When I last wrote about my experience porting out a land-line phone number to Ooma’s Internet-calling service, I was still a little antsy that Verizon would cancel our Fios Internet service.
I need not have. A few weeks later–without any further action on my part–Verizon’s online account page no longer listed ours as being disconnected, my next automatic payment had gone through as usual, and I could cash in some accumulated My Rewards+ points for a $10 Amazon gift card. And then I finally got my invitation to migrate my Verizon e-mail to AOL–almost two months after I’d written about that change for USA Today.
I opted to keep my verizon.net account, less because I plan to use it anytime soon and more because I had to experience this switchover firsthand after getting so many reader questions about it.
Verdict: fine. AOL’s site asked me to create a new password, choose from one of four preset (and not all that secure) security questions, and add a mobile number, presumably to confirm any strange logins in the future. AOL suggested I might have to wait a few hours for the messages to appear in my new inbox, but all 7,000-plus spam messages and the 50 or so legitimate e-mails accompanying them were waiting for me moments later.
Two weeks later, the single best part of having AOL manage my mail is having a spam filter that works. When I logged in today, I only had four messages waiting in my inbox, all legit, with 33 junk messages tucked away in the spam folder instead of littering my inbox the way they did on Verizon’s mail system.
The downside is a much tackier login experience, since AOL defaults to showing you its clickbait-stuffed “Today on AOL” page. To fix that and go directly to your inbox, click the Options menu at the top right corner of the page below your e-mail address, choose “Mail Settings,” and uncheck “Show me Today on AOL when signing in.” And for a recurring dose of 1990s nostalgia, check “Play ‘You’ve Got Mail’ alert at login if there are new messages.”
I still need to figure out why Verizon’s site thinks I should pay $127.99 for gigabit Fios, well above its advertised new-customer rates. But solving that (and finding a use case for that much speed, versus a measly 50 or 100 Mbps) will have to wait for yet another post.
Rob Pegoraro 
I’ve been mostly happy with 50 gbit speeds on Verizon, but I have noticed that t-mobile wifi calling can get a bit garbled if I’m downloading video at the same time. Don’t have phone or tv on Verizon, so my monthly payment is much less unreasonable.
I agree about the easy migration to AOL. Spam filter is much better. One thing I found: my old Vz filters migrated fine but adding a new filter is not as easy w/AOL b/c I have to set up a new folder to send it to….AOL will not allow me to send spam to the “spam” folder. I can create a new spam 2 folder but that adds another thing I have to check for real mail. AOnahL has told me if I download the desktop application I would have more options…nah, enough crap already.
BTW: congrats on your success…I knew it all along.
Thanks for the report. Great to hear from you again!
I had a hell of a time because Verizon let me change over only an account I never heard of. AOL folks eventually figured out the problem. Seems to me in retrospect, that when I took over my deceased father’s account, under which I had been long receiving mail, unbeknownst to me they issued me a new internal ID. Since I never use the web interface, I was unaware of it, and every time I log in it’s under that ID, tho I submit my name. So when, thinking they knew what they were doing (ha!) I changed over my mail, I found I wasn’t getting any mail on Jun 15, and tried to do something about it, all I got was msg “Congratulations, you’ve already migrated.” I should have realized there was a problem, because from May 27, when I switched, to Jun 14, I kept getting dire mails telling me to act immediately. First I tried the tech support chat. They took over my screen and all that, couldn’t figure it out and told me to call tech support. An extremely nasty lady in NYC told be it was all my fault, for migrating the wrong account in the drop down menu, and there was nothing which could be done about it. I told I was offered no other option. When she started screaming, I hung up on her. I told her I was up for renewal next month and nothing could entice me to do that. Shortly afterward, however, my download speed, which had been about 1/5th of what it was supposed to be for the past two years, despite complaints, shot up to what I consider normal since we got Fios ten years ago. But I digress, AOL support finally figured out that if I signed into Verizon with my email and old password I could get past the msg and migrate. It worked! However, I had to give up POP, because I knew none of the old passwords would work, and went to IMAP. I was minutes away from migrating to Outlook. Am wondering tho, if I renew my bundle in July, whether my download speed will drop like a stone. SERIOUSLY. Perhaps a class action suit suggests itself. Can you imagine a company that tries to sell you more stuff, while you’re waiting on the phone for tech support?
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