The irony is during the beginning of the Internet, a lot of us were AOL
users. Then voila! It dawned on us that if you spent more time surfing the
web or sending e-mail, you didn't need AOL and any of its extra "features."
You just needed a browser and a reliable service provider.
** I began noticing problems getting WORSE with AOL users about a month ago.
At first, like everyone else, I thought AOL's spam filters had been
manually (or set by default) for users at different levels of "safety." I
thought it was a matter of making sure you sent mail to individual AOL users
without a lot of "cc's."
But no. My friends, business associates and clients who continue to use AOL
-- both person-to-person e-mail to business-to-business e-mail, have been
adversely impacted during the last four weeks. Worse than ever before. In
most cases, my mail friends or business associates was delayed up to two
days, or was never delayed at all. Mail that did get through -- I received
responses near instantly to stuff I wrote days before. The problem is not
mail FROM AOL users -- but mail TO AOL users.
I've since given up with sending mail to AOL users. If it's urgent, I'll
call. If not, I'll send an e-mail and take a 50% gamble it'll get through.
** The problem is CLEARLY with AOL. This has gone beyond being an
"annoyance." It is disrupting personal and business communications
worldwide.
** Unless AOL's own paying subscribers -- complain en masse that they're not
getting mail from friends or dealers with whom they are transacting business
-- NOTHING will be done. There is NO incentive for AOL to do anything
unless they feel they might potentially lose subscribers. It's worse than
the problems with eBay being unresponsive to transaction complaints. We're
talking basic person-to-person e-mail here.
There was a time when "hotmail.com" was one of the biggest problems on the
Internet. You couldn't trust it because a lot of spam was sent by Hotmail
(and Yahoo) users. Now Hotmail has one of the best and most flexible spam
filters around and I'm now a premium user who pays only $29 a YEAR to have
2GB worth of storage. I have a two Yahoo accounts but in my view, Hotmail's
interface and flexibility, its ability to display e-mail headers with IP
locator codes more readily -- to identify bogus scams and spam masquerading
as legitimate mail -- its mandatory built-in virus checker for all incoming
mail -- its ability to let you mark legitimate users as "safe" -- and those
who aren't as "junk" with a click of a mouse -- makes Hotmail is a snap.
Its only limitation is you can only upload images one file at a time.
Next to hosting your own web space, Hotmail is now fine. I don't even use
Outlook Express (built into most Windows operating systems) to sort e-mail,
which has an address book that had once been responsible for spreading
viruses around the world.
** AOL is headed for extinction and the tragedy is that many users are now
bound to it. Their accounts are linked to their business/banking and other
important activities. Many AOL users feel it's too much hassle to change to
a new ISP, re-registering with their creditors their new contact
information, etc. AOL users, through no fault of their own, are getting
slammed if they continue to rely upon it as their primary e-mail account.
Alert notices from other ISPs and their friends and creditors aren't getting
through, urgent personal e-mail who can't contact an AOL user by phone goes
into a black hole and all manner of hell will result.
Sorry for all of the words, but please -- all users of AOL -- please send a
two-line note to AOL's "Help" or "Customer Service" departments that will
take less than 60 seconds to copy and paste:
"URGENT: Please reply within 48 hours. Hundreds of thousands of AOL users,
including myself -- are not getting critical e-mail from friends and
creditors -- who aren't AOL users. Many AOL users will be forced to cancel
their subscriptions. Please advise if you have received similar reports --
and what you are doing to correct this problem. Thank you."
-d.
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