Why do so many people use AOL? Do they think that's the only Internet Service Provider in existence? Are they entranced by receiving CDs in the mail, thinking if they just join, they won't receive them anymore? Is that little yellow guy, who apparently is always running to find his face, which happens to be the Wal-Mart logo, just too cool to pass up?
While I've never had much of an affection for AOL (once I asked her out, and she told me she had to wash her hair), I've never run into too many really difficult problems with the service, either. But that has changed dramatically because apparently, AOL is having trouble sending email on time, and sending email at all, at least for one customer.
I receive bounce backs that tell me why AOL is taking so long to receive the email I send. At least they get through. However, I receive other bounce backs showing junk from spammers being blocked. That's great to know, but the problem is that it's not being blocked because AOL thinks it's spam. It's blocking EVERY email that appears to be coming from a particular domain. Yep, if you send email to AOL users, and enough of them decide to block the domain, you could be blocked altogether.
To figure out what is happening, I decided to sign up for AOL's feedback loop. On the surface, this appeared to be the answer. I would receive a report concerning the number of people who have marked the domain in question as a spammer. The problem is, I haven't received anything from AOL.
I emailed AOL about the problem and received a canned response about a week later. This leads me to believe the obvious: computers are running the joint, and they must think a feedback loop is used for one of their tape drive backups.
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