Are AOL and Yahoo Rabid Extortionists or Just Plain Stupid?

By: John Sylvester
Submitted: 2007-01-17 14:34:03
Print this article | Tell a friend | For publisher | Social Bookmarking
Rating:
 

Today I met a client for lunch. He runs a ticketing agency in Vienna and complained about confirmation emails not getting through to customers with an AOL or Yahoo email account.

In an article he recently stumbled upon, it referes to: "AOL and Yahoo are planning to begin charging what amounts to postage for those sending multiple email messages to their subscribers." Although they're positioning it as an anti-spam measure, it will have the effect of hampering the distribution of free information by small and non-profit publishers.

It goes on to say: "It's not only mass emailings that would be affected by the system. Order confirmations...that send large amounts of email would be treated as trash under the new system unless the fee was paid."

They use the future tense, whereas my client says that customers are now either complaining about not getting confirmation messages or turning up in Vienna without knowing where to collect them from, thus making his business look inefficient.

Another client recently complained that emails to partners in his weekly lottery are never received now if the email is sent from his commercial account to AOL.

It would be polite, if nothing else, if these two corporations would at least inform businesses about their dodgy business tactics which are already in operation.

What this means is that the quasi-rich guy can send a free email to another quasi-rich guy, but if he wants to communicate with a quasi-poor guy, he has to pay for it. Logical!

My client said that if he posted a letter he would have to pay the post office for its services and hence he didn't mind paying a fraction of that online. But snail mail doesn't have corporate advertising on it for one thing and at least he is asked to pay for the stamp, rather than the mail not being sent, which is what is happening with AOL in particluar.

Many publishers and organisations that send large amounts of legitimate email might now urge their readers to switch to Google or Microsoft email or other services that don't levy a fee on senders. Or we can all set up AOL and Yahoo accounts and send commercial mail from those accounts.

This is possibly one of the most stupid online business plans that has ever been ill-thought-out. Does this means that, for example, a ticketing agency will have to scan their database and inform AOL and Yahoo that they plan to send a confirmation letter to a customer, micro-pay a quarter of a cent to both, before they do the mail-out?

Media Director of V9 Design & Build (http://www.v9designbuild.com), providing both local and outsourcing web and SEO services: we provide both brochureware and custom-designed websites, with tasteful design and branding, professional design and build, proven and successful SEO and e-marketing, e-commerce-driven database integration and content management systems.

Article source: Expert Articles

Most Recent Articles in Spam Blocker category

  • Stay Close To Your Clients: A Marketing Strategy - By: Lynne Saarte
    powerful information that you can use in your marketing campaigns
  • How To Protect Your PC Against Spam - By: Wayne Davis
    An increasingly common problem since the inception of email, Span is a concern for many users. No one wants to deal with spam, and almost every user is tired of fighting it, but while there are thousands of programs claiming to offer spam guard devices, you may need additional ways to deal with this persistent problem.
  • Anti Spam - By: David Done
    Anti Spam - Spam Soap provides hosted email security solutions including Inbound & Outbound Filtering, Disaster Recovery & Message Continuity, and Compliant Message Archiving.
  • Spam Blocker - By: David Done
    Spam Blocker - Spam Soap provides hosted email security solutions including Inbound & Outbound Filtering, Disaster Recovery & Message Continuity, and Compliant Message Archiving.
  • 20 Words That Kill - At Least When It Comes to Spam Filters - By: Alexandria K. Brown
    Spam, spam, spam. It's terrible not only for those of us on the receiving end, but for those of us who SEND e-mail. This deluge of irritating junk has unfortunately interfered with legitimate e-zine publishers, because we're caught in the anti-spam crossfire.
  • Lockspam Free 3.0 Released! - By: Sophie Ao
    6 August, 2004: Polesoft Inc., home of Professional anti spam software, announced today that Lockspam Free 3.0 (see also Lockspam Pro 3.
  • Phishing for an Identity - By: Steven M. Carlson
    Phishing is rapidly becoming on the largest threats to your personal, financial, and emotional wellbeing. No I am not talking about Saturday afternoons out on the boat with your grandfather, listening to stories that being with “When I was your age…”—now while these probably conjure up horrific childhood memories of such stores, they in no way come close to the horror felt by victims of Phishing.Phishing (fish’ing – to trick people into providing their personal and financial information by pretending to be from a legitimate company, agency or organization) is a fairly new scam propagating itself on the internet in many different forms.
  • The Great Spam Scam: Five Strategies To Stop Brand and Revenue Robbery - By: Meryl K. Evans
    Marketers usually think of anti-spam tactics as 'how to prevent' readers from perceiving their e-communications as spam. There is another, more sinister, consequence that may affect you. Spam is not just an inconvenience.
  • Getting Back To Basics. - By: Anna-Marie Stewart
    While we all agree that there`s way too much spamming/junk-mailing going on in our email boxes, there are a couple of things we can do to reduce the amount of mails we actually have to sift through, without having to resort to paying for expensive software that can be a real pain to set up properly. Firstly, and this is a great, little known tip. You can get yourself a free email account, (the bigger the better) which is a great thing to have if you use a lot of FFA`s, Classified sites, Search Engine Submittals etc.
  • Winning the War On Spam - By: Michael Southon
    For years I didn't worry much about spam.But lately it's got out of control. Over half of my email is now spam, and it was growing by the week - until I took action.