Well, this would explain a lot:
Since June, he was told, Earthlink’s mail system has been so overloaded that some users have been missing up to 90 percent of their incoming e-mail. It isn’t bounced back to senders; it just disappears. And Earthlink hasn’t mentioned the problem to these affected customers unless they complain. The two groups affected are those who get their mail with an Earthlink-hosted domain and those with aliased e-mail addresses like my friend’s Blackberry.
I recently, after 12 years with them, decided to cancel my DSL service with Earthlink (a combination of increasingly poor service and FIOS being available in my area). I’d planned to keep an email only account so I didn’t have to set up a massive rerouting of everything. Glad I saw this. And it certain does explain my frustrations with some of my email. As Cringley (author of the linked piece) points out – what kind of business is run like this?
Were they thinking these thousands of affected customers simply wouldn’t notice? And what about those customers whose livelihood depends on e-mail communication? There are both ethical and business questions here and Earthlink doesn’t look good on either scale. Fortunately the company says it is installing new software and hopes to have the problem resolved before the end of the year. Lucky us.
Lucky them. I’ll be out of that boat in short order.