AOL Tech Support Woes

I am a customer of AOL. They have been my Internet service provider since I got my computer. I have a high-speed Internet subscription from them.

I just want to share all my experiences, every time I call their technical support when I have some issues with my connection.

Every once in a while, my connection would be disrupted for no reason at all. I will call their technical support and I have to condition myself to wait on queue for 30 minutes. I never had an agent answered my call immediately. Waiting is one of the reasons why I get irate sometimes with them. But of course I have no choice because I need their help. I'm not a computer whiz who can fix any problem because I'm an accountant and computers are not really my forte.

Once an agent answers my call, I would be very happy when I receive somebody who speaks real English. Most of the time, I would receive an agent with an Indian accent. I have nothing against Indians, it's just that I'm supposed to be calling US tech support so I should be talking to someone I can understand. I really get frustrated when I have to let him repeat himself everytime he gives me instructions. The supposed to be 10 minute troubleshooting will take for an hour because of the language issue.

Sometimes, I would receive an agent who doesn't have any clue on what he was doing. I would try to ask for a supervisor but I would immediately receive a scripted response from the agent telling me that his supervisor is not available. I will ask him what he can do for me and he will just say he would call me after 30 minutes for him to do some research. I will wait for him to call back but no one calls me. I have to make another callback and someone would finally say that they will be sending their onsite technician to replace my modem.

I am just wondering why AOL would let their support people do a very lousy job. Don't they have some trainings and quality checkers?

I hope someone from their company would take action and hire people who are competent enough to do the job. I don't think having to pay someone lesser that what they pay an agent in US would do any good in their business. If they can't afford to pay an agent in US, then I hope they would at least hire skilled people.

I'm not yet changing my subscription to other companies. I still believe AOL can do something better that what they have right now, besides, I have no choice, they're the only Broadband company present in my neighborhood.