Emails not downloading to smartphone

[moonjiver]

I am having an odd problem, which maybe someone can help me with. I have three email accounts on my HTC phone, Yahoo and Gmail emails get "sent on" to my phone almost as soon as they arrive. (There were once problems with Yahoo but that was because Yahoo suffered several hacking attacks and their systems became for a time quite disfunctional).

But my AOL account won't forward emails to my smartphone (except for AOL's own messages about their services, which adds insult to injury!). On a computer I have been into Options and various settings within the AOL account, also the account settings on my phone: Incoming settings/Outgoing server settings/Sync, send and receive and so on. All seems ok and I have also tried deleting and reinstalling the AOL account onto the phone.

No good, there are ten or so emails in my AOL inbox, including notifications from the 1066 Forum about ongoing posts, but they are not being sent on to my phone. It all worked fine before for a long time.

I went into the Three shop and they "had absolutely no idea" - if they don't understand the phones they are selling, why are they working there?! The young guy I usually see, who is a wizard on problems, was not around that day.

Any ideas please, before I resume my frustrating quest for someone who understands the technology?

[Kevin]

Try deleting the AOL account off your phone, power the phone off for a few seconds. Then setup the AOL account again, but this time when adding the account DO NOT add it as an AOL account instead choose “OTHER” as the type of email account.

[moonjiver]

Thanks Kevin, I tried again removing and adding the account - the option to name the account "Other" didn't come up. I have been through all the settings pretty thoroughly both within the AOL account and "Settings", "Accounts and Sync" on the phone. All seems ok but the contents of the AOL inbox are still not being sent on. Except for the last notification - about your reply!

Odd and very annoying because I use this email account for everything I do on the internet. I'm going back to the Three shop - I find that making a nuisance of myself tends to encourage them to make some effort and, having sold you the phone in the first place, give you a bit of service.

[moonjiver]

Well, I did what maybe I should have done before - researched on Google. This appears to be a well-known issue, AOL emails not being downloaded properly to Android phones. After deleting the AOL account again, I did eventually find the list of options for installing a new email account (it doesn't come up if you go via "Settings" on the phone). I selected "Other" and went from there, but it didn't resolve the problem.

However, guided by posts on Google, I downloaded the AOL application from the Play store. It results in your getting all the news etc. which is on the AOL main website but atleast clicking the Mail icon leads you straight into all your email folders.

Phew! Now, if a humble non-tech guy like me can work out some solution, why couldn't the mobile-phone shop guys come up with some informed ideas?