On Tue, 8 Jul 1997 20:45:42 +0000 Duane Campbell <[log in to unmask]> said:
>I have yet to see any outrage at what I thought was most outrageous,
>i.e., that the AOL tech reps are not told of the problems that AOL's
>system has with listservers. So if an AOL member has a problem with the
>list he is on, the tech rep says it isn't their fault and throws it back
>to the list owner.
Believe me, I have tried to impart this upon AOL, unfortunately without
any success thus far. This situation is particularly painful for people
who use mailing lists for business purposes and especially when the
subscriber is paying good money to receive, say, timely financial news.
In the traditional "old boy" academic/hobby world, we can flame AOL all
we want and tell people to use another ISP, but in the corporate world
where money changes hands and lawyers run the show, it's another story.
Asserting that AOL is blocking mailing lists and thus people should
consider switching to another provider is a dangerous proposition as, if
it got ugly (and I am *not* saying that AOL would ever do anything like
that, however lawyers must of course assume the worst), you might find
yourself trying to prove something that only AOL is in a position to
prove or disprove. Most large newsletters reach hundreds of thousands of
subscribers, which translate to millions of dollars of monthly revenue
for AOL, or tens of millions per year, or however many zeroes for the
life span of the account... Even a very liberal lawyer would get worried
when doing the math. And even setting lawyers aside, mud-slinging and
bad-mouthing are not very popular activities in the financial world, and
people may choose to refrain from giving useful advice purely out of a
concern to "keep a high profile". This is why I have been pushing for AOL
to go public and *officially* admit (Jay's informal messages on a mailing
list hardly count) that AOL is blocking large lists and that the only
available corrective action is after the fact and on an informal basis,
until Jay gets tired of all our whining and remembers that he has
deadlines to meet :-) This might not be the high point of AOL's PR
campaign, but I think AOL would get away with it if they would just wave
the spectre of "spam" and evil incommensurate. This in turn would allow
people to openly and honestly recommend (to a mostly non-technical crowd)
the use of another ISP for newsletters and in general any important
mailing list subscription. There would be no bad mouthing, but simply a
pointer to some AOL web page where the problem would be explained in
marketing-ese and AOL would get its best shot at convincing people to
keep their AOL account on top of the new account they will have to get,
as opposed to people finding out the hard way and getting all worked up
and upset.
Eric
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