CAN AOL REALLY GUARANTEE DELIVERY?

AOL charging postage on e-mail messages doesn't surprise me (“Put Up or Shut Up,” March). Sportsmith's call center staff collects, on average, 3% AOL e-mail addresses [so the company can send] order confirmations and order-tracking information to customers.

However, almost every AOL e-mail address comes back as non-deliverable, so [those] addresses are purged from our system. Charging postage on AOL e-mail is nothing more than another revenue channel to boost AOL's bottom line.

Lets face it, cable and phone companies are offering high-speed Internet service for almost the same price as dial-up service, [and that's] hurting AOL. So AOL is going to penalize legitimate companies for guaranteed delivery?

I would like to see further details [in Direct] about how AOL plans to guarantee delivery past the spam folders and filters. Nothing works this simply, and every database marketer knows this is true when it comes to implementing services like this one.

Troy Mosley
Marketing Manager
Sportsmith LLC
Tulsa, OK