One should never be too quick to attribute AOL's failures to help customers to ulterior motives when sheer and abundant incompetence will suffice as an explanation. Still, one reader couldn't help wonder if AOL's pay-to-send e-mail program has something to do with the company's seeming inability to rectify a simple problem.
The reader wrote:
"I think I'm stuck in AoHell's purgatory. I have several mailing lists that are small, and most of the subscribers I know personally or have a business relationship with. One is a list of owners of a particular sailboat, one goes to county recorders in the 88 counties of Ohio, and one is an announce-only list from a county political party. I've signed up for AOL's whitelist and set up the feedback loop to get any errant email back."
"In March, an old FormMail script was exploited on my server and a batch of spam was sent out. I immediately noticed the AOL feedback messages and removed the script and corrected the problem. In the meantime AOL started blocking all email from my server. I called their Postmaster helpline, reported the problem, the error code (421 mail relayed from a server with a compromised script) and the fix. They said they would investigate and if the spam had stopped they would remove the block. This should take 2-3 business days. Four business days plus a weekend had elapsed and mail was still blocked. I called again. They said now that it would take 3-5 business days. They finally removed the block the next day."
"Mail flowed sporadically to AOL. It seemed that when some of their users finally read e-mail weeks and months later, they would report an e-mail sent out in March as spam and mail would shut down. I called again and they said they said the feedback e-mails should not trigger this problem and would expedite the request to check it out. Someone would contact me via email. No one did. Weeks later the on-again, off-again blocking is still happening. I call again. They expedite and I finally get a message with a checking procedure and a case number. Send a message to the checker and send another to a special address that isn't blocked. Naturally both go through even while other e-mail is blocked."
"The problem still exists. I call again asking about the case number. The case number is closed, no notes about the case. They issue another case number. I get the same checking procedure and send the e-mails. Now I'm analyzing my sendmail logs. I see two messages sent an hour apart and one goes through, one is blocked. Five minutes later one gets through. I copy these log entries, annotate, and send to the checker. No response back. I send a new email with more log entries asking why this is happening with my message flagged return receipt. I get the receipt back that someone read it but no action, no response. Once or twice, email was blocked for hours, then it finally went through."
"Is this some part of the extortion plan to charge for guaranteed deliver? It seems once you get tagged with a compromised script the 'scarlet letter' gets pinned on your IP even though they remove the block. They claim they don't know why the on again off again blocking happens but only do the minimum of investigating with a case number and a check sending. Or, are they just incompetent in checking out the problem? It sure looks to me to be the beginning of the paid delivery extortion."
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