AOL Broadband - say we still are under contract

mumma2one

We have been with AOL for 3 years, signed up initially with a standard 12 month contract. At the beginning of the year we decided we wanted to go wireless and so rang AOL as we had seen better deals elsewhere and wanted to leave, however they said they would provide us with a wireless router and lower the amount we were paying each month from £17.99 to £14.99 to keep our custom - we agreed.
Now we are wanting to switch providers, rang them up and they inform us we have still nearly a year left on our contract with them!! We asked what contract as we had never signed up to a new one and they said when they sent the wireless router they had signed us up to a new 18 month contract and for the first 6 months we paid £6.99 a month...we NEVER agreed to a NEW contract - we believed we were just receiving a wireless box (as i say to keep our custom) and we NEVER paid £6.99 a month only ever the initial £17.99 which dropped to £14.99 (to keep our custom).
Now my husband asked for proof that we agreed to a new contract and we have been told they cannot provide us with that so it is our word against theirs...what can we do? At the moment it looks like we just have to sit back and wait another year with crappy service and connection

Dumyat

we had a call from AOL this week offering us a "better deal", apparently same deal with faster connection and lower price. only downside was apparently a lock in of 18 months. was only when the documentation arrived that we found out we had gone from unlimited to 10gb, needless to say we have cancelled. some pretty shoddy sales technique going on, beware folks...

will be phoning to find out where we stand contract wise because this is the last straw, we are out of there now.

mumma2one

Thanks for the reply, we were not even aware that it would tie us into an 18 month contract - we honestly would NEVER agree to it. I think the person we were dealing with must have left that part out when we switched to wireless! We really need to change providers as the service we get is rubbish, cuts out in the evenings or goes slower than dial-up ... we phone them up and they say there is nothing wrong with the line and leave it as that, no further help or investigations so we decided to change only to be told we are still on a contract we never agreed to and if we switch to another provider we still have to pay AOL £8 a month until the "contract" ends. :mad:

DatabaseError

this is why many people now avoid contracts longer than 1 month

caveat_emptor

mumma2one wrote: »

Thanks for the reply, we were not even aware that it would tie us into an 18 month contract - we honestly would NEVER agree to it. I think the person we were dealing with must have left that part out when we switched to wireless! We really need to change providers as the service we get is rubbish, cuts out in the evenings or goes slower than dial-up ... we phone them up and they say there is nothing wrong with the line and leave it as that, no further help or investigations so we decided to change only to be told we are still on a contract we never agreed to and if we switch to another provider we still have to pay AOL £8 a month until the "contract" ends. :mad:

This is dodgy dealing and goes on all the time. Look back through your emails from AOL to make sure the contract wasn't mentioned. Then complain to the ISPA at www.ispa.org.uk and you'll almost certainly get a response from AOL customer service and you can take it up with them. I've found by painful experience that complaining to AOL is a waste of time.

markwi

i have had similar problems with aol,
i supposedly signed a 18 month contract 9 months ago,i thought it was a continuation of the broadband gold unlimited downloads package i was on.
for about 8 months it was fine and at £9.99 a month i was happy enough,
however the last few weeks the speeds have slowed to dial up speed,so i got on to the tech support and as usual they tried to blame my pc setup,virus etc.
i began to get an inkling they had set up some kind of usage cap and after countless emails and phonecalls they have just admitted i have a 10 gb a month limit,broadband gold has been scraped and aol dont do unlimited anymore.
they say i agreed to this when i took out the contract(which i wouldnt have taken in the first place),looks like iam stuck with this for another 9 months.