For the past 2 months, I have been fighting with AOL - and apparently ReptileRooms.com is not the only reptile related site to have issues with them.

AOL suddenly decided they were going to start bouncing all the emails produced by this website, and many other sites in the reptile industry.

I have attempted to contact them several times, at one point the issue was resolved for a week or so, and then it went back to bouncing.

Having sent about 8 emails to postmaster@aol.com, I have yet to receive a reply.

What does this mean for you if you're an AOL visitor? Well, this means that you won't be able to receive your password upon registration. It means that you won't be able to receive a notification E-Mail when somebody sends you a PM, posts on a thread you're watching, or comments on an image you've uploaded to the site's gallery.

I suggest, to all AOL customers visiting this site (and yes, I realize there's thousands of you), that you find yourselves a real ISP, as this problem is beyond our control - there is nothing we can do to fix this issue beyond continually E-Mailing AOL (and I will be sending them the URL to this thread).

If you wish to stick with AOL, then I suggest you contact them to ask why they are bouncing E-Mails from reptilerooms.com; E-Mails that you have specifically requested from our system.

I wonder what the problem is?

I think is just that they do not like reptiles.

As it's happened to other reptile sites too, I was thinking the same thing, but AOL couldn't be that stupid they'd piss off the hundreds of thousands of reptile-keeping customers they have... and lose all that money, or could they? They may be, it is AOL after all

*AO Hell

AOL's messed, what other sites do they hate?

Youre sure it's not just the spam filter? I believe they tend to take emails that were sent out by a distribution machine as spam and not give them. So it might be automatic. Just being devil's advocate though.

The E-Mails are being bounced back to my address by AOL's server. This has nothing to do with cspam filters.

Either way, the problem is at AOL's end, not ReptileRooms.com's. I've done all I can, I sent them several emails today, and have informed AOL of this thread's existence. There's nothing more I can do.

So, sorry AOL users.

Hey,

If your guys are on a share hosting plan with godaddy, then someone on that same hosting plan very well could be abusing the heck out of it which would cause AOL to block that IP address (mail server). Which would give you this issue. Your only options are to ask godaddy for a different ip block, which likely wont happen... and causes a nightmare with your site being down for up to 72 hours... (dns updates) and you could be in the same boat, with a different set of bad ip's... Or get a dedicated IP or dedicated box.... Prices start at 75 a month for a decent setup. Just a idea and dont get me wrong I'm no AOL fan lol.

Nichole

We're not on shared hosting. ReptileRooms.com has its own dedicated server (and it costs a lot more than $75/mo - Dual Xeon 2Ghz, 2Gig RAM, dual 73Gig SCSI Ultrawides on a 12.5MBit dedicated pipe, 2TB/mo bandwidth).

Trust me, the issue is not our end, GoDaddy is merely a registrar. The box is clean, the issue is with AOL - which is why I spent 2 months trying to deal with them before I said anything.

Hey,

Thats what I thought I was just throwin it out there. Sorry to be a bit annoying but you may want to check out your reverse DNS look ups as they go to borg.myprohost.com which can screw up alot of spam filters because its not pointing to your actual domain.

Nichole

They're fine

Everything's been setup this way since the day the site went live. Nothing has changed. It's an AOL issue.

Axe - is it easier then if I turn off my requests for email notification as I am on AOL for now - I do intent to change from them as I am not getting a LOT of my mail form all but 2 of the reptile sites I use!!

I know just me turning the notification off isn't much but if it stops you getting stacks of emails sent back then I will

Thats really stupid to bounce the e-mails it should be up to the cilent to decide what e-mails get through.

I sent them a friendly e-mail describing this and many other problems with their company. Anyone else think AOL has bad customer service? I can bet if you call AOL and explain this problem to them, theyll just blame it on you modem, god i hate aol....they lie.

Any chance we can get everyone from RR to email them? We can flood their emails until they go crazy. I hate AOL, of course, i have no choice in my ISP, i dont pay for it .


EDIT: i just sent them a long email. I'll let you know how it goes

When i used to have AOL i would have the problem with getting email notifications from php forums. The user has to change their email because it may see it as spam...at least thats what i had to do.

Also, sending an email to postmaster@aol.com wont do anything. Its just a computer. Go to the aol site and find a customer service number or email.

I'm sure they dont have a problem with reptiles.

Hmm, I don't use AOL anymore.(I switched 1 1/2 years ago because of their bad service). Any-how, I've seemed to notice AOL hasn't been the brightest crayon in the box. They seemed to make stupid decisions that could lose then hundereds of thousands of dollars. Ehh, their faulty. I just hope this doesn't affect to many users...

LOL, i can just see there next comercial

"We have a very comprehensive security team in place, we block pop ups, we block viruses, we block spam....and we do all of this for free"
"i get all of that for free?"
"yup, absolutly FREE...and we also block emails that u want to get as well...absolutly free"
"wait a min u block emails i want? but what if i really want those emails"
"well you see....were AOL, and we really know what u want and what u dont want...were just that good"
*people stand there with dumbfounded look on there face*
then quickly switches to an aol logo, and how much they rip you off every month...for all your "extra features"

postmaster@aol.com is the administrative contact for these matters according to the AOL contact information on their website.