[Solved] Earthlink, e-mail and support

[Moonchild]

Update: Thanks to the business customer care unit of Earthlink, this matter should now be solved, and if you are an Earthlink customer, you should once again be able to register on this forum and receive other e-mail from the palemoon.org mail server.

OK, so, it seems our friends at Earthlink (http://www.earthlink.net) have a gateway/firewall block in place that blocks the Pale Moon mail server.
I just moved the mail server to a new Datacenter, and mail delivery to earthlink.net users started to fail with time-outs (indicating a hard block, possibly because of previous abuse from that IP or net range since it's in a large datacenter by a very large provider (Core-backbone GmbH)).

Note that this is a mailserver-to-mailserver connectivity issue, not involving any end user. This is something that only directly involves the administrators of the mail servers and potentially the network they are on.

If you are an earthlink customer, be aware that you will not be able to receive responses to support requests. You will not be able to register on the palemoon.org forum. You will not be able to do anything that involves receiving e-mail from the palemoon.org mail server, at all. I have done everything I can to get this escalated to Earthlink's NOC and failed. I refuse to collect personal information from e-mail recipients (that is a privacy no-no) just so their support system can be satisfied. This will remain the case until earthlink removes this block or provides a gateway for me to use for delivery.

After using the normal steps to try and report this block and request removal, getting nothing but form replies including the request to send a removal from the server in question (which isn't possible if connections can't be established) and having an earlier chat with a support rep about it, I contacted support in chat again, to try and get it resolved. It should be as simple as a techie in the Network Operations Center (NOC) to verify the block, and remove it from the blocked IPs (either with or without verification).

Apparently, Earthlink's retarded support ticket/escalation system requires that the person initiating the support request is an Earthlink customer. They continued to ask me, a server administrator, for personal information of the earthlink customer I was trying to send e-mail to (including phone number). But hey, don't just take my word for it, read the following chat transcript (sanitized):

'Frank D' says: Thank you for contacting EarthLink LiveChat, how may I help you today?
n/a: Hi Frank. I'm the postmaster of an external mail domain and I'm having trouble delivering mail to earthlink customers.
Frank D: Not to worry, I'll be glad to assist you with the issue.
n/a: I had a chat before with one of your colleagues about this.
Frank D: Just to confirm, do you receive any bounce back message when you send an Email to Earthlink Customer?
n/a: The problem is that my mail server is unable to connect to any mx at earthlink. The bounce messages generated by my mail server do not include an earthlink response because connections are never established
n/a: even sending from the server to blockedbyearthlink@abuse fails in the same way
n/a: Seems you are blocking my IP at the gateway level in GA somewhere
Frank D: Please manually forward the complete bounce back error message to blockedbyearthlink@abuse.earthlink.net. Make sure that the subject is renamed as "Blocked by Earthlink”
Frank D: It may take 24 - 48 business hours to get your issue resolved. EarthLink Abuse will then review the request and either approve or deny based on the reason for the original blocking.
n/a: I already tried that, all I get is form replies
n/a: "We don't seem to be blocking mail server nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn at this time." which is incorrect
Frank D: Due to many requests your issue might got delayed, so I would suggest you to send a new request to fix this.
n/a: As said, I already tried that.
n/a: All they ever send me is form replies.
n/a: I CANNOT send it directly from the server/IP in question because it's not delivered.
n/a: even to blockedbyearthlink@abuse.earthlink.net
Frank D: Please send an Email to our Blocked by Earthlink Team from any other server or IP used computer so that it will deliver it.
n/a: I did, and that netted me said form replies
n/a: that is why I returned to this support chat now
n/a: The mail server is used for a number of different domains, and none of your clients can now receive mail from these domains (including registrations for a forum and support e-mails.)
Frank D: I request you to ask any of the Earthlink sender to contact us so that we can Escalate the issue from our end in order to fix this.
n/a: Can't you escalate this? I'd rather not have to bother random recipients with requests to contact support. This is a problem on your end, seems to be at the gateway level, and should be addressed. It's possible this is an old IP block since the server was just moved to this new datacenter
Frank D: We need an Earthlink Account information in order to Escalate the issue to our Higher Level Technicians, so that is the reason I am asking you to do that.
n/a: You can't expect me to do that. That is very unprofessional.
n/a: Pass it on to your manager or supervisor, please.
Frank D: I understand that but we need the Earthlink customer to fix this.
n/a: No, YOU need to fix this. The earthlink customer has nothing to do with your MX hosts blocking any and all connections from my server.
Frank D: We need an Earthlink Account information in order to Escalate the issue to our Higher Level Technicians, so that is the reason I am asking you to do that.
n/a: Stop copy-pasting
n/a: Please.
n/a: Manually escalate it if you have to.
Frank D: We need to Earthlink Account Details to Escalate the issue.
n/a: Why do you need earthlink account details for a server-to-server connectivity issue?
n/a: I obviously am not a customer of earthlink.
Frank D: In order to Escalate the issue to our Higher Level Technicians we need that information.
n/a: Tell you an alternative. Write this down on a post-it. walk over to your supervisor, explain the problem, and get something done.
Frank D: Let me go ahead and transfer the chat to our Supervisor.
n/a: Please

Please wait while I transfer the chat to 'Ali'.

'Ali' says: Thank you for contacting EarthLink LiveChat, how may I help you today?
n/a: Hi Ali. Not sure if you can read the previous chat conversation. I hope you can, saves me repeating myself.
Ali: Hello, I see that you have been chatting with our agent. Please give me a moment to review the chat so far.
n/a: Take your time.
Ali: Thank you.
Ali: Thank you for staying connected.
Ali: Please provide me any Email Address and Phone Number of your Earthlink Customer
n/a: I don't know the phone number. One example e-mail address (of multiple failures) is nnnnnn@earthlink.net
Ali: Please provide me your Phone Number.
n/a: My phone number is +46 nnn nnnnnn
Ali: I am sorry but we cannot Escalate the issue for Outside US.
n/a: *sigh*
Ali: We need the information of a customer who lives in US.
n/a: So, just because I'm an international server administrator, you are unable to do anything...?
n/a: You don't need earthlink customer information to fix a gateway IP block.
n/a: If this is all because you are having to battle the ticket submission system then you really need to re-evaluate the usefulness of that system
Ali: I understand your concern and I really apologize the inconvenience caused to you.
Ali: We need to have complete account information along with the local contact number. So that we can go ahead and escalate the issue. Once the issue is escalated the higher level technicians to try to contact person to get more information ( if required)
n/a: So, let me understand this correctly.
n/a: You need me to get personal information from a US person to send to you, so you can input it as an escalation, so technicians can bother that customer with questions about something that neither involves them directly, nor have answers to? I doubt the people even know what an MX is.
n/a: Can you please just do me a favor?
n/a: Call someone at the Earthlink NOC and ask them to check if IP nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn is blocked in their firewall/gateway, and please remove that block if so.
Ali: I am sorry but on Live Chat Support, we are not authorize to contact any Department.
n/a: Then I'll just have to make an announcement in the forum and on social media that earthlink customers will not be able to use several services.
n/a: If you really can't help me without having to involve an unrelated person.
n/a: You are a supervisor. you should be able to pass this up the chain.
Ali: I wish I could but that is what in my scope of support/
n/a: OK, well. I'll just have to do what I can from my end then.

So, the bottom line is that earthlink.net customers (who can't receive mail) have to contact earthlink (if they don't know that mail was not delivered, when is that ever going to happen?) from their receiving account to have a problem escalated that neither involves them nor they can do anything about, because it's an issue of earthlink's mail servers refusing connections from other mailservers. That's just crazy.

[access2godzilla]

In such cases, it's best to contact their office directly rather than "technical" support guys, these people are just the most clueless and unhelpful people. Of course, that's possible if their telephone numbers are available.

Once my ISP blocked all well known IRC servers (bad firewall rules), I contacted the support guys, they just transferred the calls from one person to another, including the "supervisor". Next morning, I called up the regional office, and got it solved in 15 minutes.

Back to the topic, are Earthlink customers being notified of this (via some other mechanism, for example, email via another server that's not blocked). Or maybe there are other plans, like moving to some other provider/IP address?

[Moonchild]

Earthlink doesn't post contact information for anything but the general support desk. Well, they list the mailing address for their corporate office but that doesn't really help. Also, I'm not exactly inclined to place a phone call internationally for what is their problem, and foot the bill for that.

What I've done now is dig a little deeper and sent a mail to their business customer care unit, since this is a B2B issue not involving earthlink end-users directly. We'll see after the weekend what they have to say.

Back to the topic, are Earthlink customers being notified of this (via some other mechanism, for example, email via another server that's not blocked).

I will do this in exceptional cases, but I can't do this manually for every failed forum registration.

Or maybe there are other plans, like moving to some other provider/IP address?

I just moved to this provider to get away from an underperforming provider. A different IP address may help, but I don't know how broad their blocked range is - I fear it may be a C net range at least. Since this is a new service and brand new host node of my VPS provider it's got a new net range, probably re-assigned, meaning it may historically have belonged to users that were blocked for good reasons (i.e.: stale firewall rules @earthlink). In any case, it's not my fault that they are blocking me, and thus not my problem to find a solution for beyond reasonable efforts to request delisting (which I have done now).

[JensRex]

I went through something like this with Asus support once, trying to get them to fix a blatantly obvious bug in a BIOS. They insisted that I provide the serial number of the board in question. Which was on a sticker on the bottom of the board, so I had to take apart my mini-ITX machine that I spent the better part of an hour putting together. Yea, not gonna happen. They just wouldn't move the case forward without that information. *sigh*

Another case involving Intel and another BIOS bug, I ran in circles for days with some chat support guy who could barely pass a turing test. Why is the support process almost universally terrible?

[access2godzilla]

it may historically have belonged to users that were blocked for good reasons

The blame may lie elsewhere than EarthLink, then, if it ended up on some blacklist. (Although I assume that you've checked your IP against all the public blacklists.)

[Moonchild]

it may historically have belonged to users that were blocked for good reasons

The blame may lie elsewhere than EarthLink, then, if it ended up on some blacklist. (Although I assume that you've checked your IP against all the public blacklists.)

The blame lies with Earthlink if they have no channel to request delisting from their private lists of stale entries. Seems AOL shares the same/a similar list as aol.com has also blocked mail (I sent them a delisting request as per normal practice).

And yes, the IP comes up clean in all blacklists when checked, with the exception of one "broad scope" list that states it may have incorrect entries because of the broad scoping applied.

[Moonchild]

Thanks to the much more professional attitude of the Business Customer Care unit of Earthlink, any and all mail problems from palemoon.org to earthlink.net should now be solved. Apparently their NOC had set up a "null" route for the server IP (meaning any packets coming from the server would be silently dropped) and that has been removed.

This means that people on earthlink.net should once again be able to register on the forum and receive replies to support/subscription mails, etc.

Of course this still doesn't take away the fact that their regular support desk is utterly useless with the treatment they gave me.