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AOL Is Returning Mail Again
I've about had it with AOL. I send about fifteen or maybe twenty emails out per day. I sent out several this morning, three of them to AOL email addresses. As has happened with increasingly frequency in recent months, all three came back a few hours later with this error:
Reason: Remote host said: 421 SERVICE NOT AVAILABLE
I see this regularly. A whole long list of things can trigger this error message, but none of them are pertinent to my circumstances. People who send out email newsletters often get this message, as do people whose SMTP servers don't implement Reverse DNS. The problem isn't consistent, and I just don't get the logic in it. (I suspect the core failure is an antispam system written by meerkats.) Most of the time my messages to AOL people get through. However, more and more often they don't get through, and I'm sick of re-sending those messages. So if you use AOL for email, don't count on getting any mail from me—or from any number of other people. AOL email is broken somehow. You are not getting messages that you should be getting. For God's sake run screaming from the CD Coaster Network and get your butts into a system that works.
(Anonymous)
The simple fact is: if you don't have your own domain, or at the very least a GMail address, then your email address is a liability. People whose email addresses end in @hotmail.com or @yahoo.com or especially @aol.com are telling the world "this newfangled interweb thingie is just a fad; I'm not making any commitment".
The one exception in Australia appears to be the venerable Ozemail. If you have an Ozemail address, it shows you got on the bandwidth bandwagon back when everyone else thought the internet was just for the US Defense Department and a few selected Ivy League universities. You mark yourself as an early adopter, and in general that's a good impression to give in an industry that considers five years to be an eternity.
: Bat :