Good Salon article about the contempt that Roadrunner's anti-spam admins are showing for the ISP's customers.
No matter whom I managed to contact, I received robotically identical responses explaining the necessity of spam filters and reiterating that only Security could lift a block and only the sender's network administrator could negotiate the unblocking. One rep did slip me a special customer service address where I sent a complaint about the inconvenience of the whole thing and suggested that Road Runner's spam blockers might be a tad excessive. Someone wrote back: "Our system has spam filters in place to protect our network from being overloaded by bulk unsolicited e-mail. The end result benefits our subscribers, who can expect less downtime and higher service levels." When I suggested that the willy-nilly blocking of perfectly legitimate e-mail necessary to one's livelihood didn't really seem like a "higher service level" to me, he replied that I shouldn't be using my e-mail account for "commercial, or revenue generating purposes."
Somehow, my cheerful, speedy, efficient cable modem service had morphed into evasive, officious martinets; Road Runner had turned into Ari Fleischer. I was trying to speak up on behalf of the unjustly stigmatized, but I was treated as if I were some kind of soft-headed liberal spam lover. Didn't I understand how important it was to protect the network? What were a few abused messages when the greater good was at stake? And what was I doing getting that kind of message, anyway? Broken, I reverted to using my Salon.com address as my main account.
