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abbeyvet -> Form Problem (11/20/2002 8:35:44)

I have a form (not an FP form, it is using a form handler from here: http://www.jimmelanson.ca/mpfh/index.shtml) on a site that sends results to 3 recipients and also generates an autoresponse to the person who submitted it.

It is sending to the recipients fine but only some of the autoresponses are arriving at their destination. For example if I enter one of my email addresses, I get a response, if I enter another, I don' t.

The form is here: http://www.irelandescorted.com/booking_enquiries.htm

I wonder if any of you would have time to test it and let me know if you get an email in reply?

And would anyone have any idea why this might be happening?



_gail -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 9:07:36)


quote:

ORIGINAL: abbeyvet

I wonder if any of you would have time to test it and let me know if you get an email in reply?


I sent to three email addresses. Two arrived immediately; the third, to my AOL account, has not. I will check again later.

I also tested by sending two emails to AOL. The one I sent myself from aol arrived immediately. The second, which was sent from web based mail, also arrived but took about a minute longer.

The one from the Ireland site has still not arrived. I submitted it about 10 minutes ago.

quote:

And would anyone have any idea why this might be happening?


Sorry, I can' t help here. [:(]

gail



erinatkins -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 9:08:15)

Katherine,

I got email back (listed below). I am not sure why it is not working at times. Sorry

Erin
----------------------------------------

Dear Erin Atkins

Thank you for your request for more information about our Tours. You can find out more about both Private and Small Group tours in 2003 at this address: http://www.irelandescorted.com/2003

There is extensive information there, but if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us, we will be happy to discuss the particular requirments of your group with you and to do all we can to assist in your planning.

I hope we will be welcoming you to Ireland soon and look forward to meeting you!

Best regards,

Michael




_gail -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 9:40:31)

Tried the form three more times, this time placing a web based email address and two aol addresses. The one response was received, still no responses to any of the three form submissions for AOL addresses.

This is a biggie; no matter what most techie folk think about AOL, the number of users is humongous. If it will at all help or is relevant, let me know if I can contact AOL support for you.

gail



erinatkins -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 9:44:21)

Katherine,

Gail made a good point. Not getting mail to AOL would be a biggie.

Is it possible AOL is blocking IP?

Erin



abbeyvet -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 10:02:05)

This is what I was afraid of - it is more than a biggie, it is ENORMOUS!

Thanks.

I would be really interested to know if there are places other than AOL where mail is not being received.



_gail -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 10:08:04)


quote:

ORIGINAL: erinatkins

Is it possible AOL is blocking IP?




What does this mean? And why would they?

gail



abbeyvet -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 10:15:44)

Geerally such a block would be for reasons of spam, a server would be blocked if it has been detected as sending spam.

However this is my own server, it is never used for spamming and never has been.



abbeyvet -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 10:31:36)

Looking into this another reason that AOL and others might block is if the mail is coming from a domain that is on a server which allows open relay mail, but this server does not allow relay mail, and I have checked that it is not listed inaccurately anywhere as one that does.

Quote from http://ordb.org

quote:

The server explicitly rejected all probes, and has been deemed secure by the ORDB testing engine.


This is a pain.



erinatkins -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 10:38:48)

Katherine,

Is AOl still using RuleSpace for filtering - parental controls & blocking?

What about their spam filters? You could email them to ask if there was a reason they are blocking it. Could be accident.


We had a problem once & it was an error.

Erin



LindaK -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 11:02:38)

You might want to read the following....they might help.

http://members.aol.com/adamkb/aol/mailfaq/#receiving
http://members.aol.com/adamkb/aol/mailfaq/dropped-mail.html

Good luck!
Linda



erinatkins -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 12:38:30)

Katherine,

Please let us know the results of this. I am very interested in what caused this.

Thanks
Erin



_gail -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 12:43:25)


quote:

ORIGINAL: abbeyvet

I would be really interested to know if there are places other than AOL where mail is not being received.


I' m visiting and tried two other email addresses. Both received the automated replies immediately. One was a mindspring.com account, the other email address was through a hosting site (using mindspring as isp).

Still no responses to my two aol addresses.

I did contact AOL' s online support and they were not very helpful. For what it' s worth, they suggested a report be submitted. Here' s the info they want:

AOLTechHYD: FULL NAME,ISP' s DOMAIN NAME,
AOLTechHYD: DATE/TIME PROBLEM STARTED
AOLTechHYD: EMAIL ADDRESS
AOLTechHYD: IS THE PROBLEM (CONSISTENT/INTERMITTENT)
AOLTechHYD: PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
AOLTechHYD: DAYTIME PHONE
AOLTechHYD: DID THE MAIL BOUNCE BACK (YES/NO):
AOLTechHYD: HOST NAME OF MAIL SERVER USED TO RELAY MAIL TO AOL
AOLTechHYD: IP ADDRESS OF MAIL SERVER USED TO RELAY MAIL TO AOL


AOLTechHYD: Send the e-mail to: support@aol.net


gail



abbeyvet -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 13:41:49)

This is utterly doing my head in and I am coming up against a brick wall.

I can only conclude after a day spent fruitlessly chasing this up that AOL is a poisonous organisation who not only does not deliver all mail to its customers but fails to tell either them or the sender of the mail that iit is not being delivered, let alone why.






_gail -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 14:17:16)


quote:

ORIGINAL: abbeyvet

I can only conclude after a day spent fruitlessly chasing this up that AOL is a poisonous organisation




Unfortunately, my experience is that their first level of support at AOL is not good beyond basic things such as how to use their Instant Messaging system and stuff like that. I' ve found you have to get on the phone and INSIST that you speak with a higher level of tech support.

Now this has gotten me really mad because it means I' m probably not getting all the mail people send me! And I' ve been an AOL customer a long time and have recommended it to many.

If you can' t contact AOL in your country and if you' d like me to give it a shot here, email me questions you' d like discussed.

gail



podunkpolecat -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 15:42:07)

FWIW I usually cringe when I have to forward information to an AOL address. Even links don' t work much of the time. Much of the material I have tried to send contains pictures (Florida real estate) and I' ve pretty much given up sending anything bulky. One thing I have added to messages containing links is a warning that AOL users often have difficulties receiving info and if links don' t work, they should try copy and pasting to their browser.
pp



abbeyvet -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 16:13:52)

quote:

If you can' t contact AOL in your country and if you' d like me to give it a shot here, email me questions you' d like discussed.


Thanks for the offer Gail, my understanding is that AOL could care less and that given that I am a non customer they are not going to be of any real help at all.

AOL in Ireland practically does not exist - they have a big presence here but it is serving a market in the US, I know of nobody on AOL in Ireland, I am not really sure it is even available.

I have never understood the attraction of AOL and I understand it less than ever now.



_gail -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 17:28:20)

quote:

ORIGINAL: abbeyvet

my understanding is that AOL could care less and that given that I am a non customer they are not going to be of any real help at all.


This has little to do with you being a non-customer. It has everything to do with me being a customer for a very long time, and not receiving mail![>:] How long has this been going on? I sure receive enough unsolicited, c*** mail every day through their channels, but when I fill out a form and request information, I do not receive it?![:' (]

Give me a break! They owe me (and others) an explanation!

quote:

I have never understood the attraction of AOL and I understand it less than ever now.


The answer is simple. Ease of use.

I' ve seen it time and again with my students; all are computer novices. I' ve set up folk with free services (when Juno was free) and Yahoo accounts (when using it with an email client was also free) and inevitably they' d move to AOL. They could care less about computer stuff, just want to click a few buttons and have fun online. I know some of us sometimes forget this but it is a fact of computing life.

gail



MCD -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 18:00:00)

Katherine, I received a response back immediatly on my Direcway account. Hope that helps.



Kitka -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 19:39:19)

quote:

I wonder if any of you would have time to test it and let me know if you get an email in reply?


Katherine, I just tested the form to an address with my local ISP and a response came almost immediately.

One thing to consider though, is that it came in all html, and I use a plain text e-mail program. However, it was quite readable, as the coding involved is minimal - unlike some sent from Hotmail etc.

Good luck solving the AOL problem!



abbeyvet -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 19:50:03)

Thanks all,

You are quite right Gail - it is a problem for AOL users if they do not get their mail. At the moment I am just so absorbed in trying to find out what I can do about it that I kinda forgot that end of it. [:@]

I have come accross many many references to this problem today, some which estimate that thousands of legitimate emails daily are not reaching their destination at AOL. AOL would contend that they are in fact just making an effort to prevent their users from receiving spam but it seems to me they are using such a blunt instrument to do so that it is knocking out a lot of legitimate mail while not doing very much at all about spam in the wind up. Certainly I know that a lot of the spam I get originates from AOL - so they are not really in a position to be taking the high moral ground on this.

Anyway I have a support request in to them all day and apart from an autoresponse acknowlegement have heard nada. The server techie people are also looking into it in case something can be done at my server end to resolve it.

I know the mail is HTML, and I dithered over whether to have it html or plain. The reason I wnet for HTML is that I looked back at the last 200 or so emails received by that site in its previous incarnation before I tried to imporve it and make it easier to run with these infernal forms, and of those 200 or so people only one was in plain text. So I felt safe enough there. I may change them back to plain text though - as you say, they are not very fancy emails anyway.

Again thanks to all. I have wasted a whole day on this, I now have an essentially non functional site, I am fed up and I am going to bed. [:(][:' (][>:][:@][&:]



_gail -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 19:50:52)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kitka

Good luck solving the AOL problem!


I just tested this again with an entirely new aol account, and did NOT receive a response. I just contacted a friend in another state with an AOL account and have her testing it too.

I know Katherine didn' t indicate that she wanted me to contact AOL but I did. I' m waiting for an email report back from them. One of the things that I, er, ever so kindly pointed out was that this problem could adversely effect someone' s business.

As an example, I helped test a gentlemen' s tourist site for him in several AOL browsers. He is from England and his site is geared to English tourists who wish to go to Disney World in Central Florida. He told me at the time that more than 60% of his visitors use AOL. I also note that the site Katherine references seems geared to a large degree to the American tourist visiting Ireland.

[edit]Hey, if about 60% are not receiving replies to filling in forms, that' s a lot of folk. And you know who will get blamed? Not AOL but the site owner and/or the web designer [/edit]

Whatever AOL is doing, or not doing, needs to be fixed.

gail





Kitka -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 20:09:55)

quote:

I now have an essentially non functional site, I am fed up and I am going to bed


I sure hope you slept well! Maybe things will look a little less black in the morning.

I don' t think you can say you have a " non-functional site" - it is only AOL users who are affected, isn' t it? There is nothing new about that - web sites have been filled with things like " AOL users click here" for as long as I can remember. [:p] So until AOL sort out the problem, why not put a caveat on your form that it might not work with AOL addresses, suggest they use an alternative and/or give them an e-mail address to write to instead?

Best of Irish luck with your dealings with AOL. [:D]



Kitka -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 20:32:00)

quote:

web sites have been filled with things like " AOL users click here" for as long as I can remember.


As an extension to this idea: why not attach a pop-up containing the text of your e-mail to a link on the form saying: " AOL users click here" ? Then say something like " we apologise for this technical difficulty with AOL, but we are totally dependant on AOL sorting things out at their end" .



AMysticWeb -> RE: Form Problem (11/20/2002 22:26:51)

I too have had problems in the past with AOL receiving form mail.

If I remember correctly, 5.0 and 6.0 had more problems with this than 7.0. I tried 8.0 recently and some of my test form submissions took over an hour.

In the past, I would send the form to info@mysite.com and forward to AOL. This always worked.

Now I send a backup to a Yahoo account in case I don' t get the AOL mail.
So far I have had luck with 7.0 receiving text form submissions. Sometimes it takes a couple of minutes.

You might take a look at this

http://postmaster.info.aol.com/index.cfm?article=13&expand=0&sitenum=7&menuid=14

& this

http://members.aol.com/adamkb/aol/mailfaq/



abbeyvet -> RE: Form Problem (11/21/2002 5:39:31)

quote:

I know Katherine didn' t indicate that she wanted me to contact AOL but I did


Thanks Gail, I appreciate it. If you hear anything let me know.


quote:

I sure hope you slept well!


I did thank you, I slept the sleep of the truely exhausted. I feel as if AOL stole a day of my life!!

quote:

I don' t think you can say you have a " non-functional site" - it is only AOL users who are affected, isn' t it?


You are quite right of course, but as Gail says this site is aimed mainly at the US market. Looking back over emails sent to it in the past there were a very high number using AOL email addresses so it is a major issue. I am just about to add those " AOL users click here" links, but it would be soooo much better if I did not have to.


Thanks for the links Tom, I think by now I must have read more about the prolems of AOL mail than almost anyone living, it keeps reinforcing to me, the more I read, that AOL will do as they please and to hell with the problems it causes either for their users or for anyone trying to do business with their users. Putting the term " AOL users please" into Google is very interesting!



_gail -> RE: Form Problem (11/21/2002 7:46:29)

My friend filled out the form at the Ireland Tour site and didn' t receive any reply. Now another AOL subscriber is livid.

There are really two significant issues here:

1) AOL users not receiving all their mail, including some they voluntarily request;

2) loss of income for businesses whose customers and potential customers pay AOL for email service.

If the US Post Office filtered my mail (as opposed to me filtering my own mail) it could very well be considered blatant censorship or even mail tampering, which I believe is a federal offense here.

quote:


I feel as if AOL stole a day of my life!!


Well, I' m not going to let AOL steal a day of my life, so if anyone knows of one link which most succinctly summarizes the known problem, please post it here. I don' t want to read all this stuff.

What I am going to do though with that info is include it in personal letters to Stephen Case, AOL Chairman, and CEO Richard Parsons. I' m not confident that any email reply I get from AOL tech support will address the problem, but will let you know Katherine if I do hear from any of these folk.

I was thinking about starting a new thread to request that Outfronters bombard AOL with letters and email about this situation, but I' m not sure it is allowed in these forums. So I won' t until I contact Spooky to find out if it' s okay.

gail [&:]


Stephen Case, Chairman
Richard Parsons, CEO
AOL Time Warner Inc.
75 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10019
Phone: (212) 484-8000
Fax: (212) 489-6183

Email: aoltimewarnerir@aol.com



erinatkins -> RE: Form Problem (11/21/2002 8:29:16)

Katherine,

If people are forwarding mail it will not work -http://www.macnn.com/news.php?id=12430


Erin



abbeyvet -> RE: Form Problem (11/21/2002 8:45:45)

Thank you once again all.

I now have a notice up alerting AOL users to the problem (and incorporating your wording Kitka, thank you) and that will have to do for now.

It seems that largely the problem lies in the fact that the emails are being generated by a form autoresponse through sendmail. Because a lot of spam is autogenerated in this way this sort of mail is treated with suspicion by AOL.

The basic problem is that they make no differenciation between one autogenerated mail and another - this mail (like many other legitimate mails) is autogenerated once only, in reponse to the users request and their email address is not stored as a result. The site has a comprehensive privacy policy in this respect. But of course that is irrelevane as a machine in AOL has decided it is BAD.

What really annoys me is that the user is not even alerted that a mail was not delivered, it would just appear that they asked for information and nobody bothered to send it. Also I KNOW there must be a way around it at so much spam does get though to AOL users, their systems are certainly not fool proof in that regard.

In addition to the warnign to AOL users, I have also caused the form in question and another one to now generate a message to us, telling us someone looked for information. We do not really need to know this, but it does mean that if someone does submit a request using an aol address, we will be alerted to it and can contact them directly. I hate doing this, as I do not really want to be getting into bothering people who just wanted to see a little more.

The reason that the email address is asked for at all there is that my client is not keen on having pricing information all that easily available to his competitors. He originally wanted to get people to use a username and password to see it, I have been working on persuading him to put fewer barriers in peoples way. This was intended to be very simple, we just ask for their email and email them the access info. I know anyone, any competitor, could easily request it but it makes my client feel a little better.

I wish I could just persuade him to let people in and the hell if his competitors know his prices. However other forms, booking forms in particular, are also using this form handler. I like it, I like what it can do, I have spent a long time setting up the various forms and I really, REALLY, REALLY, do not want to have to do it all over again another way.




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