption/hidden SSID - the lot).

It kept the connectivity with the ISP without a problem, so I only discovered the issue when I came to adding a new wireless PC.
 
:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

Well I never, and probably never will again either.....

Just had AOL call me to see if my complaint had been sorted !! And as I advised him that nothing had been done and I am still getting reduced download speeds and my router yet again needed resetting 2 nights ago (although the password was still the one I set it to, but the rest of the info had gone, which was weird), but they are sending me out a new router AND he has put a note on my account saying that if the line speed doesn't increase after this (he said something about if the router was playing up, it might have put a limit on what line speed I can recieve through it???) then I am free to leave AOL mid contract....hoorah !!

Just being able to leave AOL is reason enough to crack open the bubbly I think, especially now I've just recieved my phone bill and seen how much I've spent just trying to fix this problem :laugh:
 
I've just been reading all the hassle you've had with AOL-shocking! I was with them for many years, but can say without much hassle at all-I just got bored so changed.

You say you've ran up an incredible phone bill which I can well believe, can I suggest that you 'extract' all the calls to AOL's helpline (access your BT account online, copy and paste the various times you've rang AOL)-or ask BT to do it for you and using snail mail, post the proof to AOL's main H/Q in England? I know this sounds like a lot of bother, but believe me, you should get a FULL refund for these calls to AOL.

I did this to one ISP with a strong complaint and got that bit of my phone bill refunded :nod:

When I was with AOL they did have their helpline free and English based, but then they started the Talk side and 'outsourced' their helpline to India charging users for the 'privlige' of using it, but giving it free if you took on their Talk side.
It's common knowledge now that the amount of complaints regarding their Indian based call centre has rocketed both through language barrier and shocking tech help.

What ever you do, I wish you luck :smilet:
 
Thanks for your advice.

I did mention to them the size of my phone bill and the fact I was no further forward, so they agreed to give me a month free, being £24.99, which covered the costs, all but a few pence.

I've had no problems with the new router at all, fingers crossed and all that, but I noticed my speeds suddenly dropped and I was getting between 0.11mb and 1.75mb, so have now started another lengthy fault process with them about that. It's only been 3 weeks so far and still not resolved, although part of it was BT as their engineer put me on a new line and opened a job for work to be done at the exchange, and BT have just closed the fault and not done the work. So just told AOL I'm not prepared to pay them for this month either, and they've re-opened the job. On the plus side...I have found a freephone number for them that goes through to a UK call centre....:D
 
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On the plus side...I have found a freephone number for them that goes through to a UK call centre....:D

I'm sure there are other AOL customers who would appreciate the number - any chance of posting it.

(I'll give it to the members of my family daft enough to sign up with AOL - they keep asking me for support when they are having an issue.)
 
I posted the site that gives the alternative numbers on a seperate post earlier, but the number for AOL broadband is: 0800 2796771.

I think I might be getting slightly cranky in my not so old age, but it makes it feel soooo much better when they are repeating themselves and going through pointless information and passing you from dept to dept, and you know they're not making any money off you when you call :laugh:
 
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