Missing e-mail and AOL
A few of our clients use AOL as an ISP and have set their email addresses to forward any emails to their domain direct to their AOL account.
It seems that one or two clients are having problems in their emails going missing. As far as our email servers are concerned the emails have been sent but the client never receives them.
We have spent several hours tracing this problem and it seems that AOL members can take steps to help correct the problem.
1. Check your spam folder.
When email contains certain characteristics or the member has previously marked the mail as spam it will cause the email to go directly into their Spam Folder. If the email is in the Spam Folder please add the sending email address to their address book. This will prevent your mail from going to the spam folder. (For members who are using an older version of America Online please see the next step.)
2. Add the sending email address to their address book.
If a member has ever signed on to AOL 9.0 a Spam Folder was automatically created for them. If the member is no longer using AOL 9.0 mail may still go to the Spam Folder, but may not be available to previous versions of AOL. The member can add the sending email address to their address book which will prevent it from going to the Spam Folder. To be sure that your email is going to the Spam Folder they can use web mail at AOL.com to check the Spam Folder.
3. Use the webmail facility available on our servers
We can offer a webmail facility to clients allowing them to check their emails on the server. However, it is important to note that we will have to remove the email forwarding to allow the webmail to work (if the emails are forwarded they are no longer on the server to be read by webmail).
4. Forward emails to another (non-AOL address)
We have a limited number of invitations to GMail, the Google webmail system, existing clients can ask us to send them an invitation to join GMail.
5. Check the message before clicking the "Report as Spam" button.
You can see just how close the "Report Spam" and "Delete" buttons are, be careful which button you click.
AOL members should learn about AOL's "REPORT AS SPAM" option. Note that AOL does NOT review the email message for accuracy, forgeries, or originating sender. This means that ANY message the AOL user reports as spam will automatically be reported as such,regardless whether it actually is spam or obviously is not spam.
The accuracy of the report is not considered by AOL in this type of situation, nevertheless, AOL will block our Mail Servers from AOL's Mail Servers if spam complaints continue.