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 !!
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 !!























