It seems like every other time I try to send mail to an AOL user, it gets returned to me. Most of the time, the message will say something about no known user, even though I know that that is a valid AOL address (and yes, I do double check spelling, case, ect.) Usually, if I keep trying I can get the mail through, but sometimes it can take 4 or 5 tries! I have 3 ISP accounts, and this happens at times to all 3 accounts. What gives?
<rant> Because aol sucks that’s why, and all i have to say is HA HA, THAT’S WHAT YOU GET/DESERVE. Grow up and get a REAL isp. I wish i could meet Steve Case in a dark alley and choke that sonofabitch for making millions of people think they’re on the internet. </rant>
<garth algar voice> “If aol was an ice cream flavor, it’d be prailines, and dick…” </garth> 
“…the dark side of the mirror always threw our malice back…”
Um . . . Shag, she doesn’t have AOL, she has three different ISP. The venom should be directed at her friends, who have AOL addresses.
Truly, tatertot, AOL bites. I do tech support, and half the email problems I get have something to do with AOL. Tell your friends to get a Yahoo or Hotmail account. Or better yet, tell them to get the heck off AOL.
But I don’t even have an AOL account! I’ve never had this problem sending e-mail to any other ISPs, just AOL. It’s like AOL doesn’t want any outside people sending e-mail to their memebers. Has anyone else had this problem?
Tatertot,
It’s most likely due to the fact that AOL has a rich set of e-mail blocking options for the express purpose of blocking SPAM. I have blocked a number of domains which happen to be favorite haunts of SPAMmers/MMFers and Juno.com is at the top of that very long list.
I do the same with my other e-mail/ISP accounts.
Further, AOL does have parental control features which block e-mail access for designated screen names, permitting in-bound e-mail only from specific addresses.
It may be that you are having trouble due to one of these factors.
–Kalél
TheHungerSite.com
“If ignorance is bliss, you must be orgasmic.”
“Well, there was that thing with the Cheese-Wiz…but I’m feeling much better now!” – John Astin, Night Court
Many appologies tatertot!!! Forgive me? And i am in TOTAL aggrement with phouka, as i do tech support (for micro$oft no less) myself. Your friends deserve a boot to the head for using aol. I’ve just been awake for far too long, and saw the aol thing and i snapped. I swear to god if i get one more person bounced to microsoft by aol “because it is not an aol problem” even though it says “waol.exe has caused an illegal operation in module waol.exe” and the dumbass ARGUES with me on the phone, telling me that I am wrong, and AOL is right, you are gonna see me on the news walking into aol headquarters with a colorfull array of automatic weapons a la “The Matrix” and killing every fucking asshole in the building (starting with thier so-called tech support department). Huff puff huff puff </psychotic fucking hatred of aol>
Again, i’m sorry!
“…the dark side of the mirror always threw our malice back…”
Awww. . .come on. . .AOL isn’t THAT bad. Sure, I get lousy pings on Tribes, and sometimes I can’t sign on at ALL, and I can get nasty viruses propagated through my buddy list, and it costs 21.95 a month, but you can’t beat the assortment of people on here!
Well, either you’re closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge or you are not aware of the power of the presence of a pool table in your community. Ya’ got trouble my friends! -
Prof. Harold Hill
Gary Conservatory
Gold Medal Class
'05
No problem, Shag. I understand people get quite emotional when AOL is brought up.
I considered that possibility, but it’s so inconsistent. Not every address gets rejected every time from each ISP. Sometimes I can try again from another account and it will go through, other times I can try again in a few days and it will work.
I am getting extremely frustrated by this! The other day, I won an auction on eBay, and I just couldn’t get through to the seller’s e-mail. It took me four days to finally get through; by this time the seller was threatening to relist the item and give me negative feedback. Quite a few of my friends and family have AOL, and it’s really frustrating not to be able to reach them, especially since the big reason we got internet service in the first place was to save on long distance phone calls and make communication easier. I will suggest to them that they all get free e-mail addresses, but it just doesn’t seem right that they should have to resort to that just to get their mail.
Thanks for the help, and if anyone has any other suggestions I’d be glad to hear them.
Just last week, AOL switched to an e-Nazi position in which e-mail with embedded hyperlinks is not allowed to be sent to AOL users. Since many e-mail programs include the author’s name as a reply link, there has naturally been a lot of problems. I’m sure they’ll have it worked out in a year or so, once they’ve bought out all the world’s competing ISPs.
Sofa King, I think you just might have hit the nail on the head. Although I’ve had this problem on and off in the past, this past week or two has just been impossible. A lot of the time, I do send links in my e-mail. I’m going to check and see if my e-mail (outlook) sends my address as a hyperlink. I never would have thought of that, thanks!
Do you have any idea why they’ve banned all hyperlinks?
Hehehe, you want assortment of people, learn how to use IRC. 
“Oh dreadful angel of mine, enrich me with the vastness of your being…”
I have the problem with AOL bouncing back e-mails that are supposed to go to me from an AOL user saying that the provider does not exist or some craziness like that. Sometimes if the person complains to AOL it will stop. I tried to tell my daughter’s teacher and I don’t think I got through to her. She still can’t get an e-mail to me. Is AOL trying to hang on to customers by not letting them know about the rest of the providers out there?
Because you give them money. Ever noticed that once a business get’s big, they take your money and give you scorn?
Peace,
mangeorge
I only know two things;
I know what I need to know
And
I know what I want to know
Mangeorge, 2000
Well, I can promise that is not the issue. How you ask? A) I used to work in AOL’s NOC and still have good friends there and would have heard about it, B) I have AOL and still get links in email from everywhere, C)I just tested it from my shell account and it went through fine.
In three years working at AOL I never saw a mail problem that wasn’t either due to mail controls or typos. Also in three years there I never had a problem sending mail from other ISP’s and I had three.
Eric
A breath of fresh air. Finally a voice of sanity. Also I do eBay and I send and receive about 80 emails a week with it. In over a year I have never had one that has not gotten where it needed to go, coming to or from AOL.
Keep smiling it makes 'em wonder what you’ve been up to.
Mail I send to AOL users always gets through–sometimes it takes 26 days to get there, but it always makes it.
Shagrath…I’ll buy your plane ticket to Virgina whenever you’re ready, but if you go to the Ivory Tower, you’ll miss the techies–most of them are in Florida, Utah, and Oklahoma.
Just don’t us MSammo though…I’d hate for your guns to jam just when you have Uncle Stevie in your sights.
Eric…how long ago did you work at NOC?
-David
I wish my ISP would do this! I assume that by “hyperlinks” you’re referring to messages sent as HTML.
If someone is checking whether Outlook (or any other mail program) is sending hyperlinks, you just need to verify that you’re sending plain text, not HTML. My own mail program does not display HTML, so I have to either look at it in raw format or launch it with my web browser to read it. HTML messages are typically spam, and many people have filters to automatically reject them. So if you’re sening HTML messages, do yourself and others a favor and switch to plain text.
ROFLMAO I don’t know how many times I’ve sent pictures of my kids to my sister on AOL and then asked her on IM the next day how she liked them. “What pictures?” It usually takes about 3 days. I could have snail mailed them quicker!
I checked Outlook, and the “plain text” option is checked, so that isn’t it. However, when I send an URL it is always blue and you click on it and it takes you there automatically. Is that different than HTML?
(Sorry if that’s an incredibly stupid question, I am not really very computer literate & the household computer tech is gone til mid-April)
Tatertot, the reason the link shows up blue even though it’s plain text is because of outlook. It sees an http:// in a message and automatically says, “hey a web link, you should be able to click on that!”. It doesn’t actually write html code, it just does it inside of outlook in an effort to make life easier.
I await my plane ticket Soulfrost.
<venom> (disruptive misappropriated smilie removed)
Either you spent that 3 years under a rock, or it is a VERY wierd coincidence. Of course there is one other possiblily, misdiagnosis, ie. you can’t troubleshoot worth a fuck! Or more rather you didn’t bother to try. I bet “who is your OEM” is the first thing you say at aol. The second being “it’s thier fault”. You aol people make me sick. Does aol just make you dumber and dumber or what? Why is it that when someone calls Microsoft support and we fix thier computer after aol 5.0 completely fucked it up, they end up calling back on a short while later, with the complaint that thier computer crashed again. Know why? Because as soon as we get off the phone, they install it again! That’s like saying “doc, i can’t move my wrist, i slammed it in a car door” having him put a cast on it, and as soon as the cast comes off, smashing it in the door again intentionally!
And really i try to help people, that’s why i do what i do. I like helping people to learn and understand, because there was a time when we all knew nothing. I go to great lengths to help people too. I got a guy one day who was having problems with the juno software. It kept crashing and he was reffered to MS (as usual, it was our problem). If ONLY one program crashes, most likely the problem is with that program, not your entire operating system. Think about it, you wouldn’t go to a heart sugeon if you needed brain surgury. I conference called juno support because they had been giving him the run around the way aol usually does. He talked to her and the first words out of her mouth were “Sir, you were reffered to microsoft…” in this real condecending tone. At that point he said, “And he you go!”. I spoke up at this point, describing the problem in the most confusing technical jargon i could think of, and explaining to her it was a juno problem. I thought she was going to shit her pants. Hehehehe. 
So, it’s not as though i’m without compassion for the end user, but damnit that’s a 2 way street. Aol ppl think they have to be trapped inside of thier safe little aol browser and have thier hand held because they are either too stupid or too lazy to learn how to use thier computer. Fine. But when you call me or many other of these techies for support, just know, the moment you mention that aol is on your computer, any sympathy you might have gotten goes right out the window. And you deserve nothing less.
Here’s the solution:
What we need is a support ban of aol. No matter what the issue. It should be made standard policy in Microsoft, Gateway, Dell, etc, etc. support guidelines that if aol is installed on your computer, regardless of if the problem is with aol or not, you recieve no support. Period. No exceptions. This will do one of two things; either these dumbasses with LEARN something for themselves and won’t be stupid anymore, and they will quit using aol because they will be smart enough to know better, or, they will leave aol because, given the choice of having to keep aol and learn stuff or losing aol for a real isp and staying dumb, they will take the staying dumb and switching option every time. Scenario #1 is more optimal, #2 is more likely.
</venom>
“Oh dreadful angel of mine, enrich me with the vastness of your being…”
[Note: This message has been edited by manhattan]