New guy here, but before I start enjoying your forum, I have a beef (medium well with a side of fries).
I tried joining with my bellsouth.net email, but NEVER received any reply. Not the inbox on my email client, not the inbox on webmail, not the SPAM box anywhere. I joined with gmail, and am happy to finally get her, but what’s up with bellsouth.net?
Most likely a problem with bellsouth.net. We don’t require a particular mail server to sign up here, nor due we refuse to send to any mail server. I’d go serve your beef to them.
Thanks. This happened when I signed up with Linux Mint a couple of years ago. I convinced Bellsouth to stop blocking the Mint site, but I’m not going to fight that battle again. Just happy that Gmail works.
John
That sounds hellish.
No, no I don’t want my ISP to filter my mail, not even to weed out what they think is spam.
I am more than capable of filtering it myself, both with tools and with simply just deleting unwanted messages.
Oh worse that that. Bellsouth was actually blocking traffic from Linux Mint (and Lubuntu, apparently) at the domain level so that the admins at Mint’s site could send a confirmation email to me, I’d never get it, and Mint didn’t know it was rejected. And no one knew about it until I raised enough hell on the Bellsouth forums to where a real Bellsouth company rep finally replied and confessed that they don’t like/trust certain domains and even site names. They eventually allowed Linux Mint into the trust circle.
It took weeks. Much simpler to use Gmail.
I think what @KGIII was getting at (certainly how I would feel) is that is not a “service” I would want to pay for. If they are going to insist on shoving that down the throats of their customers, it might be a good idea to move to some other service. They’ll probably just keep doing what they feel like they want to do, though, given that they’re a huge conglomerate (including Cingular, YellowPages, Lionsgate, AT&T and all of WarnerMedia, including HBO, Cinemax, Warner Bros., DC Comics [!], and New Line Cinema). Admittedly, I’m not sure Google is much better.
I am fortunate to live in Maine. We have some good consumer rights.
Because of the regulations, I can use any DSL provider that wants to serve me - and the company that actualy owns the lines has to let them provide it. DSL is still carried on copper and the copper lines have some pretty decent protections from back in the day when they broke up the TelCo monopolies.
So, if my ISP did crap like that, I’d just bail and pick a different provider.
No, neither fiber nor cable is an option. I’m okay with that.
I did dump Bellsouth/AT&T DSL. It was crappy slow, very expensive, and not a good option in this work from home environment. So I got a 500Mbs service from another provider in this city where I live. It’s awesome and half the price of the old, long gone 6Mbs DSL line.
I still have my Bellsouth email, it’s a free side effect of having a landline that serves little purpose other than constantly ringing with junk callers, political ads, and scammers. That email’s one good purpose is to keep me connected with old friends, new friends, and friends I never even knew I had 
(re: original post)
I dug into the mail logs. This is definitely Bell South doing some stupidity with their email handling. Nothing specific to our site though, nor having anything to do with our site specifically.
Just a poor quality email service - this is why I do not condone the use of ISP mail services if you can avoid it.
That’s kinda what I thought, since it happened over on Linux Mint, also. Other than that, Bellsouth email has been pretty stable and supportive (relatively). I already dropped the internet plan I had for years, and picked up a different ISP with a MUCH better plan, but I’ll keep the email until I drop my landline 
Well I am in the process of moving away from Gmail as well. Just look at the censorship Google is doing at Youtube. I don’t think it will take long till they start monitoring (and deleting) incoming emails to Gmail as well (If they haven’t already). I only trust privacy oriented email providers. I am glad you managed to join though 
Actually, I’ve had my Bellsouth account for years, and Gmail for a few years less. Gmail has never given me a problem, and as far as Google goes there are no guarantees for privacy or individualism on the internet,anywhere. I manage my settings as best I can, and just not worry too much about some of the idiocy. If I give up one of the two, it will likely be Bellsouth. I get maybe 20 calls a day on the land line, and maybe 2 - 3 per WEEK a friend or family is making an actual call. The rest of it is crappy political calls, and scammers.
I can control and block calls on my cell, but have almost zero control on the more expensive landline.
I already have an abundance of web hosting, including a small reseller site. For my important mail, I just host it ‘myself.’ It’s in quotes because the server is managed.
It’s cheap to get a domain and some hosting, and these days cPanel (or any panel) makes it really easy to manage setup and handling. You can even set up a catchall address so you can use BusinessName@yourdomain.tld and filter it to a default address. Then, you can see if they sold your address and/or apply filters based on the names.