AOL Dial-Up and Broadband ISP Review

The America Online (AOL) Dial-Up ISP (Internet Service Provider) is still extremely popular, despite the fact that many people are moving to broadband service. I have a feeling this may have something to do with the multiple AOL CDs people receive to sign up for a free month of service, since the company certainly does not have anything spectacular to offer that you cannot get elsewhere. AOL can, however, offer a migraine that can last for many months if you ever decide to leave them for something better.

First, I will cover their broadband service, or lack thereof. If you currently use AOL Dial-Up as your ISP and would like to move to AOL Broadband, you are dependent on current broadband service being available from a DSL or Cable carrier in your area. In other words, AOL itself does not offer broadband service. When you sign up for AOL broadband, you are basically getting a third party broadband ISP with free AOL services such as email and chat.

You can just as easily search for a broadband ISP in your area by other means (usually cable is the best, and may be available through your cable provider), and go through the cable or DSL ISP directly rather than having to deal with AOL's almost non-existent customer service. If you do decide to go with AOL Broadband, your quality of service will depend on the third-party broadband provider.

As for the free AOL services you get with AOL Broadband, they are nothing more than free email and community services such as video and chat, which you can find anywhere on the Internet. Google, Yahoo, YouTube, and Myspace are some examples of companies that offer free communities and other services that specialize in specific areas, and may give you better quality services that what you would find with AOL. Free AOL specializes more in advertising other AOL services to get you to upgrade than in offering a quality product. If you can get past (or don't mind) the constant advertising on AOL, then their services are not too bad, but they really do not offer anything special that you cannot get elsewhere.

AOL Dial-Up service, however, is decent as long as you are an Internet novice. They basically create a little AOL Internet world for you, where everything you need is right at your fingertips. In fact, many AOL users still give their usernames alone, dropping the "@aol.com," when asked for their email address, because they do not seem to know that email addresses exist at other domains or URLs. In fact, you don't need to know any details of how the Internet works at all to be an AOL member.

AOL dial-up may be fine for you as long as: 1.) You do not need to or want to know anything about the Internet world outside what you can find on AOL, and 2.) You wish to use AOL Dial-Up for your entire life and pass it on to your children. I will talk more about this second point in the next paragraph. If you do not fit into both of these categories, then AOL may not be worth the monthly price of $9.95 for basic unlimited dial-up with 24/7 support, or $25.90 to include privacy and security measures. AOL's 24/7 support may sound great until you find out that you may have to wait for 30 minutes or more to get help on their support system, and when you do get through, the person on the other end may not speak English well enough to understand what you are trying to say, and may get frustrated and rude when you continue to ask them to repeat what they are saying if you do not understand them.

Another thing that is not very pleasant when you sign up with AOL as your ISP is that if you ever decide to quit the service, you may have to jump through hoops (as mentioned above in point 2). Actually, those hoops may be more like rings of fire over a deep lake. It is almost impossible to quit, and if you finally think you can make it, you will most likely get burned. My poor father suffered one of the worst examples of this when he decided to quit AOL as an ISP in order to sign up for broadband cable. He spent hours of his life on hold to quit the service, only to be charged again the next month, even though he had erased every trace of the AOL Dial-Up ISP from his computer. After months of charge-backs, he finally had to order the credit card company to refuse all future charges from AOL.

This is not an isolated incident. If you search for reviews of AOL services on the Internet, you will most likely read about many more horror stories. So, be wary of free AOL offers. AOL CDs may be more useful as decorative coasters, or in a piece of modern artwork that you can enjoy for years to come.