Why is leaving AOL so difficult?

Hi folks,

Currently an AOL Broadband + Talk customer but still pay line rental to BT.

I've seen comments about how hard it is to get away from AOL and I was wondering what problems come up at the time of switching?

AOL did offer a deal which included line rental but I didn't go for it on the basis it was only going to save about £25 or so per year.

I'm just interested to know what actually goes wrong or whether customers are left without a service during the switching period and whether it's worse with AOL than it is for any other ISP.

As you still have line rental with BT it should be no different than any other Partial LLU ISP to migrate to any other Partial LLU ISP or BT. Just request a MAC (Migration Authorisation Code) from AOL which they should supply within 1 week and give it to the ISP of your choice.

If you had taken the deal which included line rental, which is Full LLU, then it would be much more difficult to switch as the MAC process does not apply.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

As you still have line rental with BT it should be no different than any other Partial LLU ISP to migrate to any other Partial LLU ISP or BT. Just request a MAC (Migration Authorisation Code) from AOL which they should supply within 1 week and give it to the ISP of your choice.

If you had taken the deal which included line rental, which is Full LLU, then it would be much more difficult to switch as the MAC process does not apply.

Thanks - so if a customer wants to leave, what happens if they do have a full LLU line where the MAC process doesn't apply?

Are these issues exclusive to AOL LLU or to any LLU product?

To & from Partial LLU (or BT) can ofter be migrated with just a few mins downtime using the MAC process and you would keep your BT Wholesale WLR phone line.

Full LLU could involve days/weeks of BB downtime and often you would need to get your phone line back to BTW WLR 1st (not necessarily from BT Retail; could be from PO e.g.).

This applies to all ISPs; what matters is the type of LLU, in both directions.

Have a read of: What is LLU?

Haha just for entertainment, here's the video you probably saw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpDSBAh6RY

Will.

very good (but maybe setup or he tried to cancel it before and failed)

like the tiscali one

I had more hassle with tiscali back in 06 it took 50 minutes to speak to someone and then when they said they were transferring you it would disconnect the call. I wasted 2-3 hours before giving up. I ended up purposely downloading multiple 2GB+ game demos from sites to avoid p2p traffic shaping all day and night until they rang me to inform me i was breaking there Acceptable usage policy. I told them i would keep doing it till they cancelled my account they gave me my mac code within 2 minutes.