[Vintage-Radio] Attention AOL customers

[Mike D.]

Subject: AOL users — Do not use SPAM button on QTH.NET e-mail

Over the last year or so the QTH.NET system has been periodically blocked
from sending mail into the AOL system. A month ago, I finally made
arrangements with them to be white listed and put an end to this once and
for all. To be white listed by them I had to agree to receive any and all
complaints logged by their users about mail being sent from our system (we
don't send spam, no problem).

While this seemed easy, I found that AOL provides their users a button on
their interface that says something to the effect that "this message is
spam", and when they highlight a message and push it, we get a "complaint"
logged against us and mailed to us. No one at AOL reads this stuff, but
they keep track of them and after we reach a certain percentage of the mail
we send vs how many complaints we get, they block our entire system. I've
also found that the spam button is next to the delete button, and a clueless
user MIGHT use it to delete messages. Here in lies the problem.

I am getting plenty of these "complaints" and since AOL does not tell me who
is complaining (apparently a privacy issue), it's near impossible to find
out who they are and remove them from the system.

So, I'm asking all list owners to post a message to all of your lists
reminding AOL people not to use the "spam" button as a delete button and if
they are subscribed to your list and don't want to be, help them get off the
list so we don't get blacklisted by AOL.

Thanks for your help. If you have any questions about this, let me know.

Tim

Note: Please do not discuss this on the reflector. Contact the List
Administrator with questions/comments.