Download problems with AOL (America Online)

Hey troops,

Has anyone had a problem with America Online similar to this.
She purchased 2 download items from us and when she went to press the download button, it brings up the page "Whoops, your session has expired"

She is on dial up and is using the AOL Explorer browser on a PC.
I asked if she could just use the standard IE or Firefox browser, but she said it didn't work on a dial-up connection.
I tried for almost an hour to figure out the problem.... but no dice.

A previous order was made by her for 7 downloads nearly 3 weeks ago and it worked fine (albeit very slow with dial-up of course). I suggest to try another dial-up phone number. I haven't heard if that worked or now. I ended up emailing her the downloads directly, but I'd like to find a solution to this for future orders by her and other customers.

Here's three of the messages the customer wrote me:

<<Thank you for responding. I just came back from work and logged in. I was able to log in the first time, and went to download the new songs. When I clicked on download, it said Whoops! Session has expired, please relog-in. I did. Again it brought me back to the log in page. I entered it again. Same thing, back to the main page login. And yes, I am entering my email and my password correctly without the caps on.

Help!>>

<<I'm not at work, I'm at home on my personal laptop, the same laptop that I bought and downloaded on. I disabled the firewall protection.>>

<<Okay, I got to log in, but when I clicked DOWNLOAD again, it went to this:
http://www.ibacktracks.com/index.php?main_page=time_out
Whoops! Session expired AGAIN!!!

It didn't do this the last time I downloaded the songs. What am I doing wrong? Is it my Internet connection. I'm on AOL dial-up. It worked last time ????>>

AOL dialup (esp using the AOL-supplied/branded browser) is the bane of website owners.
They use a revolving proxy, meaning that a different IP address is used for each click they make on your site.
This throws cookies, sessions, security, etc into fits in some cases.
She might have more success by clearing cookies and cache in her browser. But I doubt it.
You were right to suggest using a regular browser. Usually that's the best workaround. She may or may not be correct about it not working on her dialup. I seem to recall it working fine as long as the dialup connection was active.

I haven't used AOL in years, and don't have even the slightest interest in touching it again ... it was a horrid experience. I've no idea why people still give them any money ...