posted on March 24, 2001 04:35:50 PM
Been spending the afternoon answering angry AOL'ers asking where to send the money. Will be leaving negative feedback if I don't here from you in 24 hours. Do they bother to read my about me page, warning them about the problem? Of course not. Just letting all you people who use AOL, that they are still blocking out all sorts of emails, in spite of their denials. Please consider using another email service for your auction account. Until AOL gets their act together, you will be seeing quite a bit of negatives from angry bidders and sellers who are victims in this mess. Hey ebay! How about posting a message on your announcement board about the lousy service by your business partner? Out of the 42 NPB notices that I sent out the other day, over 30 were from AOL accounts. Most likely many of them never got my notice. Looks like ebay will be giving quite a few FVF refunds due to the lack of professionalism by their business associate.
posted on March 24, 2001 04:52:34 PM
I know just what your saying.
Say I have 10 EOA's to send to AOL bidders, about 7 of those write to me a day or more later, asking what the total, and where to send the money. I forward the original EOA and most of the time they get it the second time? Some just don't ever get them.
I hate to add more to my TOS, and I am not sure how many read my 'ME' page, so I would like to know too, if anything could be done about it.
And its just not the EOA's, its any questions asked during an auction, I'll answer, then get back an angry email, asking me why I don't answer their questions.
posted on March 24, 2001 05:08:29 PM
Call AOL's customer b.s. service at 1-800-827-6364 and tell the rep you were considering signing on with AOL but you heard they were having problems with their email. Ask if he's heard anything about that.
It will take him about 2 or 3 seconds to respond while he glances down his list for the appropriate response.
If you mention "Earthlink". He'll say that Earthlink was having some problems but AOL is helping them sort it out.
posted on March 24, 2001 08:21:21 PM
the above is true they have standard answers , the first being "your the first to complain" even if your #million.
posted on March 25, 2001 05:56:36 AM
I must vent too! WHY oh WHY do people still like them? I have spent so much time resending emails, hoping they make it through the spam filter, which is only occasionally on, mostly during peak hours. Sounds like they are controlling traffic, not spam! I've emailed all my AOL buyers about the problem. 2 of them are outraged, the rest of them just say Thanks for resending the mail, I didn't get it the first time. If I found out my service wasn't giving me my mail, I'd be switching immediately.
What can we do? I've heard that also, that AOL cs reps will tell you it's the first time they've heard that complaint, when obviously this is a big problem! Should I put something in my Ebay AD so AOL buyers know?
Is this happening to AuctionManager users? I use a different service now, is AOL just blocking them, or are AM WBNs occasionally being blocked too?
AOL users! Please switch services and tell them why you are leaving!
posted on March 25, 2001 07:47:44 AM
Have you ever had to quit AOL? LOL, they put you thru this almost cross examination, asking you what they can do to make you stay... it was almost laughable. You cannot cancel AOL online, they make you call in to cancel, then they put a Sales rep on trying to convince you to stay. Its like a telemarketer that won't quit. You have to be firm, and say Cancel My Account Now, and hang up! [email protected]
posted on March 25, 2001 09:17:43 AM
Just to let you know that When I was unable to get email to winners of my auction who had AOL Email addresses from my ISP email and also could not get Ebay send this auction to a friend emails to them I used yahoo mail and hot mail account and they received with no problem.
so if you have a yahoo mail account or hotmail send out your EOA to AOL buyer from there they will get them with no problem.
also just a note AOL users are not getting bill point invoices or paypal request for payment notices either.
posted on March 25, 2001 11:34:09 AM
sg52:
I don't understand. Are you saying you are an AOL users and you like that they attempt to filter out spam? If that's so, I guess I can understand that point of view. no one likes spam, or junk mail, or telemarketers. But the spam filter is not working. Earthlink emails, EOA emails, and now Paypal emails are not getting through? I am genuinely interested to hear back from you if you are an aol user that likes the feature and doesn't mind missing important mail. The thing is, most AOL'ers don't even know they are missing the mail, or at least then they would know to contact the buyer. In the meantime, I have spent too much time resending emails, and reanswering questions I've already answered. I just think that AOL should discontinue their filter until they figure out how to tell difference between solicitations and legitimate mail.
posted on March 25, 2001 11:39:01 AM
Didn't you know that AOL OWNS the internet? I recently saw a thread on another forum where a poster actually equated AOL with GOD. If that were really the case I think we're all in big trouble!!
posted on March 25, 2001 11:41:21 AM
I wish I could shed some light on this problem, but I can't. My "buying account" is with AOL, and I've made over 125 purchase in the past year with that account...no problems whatsoever. I get all emails that I'm sent, people receive mine, payments are timely made (even when through PayPal), etc.
I probably wouldn't choose AOL as my main ISP, except that I have a free account with them and it's handy for that reason. And I've yet to have any of the problems outlined in other messages...and nobody has complained to me about not getting MY mail from AOL.
posted on March 25, 2001 12:23:54 PMBut the spam filter is not working.
No evidence of that has been presented here.
When under attack, you either surrender or put up a fight. Those who surrender should be derided for the cowards they are, and those who put up a fight should not be subjected to complaints that their methods are imperfect.
I guess I still don't understand your point of view. Honestly, I am an open minded person and genuinely interested. I just don't understand what you are trying to say. If the spam filter also eliminates mail that is not spam, then it isn't working, right? What am I missing here? maybe that you don't mind missing the occasional important piece of mail if it means you have to delete less spam than at other ISPs? And the part about cowards and surrendering, you lost me there. Please explain in plain language so my simple mind will get it.
Not trying at all to start some kind of war against AOL users. I just assumed anyone would be upset to be missing important mail. Please shed some light if there is another point of view that I'm not getting.
posted on March 25, 2001 02:32:04 PM
If I was a bidder and did not hear from a seller in three days, I'd sure be emailing the seller. While AOL is certainly a
problem, it doesn't end with the ISP.
Email is one of the main sources of trouble communicating with bidders. Almost every ISP has screwed up. It's up to bidders and sellers to have multiple accounts to maintain communication.
posted on March 25, 2001 04:17:58 PM
The problem doesn't lie with they isp but with aol. AOL gets this bug up their a.. every six months or so, and starts dumping emails. This last round appears to be the worst that I've seen in my 3 years of selling online. One of the reasons I started with goto to send out my notices, was because AOL blocked out my pacbell dsl account. I could always route my emails to AOL accounts thru my website, but then hotmail and webtv started blocking those as they were showing that they were coming thru a pacbell account. I haven't heard if AOL was blocking emails from AW's EOA's, but they sure were blocking goto's. If they were blocking ebay's as well, that just goes to show that they were a little over zealous this time around. I can live with this incovenience, but I just hate dealing with bidders threatening to ruin my feedback because they haven't gotten their email. What do they think? I don't want their money? I went back and emailed over 120 aol/cs accounts this morning just in case they didn't receive my first email. Goto has said that their trials have worked, so they feel that the problem has been solved. So far I've heard from about a dozen of those people who said they were wondering why I never sent them a message. It just goes to show the shoddy service that AOL provides.
posted on March 25, 2001 04:47:27 PMWhat am I missing here?
The fact that the blocked ISPs were emitting spam. The fact that blocked sellers chose to do business with a spam emitting ISP.
Let's take Earthlink, because they were part of the story.
Earthlink claims to go after spammers, and, apparently, they do. But they use a business model which allows spammers to spam first and get "caught" later (with Earthlink keeping the money).
AOL didn't block ISP's indiscriminately. They blocked ISP's which were emitting spam, some Earthlink sites among them. When they blocked the spam, they blocked "legitimate" Earthlink customers along with the spammers.
The answer is to not use Earthlink as one's ISP until Earthlink stops emitting spam...and to applaud AOL's courage in this matter.
MY ISP doesn't emit spam (basically by not allowing anyone to send a whole lot of email), but they don't fight back either. I receive about 200 spams per day. I'm thinking of switching to AOL. If it results that they dramatically reduce the spam load, I'll go.
As it is, I'm becoming more anonymous every day, generally not to hide, but to hide from spam. More and more I use throw away email accounts which can be refreshed as needed. That's not how life should be.
posted on March 25, 2001 04:56:21 PM
ok....so if my mailman throws away my mail (bills and paycheck) along with the sears (junk mail) , i should applaud him?.......WRONG! thats what aol is doing and it should not be their choice.
posted on March 25, 2001 05:04:43 PM
AH, ok, I understand your point of view now, thank you for explaining it. So some of the emails AOL are blocking are because those certain ISPs are known for having spammers and not fighting them.
But my personal emails are not blocked at AOL, it is just my EOA emails that my auction management service sends out automatically when the auction closes. They are blocked only occasionally when the filter is turned on, I assume, during peak hours. They are blocked because the reply part of the email says it's from me, although it is actually routed through my auction manager service. And now I understand this is happening with other companies, not related to ISPs and spam at all. I can see where they may have thought this would be a clever way to prevent spam. But it's like the teacher punishing the whole class because one kid acted up.
I can say that after this fiasco, and all the trouble it's caused, I will NEVER use AOL and will encourage anyone I know to avoid them. And I'll happily delete junk mail, which takes less than 1 second, if it means I am guaranteed that I will get the mail that my legitimate associates send me.
I'd like to know now how others are handling this, is this going to go away soon? Do I need to put something in my ads? Or am I just doomed to manually sending emails to AOLers? OR since it's their ISP not delivering mail, do I just ignore the problem?
posted on March 25, 2001 05:33:40 PM
AOL STINKs. Several years ago they took millions of dollars from customers for a year of advanced service. It took the Attorney Generals of several states to correct that issue alone. I received a refund for only half of the money they had stolen. Their customer service (children) are rude and/or unresponsive to business issues. Their service is still poor but newcomers like it for the Chat. I agree that was a the reason I signed up. I tried to drop the service a year ago and guess what? It couldn't be done. The took me for almost 8 months of service until I had to cancel my card.
Now my first neg came from a customer who claimed I "refused to sell to him" but in reality I never received his emails and he never received mine. Thank you Ebay - the neg still stands and ruins all my extra efforts to have a perfect feedback. I have been selling since last May with 200 + positive and glowing feedbacks.
It looks like the internet disruptions have gotten so bad in the past two weeks I doubt I could get any more auctions up even if I tried. But if I do I am going to post something about AOL emails in my auctions and I think we all should do that as a policy.
AOL blocks access to many of the search engines that I used for research and most AOL users don't have a clue what's going on.
It was designed with children in mind and for that purpose it works. For those of us trying to conduct business or real research they are "Big Trouble". Or maybe that should read "BIG BROTHER" now that they are hooked up with Time Warner.
posted on March 25, 2001 05:44:53 PMBut my personal emails are not blocked at AOL, it is just my EOA emails that my auction management service sends out automatically when the auction closes.
Ah, ok, now I think I understand your problem a little better. Your auction management service ends up being caught in the AOL spam detector, perhaps unrelated in any way to any actual spammer or spam emitting ISP.
I do hope that AOL publishes "rules" which legitimate senders of large quantities of email can comply with...but I still applaud them for fighting back.
posted on March 25, 2001 06:04:26 PM
ok please pay attention. they block earthlink! their main competition!!! not anyone else. as far as fighting spam goes, i can't ever remember getting spam from adresses with @earthlink.com. it almost never is. and the aol members who i have contacted are getting just as much and more spam than ever, they just are not getting earthlink mail. this is nothing more than aol playing dirty pool at our cost. so go ahead and applaud them. i agree with greengate....aol is a virus
posted on March 26, 2001 04:37:32 AM
sg52 writes: "I'm thinking of switching to AOL"
That sounds like a great idea. They have email filters, newsgroup filters, they even block websites (you won't even know they are there). Make sure you get one of the newer discs. 5.0 or 6.0
posted on March 26, 2001 04:48:57 AM
Cnn.com - Technology
AOL class-action suits pile up
by James Niccolai
(IDG) -- The latest version of America Online's Internet software hasn't been receiving a warm welcome in the U.S. AOL 5.0, already faced with several class-action lawsuits, this week finds itself slapped with two more. The lawsuits allege that AOL 5.0 makes changes to customers' PCs that make it hard, if not impossible, for them to connect to alternative Internet service providers.
The most recent lawsuits were filed Thursday in New Jersey and yesterday in Oregon and seek class-action status on behalf of all users in those U.S. states who installed AOL version 5.0. They follow similar lawsuits filed earlier this year in Washington, Arizona, Virginia, Colorado, and Ohio. The Virginia lawsuit is seeking $8 billion in damages.
The claims made in all of the lawsuits are similar, and relate to the most recent version of AOL's Internet software -- AOL version 5.0 -- released in October of 1999.
AOL failed to inform customers that installing the AOL 5.0 upgrade would make "dramatic changes" to their operating systems and would interfere with their ability to connect to competing ISP networks, according to a statement issued today by Hagens Berman, a law firm handling four of the lawsuits, including the two most recent filings.
"AOL 5.0 promised users 500 free hours of faster, better Internet access," attorney Steve Berman said in Thursday's statement. "But in reality, many novice users found that once they installed AOL 5.0, removing the software was nearly impossible."
posted on March 26, 2001 05:52:34 AM
I was on aol for about 2 years. Mostly for one chat room for us old folks.
What I liked: that chat room.
What I didn't like:
-Trouble logging on during peak hours. I used to come home from work, log on, my computer was set to dial in 30 times, and just about the time I'd shed my work clothes, grabbed a slice of pizza and put on a robe, I'd hear the connect sounds of aol.
-Genuinely crappy tech folks. "We see no problems here," is a standard answer. Happy peppy kids with no clue.
-System going down too often - you think eBay is bad? You ain't been aol'd yet.
-aol "updating" your system as you log off, i.e. reconfiguring things w/out you having a yes/no option.
-new versions that don't work until a year after half their users have installed them.
I have to admit, though, that they've improved their cancellation policy. I called to cancel, and not only did they cancel me immediately, but when I called back for a 2/3 month credit (they bill a month in advance), they credited me for the whole month. They were on a cc I only used for eBay billing and aol, so it was easy to see each month.
They did, however, send me "700 FREE HOURS" to try and get me back - to be used in a 30 day period - gotta laugh.
posted on March 26, 2001 06:07:46 AM
I have to admit, I cringe when I see a buyer w/an AOL account, especially if I haven't heard back from them in a couple of days after I send the EOA.
I just use another ISP to resend the EOA & that usually does the trick.
FWIW, if you have a non-responding AOLer, you might use the ebay "send this auction to a friend" to forward the auction to them & include your EOA in the message.
Sometimes you just have to build a better mouse to get around the mousetrap.
posted on March 26, 2001 06:49:20 AM
I primarily use AT&T worldnet. Downtimes are few, you get your own websites (10 meg for each account), up to 6 email addresses & I haven't had any problems w/blocking by other ISPs. Yet.
I recently saw a thread on another forum where a poster actually equated AOL with GOD. If that were really the case I think we're all in big trouble!! 