Yep, I'm having a problem since they decided to change everything. I'm on Panther so I have the older Safari and it won't work with that. It only works with Safari 2.0, but yet they claim OS X 10.3.7 or later. I have Firefox, but I like using Safari better. That's all besides the fact though because I set up my AOL mail in Apple Mail anyway.
Yea, I can't say that I've had any problems checking my AOL e-mail in Mail. I always have Mail running and there have been no problems connecting to the server and retrieving my AOL mail.
Do you have send only trouble, or also receiving trouble? If you only have sending trouble, you are probably being blocked from their SMTP server, and you need to use the one your ISP provides.