I Cringely Is Required Reading, K?

The guy posts one (often long) post weekly, but each is a must read IMHO. An example that affects many of you.

The trend continued so my friend, who has long been in the networking business, himself, started running experiments. He sent messages from other accounts to his Earthlink address, to his aliased Blackberry address, and to his Gmail account. For every 10 messages sent, 1-2 arrived in his Earthlink mailbox, 1-2 (not necessarily the SAME 1-2) on his Blackberry, and all 10 arrived with Gmail.

Swimming upstream through Earthlink customer support, my buddy finally found a technical contact who freely acknowledged the problem. Since June, he was told, Earthlink's mail system has been so overloaded that some users have been missing up to 90 percent of their incoming e-mail. It isn't bounced back to senders; it just disappears. And Earthlink hasn't mentioned the problem to these affected customers unless they complain. The two groups affected are those who get their mail with an Earthlink-hosted domain and those with aliased e-mail addresses like my friend's Blackberry.

What the fuck? They can't handle the traffic so they just trash it? Is that the sort of service anyone signed up for? As Cringely asks: What about those whose livelihoods depend on emails? They have no idea how many clients can't reach them.

Do I need to suggest you dump Earthlink if you use them? Just asking.

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