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What a ridiculous couple of months. I returned from a business trip at the end of September only to find that I could no longer access the internet.
I use NTL (sorry ... Virginmedia) for my broadband access however they informed me that because my internet service provider is AOL I must call them.
Over the course of a couple of weeks I called the AOL help-desk on numerous occasions (each call taking ages due to waiting in a queue) and received more than a dozen reasons why my service no longer worked, none of which of course placed the blame at their end. At one stage I was informed that my PC must be at fault and I should call the manufacturers. I actually called in a local technician to run a diagnostic test and he found nothing wrong with my equipment at all. Based on this information, I called AOL again and was finally told that the modem software must be corrupted and they would send me a disc in the post. It never arrived and I was then informed that it was not their practice to send such software despite the fact that it had been promised.
At this stage, realising that I was going round in circles, I tried another tack and wrote to AOL Complaints department. They responded very quickly and were a refreshing change to the inept performance of their help desks, and stated that all I needed was a new modem which arrived the next day!
However, the problem did not end there. In order to register the modem, Virginmedia had to come into play ... and they proved to be the final barrier. For whatever reason, the registration did not work.
Realising that I faced a hopeless task, and not feeling like starting the whole process again, I cancelled my AOL subscription and got Virginmedia to set me up with their 4Mb broadband service. I can still access my AOL mail, and the bonus is that the new service is lightning fast. Furthermore, AOL have been kind enough to pay for my first years subscription due to the length of time they took to resolve the problem.
So finally I'm back ... I shan't bother giving updates on the games that I missed posting - plenty of others have done that ... just refer to the links on the right.
Also means that I can finally get back on Charlton Life on a more regular basis!
I use NTL (sorry ... Virginmedia) for my broadband access however they informed me that because my internet service provider is AOL I must call them.
Over the course of a couple of weeks I called the AOL help-desk on numerous occasions (each call taking ages due to waiting in a queue) and received more than a dozen reasons why my service no longer worked, none of which of course placed the blame at their end. At one stage I was informed that my PC must be at fault and I should call the manufacturers. I actually called in a local technician to run a diagnostic test and he found nothing wrong with my equipment at all. Based on this information, I called AOL again and was finally told that the modem software must be corrupted and they would send me a disc in the post. It never arrived and I was then informed that it was not their practice to send such software despite the fact that it had been promised.
At this stage, realising that I was going round in circles, I tried another tack and wrote to AOL Complaints department. They responded very quickly and were a refreshing change to the inept performance of their help desks, and stated that all I needed was a new modem which arrived the next day!
However, the problem did not end there. In order to register the modem, Virginmedia had to come into play ... and they proved to be the final barrier. For whatever reason, the registration did not work.
Realising that I faced a hopeless task, and not feeling like starting the whole process again, I cancelled my AOL subscription and got Virginmedia to set me up with their 4Mb broadband service. I can still access my AOL mail, and the bonus is that the new service is lightning fast. Furthermore, AOL have been kind enough to pay for my first years subscription due to the length of time they took to resolve the problem.
So finally I'm back ... I shan't bother giving updates on the games that I missed posting - plenty of others have done that ... just refer to the links on the right.
Also means that I can finally get back on Charlton Life on a more regular basis!
3 comments:
Welcome back!
Wondered where you'd got to. Welcome back.
With you on AOL ..rubbish. I went through a similar scenario with them when they refused to accept that they needed to report a ADSL fault to BT.(Presumably because BT would charge them for the work) After 2 weeks of monitor trashing levels of frustration I cancelled and moved to the network supplier so no more finger pointing.
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