America Online has been receiving a lot of bad press of late because its users have had serious mail delays - sometimes amounting to several days between receipt of a letter from the Internet and passing it on to the desired recipient. Two friends of mine run a start-up play-by-mail company, and unaware of the bad press, they called AOL customer support for this very reason (several days' delay of email makes PBM games unplayable, for all intents and purposes). The AOL customer service rep. said that he didn't understand why there were problems, because "when I run the AOL interface, and when I type my mail in and press the 'send' button, it vanishes, and it's just gone! It's off to the Internet! Maybe you should telephone the Internet and talk to their tech support people." Yes, the mark of a truly professional Internet access provider...
(From the "Rest" of RHF)