AOL Announcement

[Sharkey]

I just read the announcement about AOL. I tried to reply directy to the announcement but was not aloud to do so. I use AOL just for Email.So now I being penalized for using AOL and have to pay somebody to receive my Email. I have always been a platinum Member. I guess I will have to quit donating to this site so I can pay to have an email account.I know I can use this site to receive email but it does me no good when I have a problem with my password and can't get to my email. So what am I suposed to do?

[andy]

I just read the announcement about AOL. I tried to reply directy to the announcement but was not aloud to do so. I use AOL just for Email.So now I being penalized for using AOL and have to pay somebody to receive my Email. I have always been a platinum Member. I guess I will have to quit donating to this site so I can pay to have an email account.I know I can use this site to receive email but it does me no good when I have a problem with my password and can't get to my email. So what am I suposed to do?

You are mad at the wrong people. *WE* do not enforce AOL's email policy. *WE* tried to work with AOL, yet AOL is not even willing to answer our emails. *WE* are not deleteing your email's AOL is. *WE* are not censoring your emails.

Yes, you do get an email account with your donation, which you can use for anything you choose.

What *WE* did was to make you aware of a problem You have with AOL. Now you are mad at *US*? Whats that saying? "Don't shoot the messenger"

[Ted Shred]

I just read the announcement about AOL. I tried to reply directy to the announcement but was not aloud to do so. I use AOL just for Email.So now I being penalized for using AOL and have to pay somebody to receive my Email. I have always been a platinum Member. I guess I will have to quit donating to this site so I can pay to have an email account.I know I can use this site to receive email but it does me no good when I have a problem with my password and can't get to my email. So what am I suposed to do?

You get an email account from bmwlt.com

Can you use that for access to this site since AOL is being such a pain?

You can also get a free email account with yahoo or hotmail...

[eljeffe]

Sharkey,

I've recently moved all my email accounts to gmail (Google's email service). It's allowed me to consolidate 5 of my old email accounts into one. PM me your email address, and I'll send you a gmail invite (in case you need one to register for their email service). That goes for anyone out there stuck on AOL -- just PM me with your email address and I'll send you a gmail invite.

gmail is great because it's both a web-based email, but you can also use an email client that supports POP or IMAP (i.e., Thunderbird, Eudora, Outlook, Outlook Express, etc.). It also allows you to retrieve email from all your other IMAP or POP email services and integrate it right into your single gmail account. I have 5 other accounts I have used over the years, and now they are all consolidated in my gmail account.

gmail gives you 5GB of free storage, and costs nothing. You can even change your settings so you never see those stupid Google Adwords that try to sell you stuff.

Then again, you can always become a donor to the site (which you are, Sharkey) and log into the email server at email.bmwlt.com and use your site username and password. Voila! You're already set up with a <you>@bmwlt.com address

Andy's action may sound harsh, but we've been dealing with this for several years. In fact, we almost made a decision to exclude AOL users a couple years ago when we migrated to the vBulletin software. The issue is with AOL. They don't deem our email worthy of sending to their members. It's gone way beyond spam control. In the past, we would have to fill out a silly "whitelist" form that got us back in good graces, but over time, they've changed their policies, and emails sent to members (i.e., confirmations, password requests, PM notification, thread reply notification, etc.) are ignored and dumped into never never land.

BTW, if you are on AOL and already a member, nothing is going to happen. It's not like your account will disappear. But it sounds like Andy is no longer going to accept new members who are from AOL email addresses. Also, since AOL is dumping all emails from us, if you are on AOL and forget your password, you're probably SOL, as AOL won't let you get the email from us.

[andy]

Then again, you can always become a donor to the site (which you are, Sharkey) and log into the email server at email.bmwlt.com and use your site username and password. Voila! You're already set up with a <you>@bmwlt.com address

Andy's action may sound harsh, but we've been dealing with this for several years. In fact, we almost made a decision to exclude AOL users a couple years ago when we migrated to the vBulletin software. The issue is with AOL. They don't deem our email worthy of sending to their members. It's gone way beyond spam control. In the past, we would have to fill out a silly "whitelist" form that got us back in good graces, but over time, they've changed their policies, and emails sent to members (i.e., confirmations, password requests, PM notification, thread reply notification, etc.) are ignored and dumped into never never land.

BTW, if you are on AOL and already a member, nothing is going to happen. It's not like your account will disappear. But it sounds like Andy is no longer going to accept new members who are from AOL email addresses. Also, since AOL is dumping all emails from us, if you are on AOL and forget your password, you're probably SOL, as AOL won't let you get the email from us.

Jeff nailed it. If you ARE AOL customer your are SOL, not because *WE* don't like AOL, but because AOL throws away your email without informing you. The only thing YOU can do as AOL customer is to

a) complain at AOL's 'customer support'
b) vote with your legs/wallet and use a different email provider. Someone that does not throw away your email without informing you.

And, yes the only thing that will happen is that we will no longer accept AOL addresses as valid email addresses. Which in fact they are not. Just imagine your local postmaster would try to decide for you which mail you should get and which email you shouldn't and not even informing you about which mail they throw away. As long as AOL does not change it's policy their email addresses are no longer considered valid.

[sonnata]

1+ on what Andy & Jeff said. I run a commercial e-commerce site. When someone makes a purchase, our system sends them a thank you e-mail along with a receipt. Almost everyone who buys from us that uses an AOL e-mail for their purchase, does not receive their receipt or thank you. We wind up looking like unappreciative jerks because of it. More than a few of these customers contact us to ask if we ever did receive their order. The same thing happens if one of these customers tries to sign up for our newsletter. Our system sends them a confirmation e-mail which contains a link they must click to confirm that they are the person who really did sign up & not someone else who is using their e-mail address. They never do receive the confirmation e-mail. This wouldn't be such a big deal, but we offer a coupon off of a future purchase for signing up. Because some customers can't sign up, we wind up giving them the coupon anyway without the benefits of having them signed up for our newsletter. All because of AOL's ridiculous anti-spam policy.

I have complained to our e-commerce host about this & was told that AOL has an extremely low tolerance for complaints from their customers about receiving spam from a mail server. I seem to remember it being something like 20 complaints per 1000 e-mails from a given mail server.

I thought when I quit subscribing to AOL years ago ( no easy task at that time, BTW, took me hours to find out how to unsubscribe), my days of hating AOL were over.

America Online? A$$holes Online is more like it.

[andy]

Here is another read on that: http://www.dmsiusa.com/aol.htm

[andy]

http://www.godsweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/headlines/headlines.cgi?mode=popup&num=0

Quite frankly, I myself see a dramatic increase in spam originating from the AOL network, and last night I have decided I will do as AOL does. If I get SPAM from any AOL address if will be handled just as any other spam, and blocked indefinitely. Will that hurt some of our members? Yes it will. But then again, My nerves are too short to think about AOL all the time.

Bottomline: If you want RELIABLE email service and RELIABLE connection to the internet: Don't use AOL, or you risk being blocked from many sites in the future.

[scottydawg]

I just read the announcement about AOL. I tried to reply directy to the announcement but was not aloud to do so. I use AOL just for Email.So now I being penalized for using AOL and have to pay somebody to receive my Email. I have always been a platinum Member. I guess I will have to quit donating to this site so I can pay to have an email account.I know I can use this site to receive email but it does me no good when I have a problem with my password and can't get to my email. So what am I suposed to do?

Bruce you don't have to pay for email ever these days. Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and a bunch more are always free. I don't even know why anyone would want AOL these days. Just get a nice fast cable/dsl/fiber connection and set up webmail with someone. I would be happy to walk you through the steps and help you get on with a reliable, free email service.
On a sidebar, I have been trying to deal with AOL on my Ducati.ms mail for two years. Filling out forms, making phone calls, more forms, email test and on and on and on...

[Sharkey]

I have to apologize to Andy and the site. I'm not very good with computers and this site is one of the few computer things I do that works with no fustration. I didn't know about all the other free email services. Eljeffe emailed an invitation to join Google Email account. So all is not lost and and I learned something.



Bruce

[dshealey]

For the life of me I cannot understand why ANYONE likes AOL anyway. I tried it for a very short time when I first got into email and internet, many, many moons ago. Very rapidly found it offered me NOTHING that I could not get free, without the insane filtering and their unwanted "protection" to save me from the "bad" people. I am a big boy, and can protect myself, thank you. At least I am deciding what I want to be protected from, not AOL.

It is just mind boggling that AOL is still in business. Most people I know would not touch it with someone else's 10 foot pole.

[Ted Shred]

I have to apologize to Andy and the site. I'm not very good with computers and this site is one of the few computer things I do that works with no fustration. I didn't know about all the other free email services. Eljeffe emailed an invitation to join Google Email account. So all is not lost and and I learned something.



Bruce

Right on! Another soul saved from AOL:histerica

[Steve_R]

Most people I know would not touch it with someone else's 10 foot pole.Well, I know I wouldn't touch it with your 10 foot pole David. :)

[lnowell]

I had to block AOL at the server level seven years ago because one employee downloaded a bunch of their crap onto her workstation and made a real mess for me to clean up. Never again. Even now I can't access anything "AOL" and I own the business.

My wife works for a bank and I heard many horror stories about AOL subscribers trying to un-subscribe and stop AOL from charging their accounts. It was a major problem - actually to me it bordered on fraud.