Do you have this problem? Many AOL Customers not getting emails.

[blitzen]

Hi,

AOL is driving me nuts and giving my answering service job security. AOL is the only ISP with this problem.

Maybe one or two emails get through from my company. Maybe none. (We have never ever spammed and should not be on any spam list.) Thus, I have my receptionists make calls to AOL customers to ensure that they got our emails. Back to old technology that works (phones).

I'd like to know if others notice this AOL problem, too?
Have you?

BTW - Forum Webmaster, I tried searching for AOL and your search engine doesn't accept three-letter words so I can't find anything related to AOL on this forum.

[tomcatuk]

Have you tried getting on their whitelist?

AOL Postmaster

If you haven't, it will help.

Unfortunately it's well documented that scomp@aol.com is totally worthless as they don't let you know the e-mail addresses that don't want your e-mail. This is an example of something Hotmail does better - if you get on their JMR (Junk Mail Reporting Program) they'll let you know which addresses don't want your e-mails so you keep your list clean and Hotmail happy.

Incidently, you really ought to check if your mailserver is on any SPAM lists and get off if possible. As long as you know either the IP or domain name of your mailserver, you can check against the major SPAM lists at DNS Stuff.

[deepsand]

Are you using graphics in your e-mails?

Because of the greatly increased usage of graphics by spammers, in an attempt to evade filters, ISPs are now adopting practices such as blocking e-mails from unknown senders which contain graphics, comparing the amount of grphical content to that which is tect, etc..

AOL is one such ISP.

See
InternetRetailer.com - Daily News for Thursday,*May*31, 2007
and
InternetRetailer.com - Daily News for Thursday,*May*31, 2007

[blitzen]

No Graphics - I've stuck to plain text emails (not HTML) for many reasons.
No time for whitelist. It's too involved.

Anyway, I passed their test at http://postmaster.info.aol.com/tools/telnet.html.

The DNS Capability accommodates their wishes.
Postmaster.Info : Troubleshooting E-mail Delivery

This problem is really problematic. Recall about a year or so ago that AOL blocked emails from the entire Earthlink.net domain? Their new alg to filter out spam apparently did this. The big boys at Earthlink had to get involved to get AOL stop this.

I suspect that they have a new alg that filters out emails after the first one and if the AOL user doesn't reply to it. My mother-in-law has AOL and doesn't have problems receiving my emails.

My Solution.
I put a message window at checkout that pops up for an AOL address. The window instructs them to allow our domain to bypass their filter. Just putting that message where customers entered their email address didn't work. I'm baffled at how many don't read things - just click click click and away they go! Anyway, I hope the popup works.

[Matteo]

removed


next time I should read the post closer

[fhlee]

I don't have an answer & I'm as frustrated as you too. Something I found out:

We hosts our website outside (shared server). So, our mail server is mail.mydomain.com (example). Then I tried to Whitelist our (SMTP) server which is the same server. But AOL will not Whitelist us because they says our Reverse DNS (RDNS) doesn't resolve back to mail.mydomain.com.

This is because we are on a shared host & the RDNS goes back to the top level domain... ie: 202.190.202.28 resolves back to gate1.dnshostmaster.net instead of mail.mydomain.com ... nobody at AOL reply me when I told them this...

Maybe someone out here knows how to fix this? Will REALLY REALLY appreciate it...

[blitzen]

I tried this test
http://postmaster.info.aol.com/tools/ipverify.html

(1) Send from mydomain.com through Outlook via my ISP which is Earthlink.net.
I get the confirmation email.

(2) Send my the mail.mydomain.com webmail interface.
I get the confirmation email.

(3) Send via sendmail in a program and I get NO confirmation email.
Tried this from two different programs written by two independent programmers using sendmail.
I get NO confirmation email.

Any ideas why #3 doesn't work? I'd think #1 wouldn't test okay if any.

Then, look at http://postmaster.aol.com/selfhelp/index.html
The 3rd one applies, "My mail is not reaching AOL members, and I am not receiving a bounce back."
Their answer is that it's the AOL user with the problem, not us.

[dfenster]

Yes, I had this problem as well and the cause turned out to be that there was no valid reverse DNS for our mail server's IP address. Once our IT guys got the reverse DNS set up PROPERLY, the problem went away immediately.

Cheers,

Dawn

[jpatriar]

Hi,

I've had the same problem with a few AOL customers I've had to get in touch with.
I've tried sending just plain text emails from several email accounts including dusting off the old AOL email account. They all go unanswered.

[qh4dotcom]

You might want to send the e-mails to your customers through an autoresponder company. Many of them have a high e-mail deliverability rate thanks to the relationships they have established with e-mail providers such as AOL.

[hostBrain]

Reverse DNS is the most likely cause.
Do the reverse DNS test

fhlee:
Are you sending mail from your internal network, separate from your domain?
If so, you may need a dedicated ip address set up.

[jestep]

Definitely check the reverse DNS. You can also call them and get your IP address added to their whitelist. We had valid reverse DNS, and everything else was fine, but our emails weren't getting to them until they added us to their whitelist.

[blitzen]

Reverse DNS checks out okay.

Some emails get through. E.g., one customer received one email then none after that, or so she said. My husband got emails on his AOL account.

Maybe I'll try the whitelist.

[hostBrain]

Did you have your service provider check out the mail logs?
It may offer a clue.

[blitzen]

After several unanswered emails, I phoned AOL and they said the IP was blocked (shared) - They should be releasing it any day - I hope.

I'm amazed at how this electronic age that to do something still takes a long time.

Thanks for everybody's input.