Continuing expensive AOL problems

[phoenix_top_drawer]

Hello all,

We're beginning to assume that most AOL users have their spam filters set on stun.

We're experiencing problems communicating with about half of the AOL users who buy from us. We usually don't get bounce messages, we just get agitated purchasers thinking we're asleep at the switch. We receive their emails but they don't get ours. Now we're at the point where if we see it's an AOL user, we get the phone number from ebay member search. Dealing with this isgetting time consuming and expensive, not to mention aggravating.

Thoughts?
Ideas?
Suggestions for a strategy?

Thanks

Brad

[amberwoodottawa]

Brad
AOL advertises that they filter out the Spam and Viruses, thereby protecting their members.

That is total BS. An AOL member can spam and send viruses as can thousands of others to AOL users.

What AOL and some other high profile companies have done is to demand that you pay them a big fee to allow your emails to pass through to their members.

As an example, we operate our own server. We wont pay AOL a fee to allow our emails to get to their members so when sending emails to an AOL member, we use a recognized server, such as rogers.com.

It is not the individual AOL members rather AOL themselves who block those who do not pay them money. You can always set up a hotmail account for your AOL customers.

I know its a pain but thats progress,

Malcolm

[mahsauction]

Malcom I noticed recently that my mail server cannot send to their members and the error message is that I'm on a dynamic IP. Is your mail server on a static IP or dynamic?

[amberwoodottawa]

We are supposed to be on a dynamic IP through Rogers however for the last 6 months it has been a static IP address.

We run our server through Rogers as well that is why I can use a rogers.com email address when sending my AOL customers an message compared to sending them something from a shopline.ca email account.

My son, the techie in the father/son eBay business had learned about AOL blocking out non-recognized accounts.

For the big guys, like Rogers, Hotmail, MSN etc its a free ride however for private businesses with their own .com or.ca thay want $$$$$ to allow us the privelage of emailing their customers.

Malcolm

[deltone]

Phoenix, are you with sympatico by any chance? Reason I ask is that I'm having the same problems with AOL. I have several friends with AOL and they can't receive any email from me. They've spoken to AOL and have done all the necessary things to ensure they would not filter out certain emails (mine) and yet it's still happening. They were told to tell me to contact my ISP (sympatico) and have sympatico contact AOL postmaster to work it out as it's possible that the entire ISP has been blocked. Seems strange to think that they'd block all of sympatico users but apparently it's a possibility.

I phoned sympatico yesterday and spoke to some guy who had not a clue of what he spoke. He told me to email abuse@sympatico.ca which I did, but they replied in French (with English buried at the bottom) that I need to send all emails with headers, blah blah blah, so here it stands.......my emails are still being bounced by AOL. I wonder how long before I get a neg from an aol buyer. sigh

[amberwoodottawa]

I guess Rogers paid off the AOL ransom and Sympatico hasnt sent them their cheque yet.
Malcolm

[phoenix_top_drawer]

Hi Deltone,

That's a large 10-4 on the sympatico. We'll be switching to Rogers in three weeks because we're moving to an area where Aliant (Bell New Brunswick) has rather pathetic dial up and no high speed.
I find the news that AOL charges for access really disturbing.
As for how you get to talk to someone a little higher up the food chain at sympatico, I have found a short rant- something a bit subtle like a Jack Nicholson kinda thing- or asking the CSR for his full name for the story (my other day job) works.
How come e-bay hasn't taken a hard run at this? And does a yahoo address work as well as Hotmail?

Thanks

Brad

[acurael]

I'd read somewhere that aol loses a customer every 10 seconds or something like that.

So this problem will eventually take care of itself. 🙂

FWIW, I've never had problems emailing aolers.

[deltone]

Brad, I've actually had a to go use my hotmail and yahoo email addies to email some of my buyers with AOL so that I could actually get through to them.

It think it's ridiculous that Sympatico hasn't done something about this matter as from what I understand, they're the largest of the ISP's in Canada, aren't they? It's definately a big problem which has been going on for weeks, if not months. Ever since that recent worm virus thing was rampant.

[firedept10]

Been there with AOL. Some of my notices get through and some do not. The only problem with this is that I do not know which ones until a couple of days later when my customer emails me for an invoice. Crap shoot! Very frustrating because then I need to do it through eBay mail system and that sucks a bit. As said earlier, I also wish someone with the funds would take a run at AOL. acurael, as for an AOL customer leaving every 10 seconds you may be right as I do not know for sure, but the other side of the coin is how often do they sign one up. Big problem and it does not seem to be getting any better. My fingers are crossed on that one.

Don

[muminlaw]

I'm with Shaw and I've had a problem with AOL for months! I've even gone so far as to put a notice to that effect in my TOS. Ive had to resort to keeping a back-up dial-up service just to email my AOL customers -- a pain indeed!!

Glenda

[shooger]

I've had as much trouble with Hotmail users, than anything else. How is a hotmail user supposed to notice an invoice sitting amongst 38 porn advertisements and 16 penis enlargement banners? Not to mention the 22 "are you in debt?" spam-mails. I think people believe they're smart when they use hotmail for eBay. I think it's stupid. And as a seller, it's very frustrating.

I had a guy email me three times, saying WHERE THE HECK IS MY STUFF?!?!?! WHY DON'T YOU ANSWER ME!!?!?!? I finally had to leave him a positive feedback (one of three possible) which said:

Praise: You are using hotmail & cant see my replies. You have not paid yet.

[deltone]

Yes, hotmail accounts are NOT very good. I rarely use mine.....in fact it goes dormant because I use it so little.

[ospreylinks]

Back to AOL not accepting Sympatico.ca emails.... we had a similar problem a few months ago however it was with Cogeco. Something had happened that my ISP had been listed on some independent list that named sources of spam and junk mail that Cogeco subscribed to (the list not the spam) and as a result, anyone sending from my ISP to a Cogeco account was blocked and got an error message.

After having about 20 Cogeco destined emails returned, I got on the phone to my ISP to find out what the heck was going on.... it just started all of a sudden....I know talking with my ISP, they found it very frustrating....however within 24 hours they were able to have their name removed from the list and everything is now a-okay....(during the 24 hour period, they gave me access to another mail server that apparently hadn't been on the list.... it was a little slower, but it got the job done until things were back to normal).

Further to the mention of multitude get outa debt free and longer penis spams.....man I get a million of those a day without hotmail......anyone wanna buy a remote control helicopter for Christmas.... thats the newest one I get about 10 times a day.... Now if I didn't want to buy it with your first 100 emails, why do you think another 1000 will make me change my mind....

Jeff

[amberwoodottawa]

AOL, MSN and YAHOO recently did some update, just last week. As a result I can no longer email customers having email accounts with any of these companies.

I was blocked with my own business ISP and reverted to a rogers.ca email account however as of 2 days ago none of those are getting to customers.

I can just see AOL ads "Tired of getting 300 spam emails a day? Why not sign up with AOL and for just $9.95 per month, we promise you wont get 300, you wont get 200 you wont get 100. In fact we guaranty that if you sign up with us right now, you wont get any emails at all"

Up until 2 days ago, I could at least get through with an alternative email address through a different ISP but no longer.

I am getting truly frustrated as are my customers who are emailing me 10 times a day and not getting my 10 email responses.

A heck of a way to run a busines isnt it?

Malcolm

[astro1]

Try getting an alternate email thru www.mootropolis.com.
It is webbased and so far not blocked by anyone. I's free.

[amberwoodottawa]

Thanks,
Yippeee another email account.

Apparently its not just the email account but also the subject matter that gets filtered.

As an example when we are forwarding something on the rare ocassion, we remove all reference to 'forward' in the text of the email and heading.

Malcolm