AOL and Road Runner/Comcast

[Nancy]

It has recently come to my attention that AOL has installed a new Spam filter, and that this new filter is not accepting messages from some Road Runner domains.

The messages sent to AOL accounts are being bounced back by the mailer-daemon with a fatal error in the address. The AOL recipient won't have any idea that a message has been sent to them, and the Road Runner sender will think they are being snubbed, or deliberately blocked, unless they can read a routing trail.

Strangely enough the AOL person can send email to the RR person, but the RR person cannot send a response.

It has the potential to cause much aggravation for businesses and personal email customers too.

Just thought you all should know.

Probably would be a good idea to tell others about the situation.

Here's a link w. some info.:

http://news.com.com/2100-1024-994992.html

 

[Ross]

Comcast and Road Runner People Be Advised.

Out of 5 or 6 messages I mailed out to AOL customers yesterday, I got one bounce message and wouldn't have had a clue that the others were never received had I not checked with the receiver another way.

America Online, in an effort to combat the growing problems of spam sent
to their networks, has restricted the ability of certain dynamic IP
address ranges, including those of Road Runner, to send e-mail directly
to their mail servers. Many other ISP's, including Road Runner, also
have similar policies. This will not affect your ability to send mail to
AOL if you are using Road Runner mail servers, only if you are running a
mail server on your residential account. (Not true in my case!)

Road Runner's outgoing mail (SMTP) server address for your area is:

smtp-server.neo.rr.com

If you are using the correct SMTP server address, and are still unable
to send, please forward a copy of the rejected message to:

[email protected]



Hey Billy, I think this answers the questions about my mails never reaching you!!!!

 

[Billy]

Road runner or Jaws

Road runner or Jaws

Hey Ross...it was either Road-runner ran off with your e-mails or that shark ate them up while they were travelling under the atlantic.

PM's to the rescue once again.

Cheers,

 

[Karlynn]

Ah, the puzzle is almost done. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent on the phone with AOL and Comcast. I've been having problems with AOL people not receiving the messages I send them for well over a year. Both AOL and Comcast (my provider) say it's the other company's problem. I have never gotten any mail bounced back to me as undeliverable, like you Ross, I just find out some other way the the intended recipient didn't receive the mail. I've never received an error message.

I also found that if I reply to a message and AOL person sends me, they will get it. So I have a folder in Outlook Express, of old AOL messages from my AOL friends, so that if I want to contact them I just bring up an old email they sent me and hit "reply".

This has been a real pain in my music director's job. Lot's of my singers have AOL.

I also don't like the fact that anytime I receive a forwarded message from someone who received it from an AOL user, the original message comes as an empty attachment and I never see the actual message.

My personal opinion, this is AOL with a big case of sour grapes that they are not the only provider any more and they try to make it as hard as possible for non-AOL people so that we'll switch. Yup, it's the conspiracy theory.

Karlynn

 

[Ross]

Karlynn get ahold of Comcast and tell them that AOL is blocking residential email from Comcasts own smtp server. They need to get in touch with AOL.

The reply thing did not work for me. I still never got there.

Road Runner is supposedly working on the problem.

 

[Rich]

I use earthlink for my ISP.
My cousin in Ohio uses AOL.
I have been almost totally unable to send him anything for close to a year.
He tells me others are also having problems sending mail to him.
Some have gotten hurt feelings apparently because their mail comes back as undeliverable and/or as a fatal error.
He is really upset with AOL and is looking elsewhere.
He recently sent me a message to see if I was still alive.

 

[Ross]

I've had it. I've begged my ISP to contact AOL and AOL is still blocking my outgoing mail to AOL members. I cannot talk to anyone with a secure email source. AOL's main complaint is spam. Can someone tell me why hotmail or yahoo mail is allowed when they are a major source of spam, though it appears everyone has their spam filters set high since I'm still not getting through, but a legitimate smtp server is blocked? Screw AOL!

 

[Ross]

December 3 and nothings changed. Still cannot send to any AOL addresses. Enough is enough already. All you folks on AOL, change your ISP so I can talk to you again.


Dear Ross,

Hi! I am Louie (I'm an automated computer response because no one wants to give you a straight answer here at AOL) from the Techmail Department. I would like to thank you for spending time in writing to us. It is my privilege to be of assistance to you and all our members.

I understand from your recent e-mail that you suspect AOL has blocked e-mail coming from your domain.

Please accept my apology for the extremely long delay in responding to your e-mail.

I just received your e-mail forwarded to my personal attention and I want to assure you that I replied as soon as I read your message.

Please allow me to explain that AOL has developed Solicited Bulk Mailing Guidelines to both aid 'netizens' with their online marketing campaigns and to protect our member base from e-mail abuse. (Why would I care about Bulk Mail Policy when I've already explained that it is personal, residential email going to legitimate AOL members?)

To learn about AOL's Unsolicited Bulk Mail Policy, please visit this site:

http://www.aol.com/info/bulkemail.adp

If you believe your organization's e-mail provider can adhere to AOL guidelines provided at this site: http://postmaster.info.aol.com/policy/sender.html, please ask your e-mail provider to call our Postmaster Hotline at 703-265-4670 or 1-888-212-5537 and the Postmaster group will evaluate your mailing patterns and resolve any outstanding issues with your server or domain.

AOL has developed a site for Internet users who are experiencing problems sending e-mail to AOL or for people who have questions about AOL's e-mail and junk e-mail policies. Please visit this site:

http://postmaster.info.aol.com/index.html

If you would like to test your e-mail server against our database, enter the IP address on the site below:

http://postmaster.info.aol.com/tools/dse.html

Again, thanks for writing to America Online. I hope that I have sufficiently provided you with useful information about your inquiry. (Umm No, you never answered the original question to start with!)

Louie M.
Customer Care Consultant
The TechMail Department
America Online Inc.

 

[hensylee]

uhhhhh.......what?

 

[Karlynn]

If AOL considers one email bulk mail,.....

Ross, if you reply to an email someone from AOL sends you, does the person get the reply? I've found that, in my case, they do. It's a pain in the rear, but as I mentioned before, I save an email from each AOL person I know and then when I need to write to them, I pull up their old email and reply to it. The only problem is when I need to send to a group. I then have to send each AOL person a separate email using my "reply" method.

Months back, when I reported this to Comcast (my ISP), they told me I needed to email an official complaint to their Who's Being An Idiot department. I was supposed to send them the email that came back undeliverd. Except that the email has never come back undeliverd. It's floating around out there in cyberspace. This was when I gave up and just lived with it.


Karlynn

 

[dwfreck]

henseylee,

The short translation of the reply Ross received is:

"Hi! We're too busy sending you bulk unsolicited postal mail with AOL version X.X CD's to worry about the fact what you can't talk to our customers."

Personally, I have always despised AOL. I cried when the acquired Compuserve. I have also always despised Time Warner Cable. How ironic that AOL and Time Warner merged, and now customers on Time Warner's Road Runner service can't e-mail people on AOL.

I'm a computer programmer, and a computer technology buff, and I recommend to everyone I meet that they use DSL instead of cable modems. But then some people hate their phone company as much as I hate AOL Time Warner.

My recommendation to anyone and everyone affected by this is to keep complaining to your own ISP's tech support department. They're the only ones who have the tools and corporate leverage to get AO(smel)L to change. Your ISP may be unresponsive at first, but remember the old adage "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." In this case, it is really true.

 

[Nancy]

I just got offline with live AOL tech support. They asked a lot of questions, and said if I can email RR people and it gets through, and I haven't somehow inadvertently blocked them with a spam listing or other controls, that AOL is not the culprit. They tell me that they will never block an email unless the member does it themselves.

They also said it might be a problem with the sender's mail server.

So that's the official word from AOL. But--now I can receive emails that I couldn't before.

The Internet works in mysterious ways.

 

[dwfreck]

Nancy,

From long experience in the computer industry, both asking for and providing technical support, I can safely say that many, many problems mysteriously fix themselves with no admission of a problem from anyone. Sometimes people find a problem and fix it, but don't want to publicly admit to a problem. Sometimes people are looking for something else, find an unrelated problem and fix it without reporting it. Sometimes people call in other folks to look at a problem, and it suddenly disappears. Sometimes the problem just mysteriously goes away. I've personally done all four of these.

However, as a former tech support person, I can say that we can't even try to fix a problem we don't know about. My philosophy is to always alert a provider to a problem, even if I think they know about it.

 

[Nancy]

Well, worked for me. What more can I say. All of our email is just tiny little pieces of electricity. All it takes is one electron going the wrong way on a one way street, and there you have it, a FATAL ERROR.

People in my family used to say if a motor or other contraption wasn't working, then give it a good kick. You know?? A lot of times it really works that way.

Wish I could do it to the computer sometimes.

But this problem was probably solved by some tech somewhere. Hope it stays that way.

 

[Ross]

It appears that after many tech support emails, they've unblocked Road Runners verified smtp server. Gee, that only took what, 2 weeks?

I have a folder full of emails from RR and AOL. It's funny because they each blame each other. I don't care who's fault it is, correct the problem for crying out loud and stop replying to me with auto reply virtual techs!

I finally got mail out to Billy and Nancy, so hopefully this issue is now resolved. ?????