Incident Number / Tracking Number: 2170594, 2188405
In April 2007, a failure occurred in one of AOL's servers which caused failures in certain AOL-hosted web pages on the users.aol.com server. This is a report of that bug.Status:
Still not fixed. America Online is still ignoring this breakdown, 1 month after I first reported it [more below]Forwarding Notice
This bug report is written in terms which your programmers will understand. The problem is of a technical nature, and cannot be resolved by front-line customer service staff. Therefore, direct forwarding of this bug report to the America Online programming dept. is requested.Problem Type
Breakdown of advertised feature.Feature Affected -- Background
AOL provides its customers the ability to make web pages having fill-in forms. (If you are not familiar with this feature, please see AOL's description of this feature at http://members.aol.com/wwwadmin/email/email.htm.) When the "Submit" button is pressed, AOL's server is supposed to take information from the form and send it as an e-mail, to the form's owner. This is called "form-to-email processing."Feature Affected -- Specifics
Pressing "Submit" no longer causes an e-mail to be sent. The e-mail never arrives.History
I have used this AOL feature continuously since 1997. The breakdown occurred in several of my web pages simultaneously this week (April 2007), even though I had not changed them. Therefore this rules out any possibility that the bug might be mine and not AOL's. Problem First Appeared: a few days ago Problem First Proven to Exist: April 10, 2007 Feature was working: April 7, 2007 Date Reported to AOL: April 10, 2007Cause
Unknown. Rebooting the FTP server might fix it?Symptoms and Demonstration
The problem is easy to see and understand. Please see AOL's description of this feature at http://members.aol.com/wwwadmin/email/email.htm. When you press the Submit button, the AOL user "wwwadmin" should receive an e-mail. You may also test my version of this form, at http://members.aol.com/JEBrown800/Contact/index.html. Each time you press the Send button, an e-mail should arrive in my in-box.
Closing Comments
This bug constitutes a reduction in the user experience and a reduction in AOL's level of quality. This problem is simple in nature and is easy to see and understand. All the information necessary to understand the problem is included in this page and the linked pages. Therefore, if this bug is not corrected by April 13, I will report it to AOL management.Time to Investigate and Write This Bug Report:
About 90 minutes
Sincerely, (mr.) Software Engineer and Tester (for hire) Testing Pays! http://users.aol.com/JEBrown800 Los Alamos, New Mexico USA , BS Computer Science, has been a software engineer for over 20 years and an AOL user since 1996.
Caution
Note: As in every company, it's possible you'll delegate this bug report to a new employee. If you do, please keep an eye on his or her progress. New employees sometimes have little experience with customer support and service, and sometimes find it easier to blame the customer than to fully investigate the problem. Such behavior is unprofessional. My policy on unprofessional behavior is to report it to AOL management. So, if you delegate this bug report to a new employee, please see that he or she has adequate supervision. This is an AOL breakdown. Any attempt to shift blame onto the customer will be regarded as unprofessional and will be forwarded at once to AOL management, along with the name of the offending employee. I'm sorry to have to put it in those words, but I have years of experience dealing with certain non-technical AOL employees who treated me that way.
Status: Unresolved + over 30 days delinquent
Issues:
AOL complaints, AOL problems, AOL breakdowns, reviews of AOL, how AOL treats its customers
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