Zen mail servers blocked by AOL

Since last Thursday mails to AOL have been returned with the message

SMTP error from remote mail server after initial connection:
host mailin-03.mx.aol.com [64.12.90.97]: 554 mtain-mc01.r1000.mx.aol.com ESMTP not accepting connections

I know of 2 other zen users who have found the same thing.

I contacted Zen Tech Support on their web chat to be told that AOL had blocked them because of spam, and it is up to AOL to clear the block.

This is ridiculous to be blocked for so long and must be causing other people problems.

So Zen what are you doing about it to get this sorted ?

I have just tried a few minutes ago and got it bounced

I have had two calls about this issue today. According to Zen service status they are working with AOL to get the block removed.

AOL appears to block (UK) ISP mail servers at will and you can be sure the people responsible have been contacted by Zen and had their mail relay "privilige" blocked. That may not be enough to satisfy the techies at AOL and until they remove the block there is very little more Zen can do.

You may be able to get around it if you have a domain held with a hosting company that provides mail relay or a mobile phone that could use your providers mail relay.

It is a pain, but in many respects it's the AOL users loss as they aren't recieving all of their emails, thats the way I see it.

Someone I know had their server hacked and used to send spam out for a couple of hours. AOL blocked his IP for an entire year and would not remove the blacklist even after getting in touch with them repeatedly.

I had this problem a couple of days ago. The only way I could get round it was to re-send the email from a little-used Hotmail account. That worked. Go figure.

In reply to a post by aerostar2:

I contacted Zen Tech Support on their web chat to be told that AOL had blocked them because of spam, and it is up to AOL to clear the block.

This is ridiculous to be blocked for so long and must be causing other people problems.

So Zen what are you doing about it to get this sorted ?

I have just tried a few minutes ago and got it bounced

I'll chase this one up (via Tech Support). For years we've been on AOL's anti-spam feedback loop, whereby any spam they received from our smarthosts they would inform us about rather than block us. Recently we've made some network changes which meant the smarthosts' IP addresses have changed. Since we entered this arrangement with AOL around 8 years ago I suspect that we/they haven't updated the IP addresses.

I had this problem but seems to be resolved for me today

Jander has sorted the issues and the Service Alerts have been closed.

In reply to a post by aerostar2:

So Zen what are you doing about it to get this sorted ?

Just an update. I've been in contact with AOL's Postmaster about this. They now have and update to our server IP addresses and should be putting them on their whitelist.

All seems rather ironic given the amount of spam that eminates from AOL...