Hi Homer and welcome.
I don't think you're being told porkies exactly. Your connection speed is 8096 kbps, so you are getting the connection speed which you were told you could get (plus a bit more). Your problem is that your throughput isn't close to what the connection should be capable of. This could be due to congestion in the exchange or at the ISP, or it could be traffic management by the ISP. I presume that AOL do traffic manage, so that could be quite a likely possibility.
The other thing which comes to mind is the MTU setting of your PC. If you're using Windows, then you may need to adjust this for best results.