AOL Mail is hopelessly FUBAR

You've got stupid!

I swear, the folks running AOL Mail couldn’t find their asses with both hands and a flashlight.

First, they lose their customers’ email in a huge crash, taking until yesterday to restore the email archives of users. Then in the middle of this disaster, they mistakenly flag my mailserver on their spam list. Only one anti-spam list (Barracuda Network’s) out of a dozen showed my server as blacklisted, but that was enough to kick me off of many services, as I said before. Barracuda immediately cleared my server but AOL continued to show it as a spam source. When I learned that a friend’s mailserver had also been mistakenly blacklisted, I grew more concerned.

I filled out the AOL Postmaster form multiple times to report the problem but never heard anything back. Why was AOL ignoring me, I wondered. Turns out that AOL was sending replies: AOL just wasn’t sending them to the right place. In spite of the email address I specified in their form, AOL insisted in sending the email directly to my server. There the responses sat until this evening, when I finally realized what was happening.

While I was still in the dark about the misrouted email, I looked up AOL’s whois record in an effort to find a phone number that might connect me with a clueful engineer. I thought I was home free when their voice mail menu told me “if you’re a system administrator who is having trouble sending email to AOL, press 1.” Hey, that’s progress! Now I was suddenly connected with a real human, albeit a human on the other side of the planet. Reading from his script, my human asked me again and again for my AOL account. When I finally got through to him that I was a sysadmin who can’t send email to AOL, he told me he couldn’t help me because AOL no longer offers voice support for outside users.

Uh, do what now? Didn’t I just hit the option that said “if you’re a system administrator who is having trouble sending email to AOL, press 1?” Why, yes, yes I did.

I held my tongue as he finished his script. He told me I have to use the AOL Postmaster website to submit my problem.

“I tried. Your form is broken,” I told him.

“No it isn’t, sir. I can pull it up here.”

“I’m not talking about the website not working, I’m talking about the form on the website not working,” I responded heatedly. “The AOL mailservers are providing me a response code that your own form doesn’t even recognize! It won’t let me report a problem because the people who designed the form are obviously not talking to the people who actually run the mailservers!”

It was clear that this guy was as far away from my solution as he was from me. I apologized for getting terse with him and hung up the phone, seething.

Then late this afternoon I discovered (and fixed) the misrouted emails from AOL. That showed me AOL actually was responding to my requests. We were now getting somewhere! Finally, when I checked again at 8 PM I saw that all blocks had been removed.

Now, you’d think that would be enough stupid for one day, but then again you’d be wrong. The piece de la resistance came an hour ago when I caught a spam email from a neighbor’s AOL account that was bound for my mailing list. Apparently she’d had her AOL account hacked, so I do what I normally do: I sent her a friendly reply letting her know her account is probably compromised. After all, she probably had no idea her account was sending out this stuff.

Well, imagine my amusement when AOL blocked my reply to her! Instead I got this message:

421 HVU:B2 There is at least one URL or domain in your e-mail that is generating substantial complaints from AOL members. Resolution will require opening a support request.

Well, no shit! I’m sure AOL users have complained about this message, because it originated inside AOL! it’s probably been bouncing around AOL unchecked for days! How about putting some goddamn filters on the spam that AOL users send, you jackasses!

Oh, and heaven help you if you get more than one of these spam emails a day: the AOL Postmaster form will bounce any further reports that day if you’ve already submitted one. One issue per day is all you’re allowed to report. Any more and they stop listening. You’re screwed.

So now I think I understand how AOL might have mistakenly flagged my server as spam. I can almost bet you that one or more of my AOL-using list subscribers sent spam to my server (either because of a computer virus or through a breach of AOL’s network security). Then, when my server caught it and properly bounced it back to AOL, AOL’s useless spam filters flagged it as incoming spam. Brilliant.

I’ve been administering mail servers for over 15 years and I know that sometimes an occasional email can appear to be spam. In the old days, I would pick up a phone and talk to the affected party and in 5 minutes all would be fine. Now with an automated system flagging spam and an automated system for reporting the problem, it’s a frustrating, infuriating experience to get anything fixed.

I hope AOL can straighten their shit out but I’m not optimistic. The level of incompetence I’ve encountered this week is downright staggering.