Hello Mr. Wittenberg,

You have reached Bell Internet Services, my name is Joseph and I appreciate the opportunity to respond.

I apologize for the inconvenience this issue may have caused you. You are right, your email address tomrsn@sympatico.ca is still active. The reason is that the database linked to your selfcare tool is down.I suggest therefore to try it later.

From Sympatico to Uriel

From: Sympatico Member Services
To: Uriel Wittenberg
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 10:49 AM
Subject: Your recent call

We're listening

Dear URIEL WITTENBERG,

Thank you for letting us know about the technical problems you were experiencing. Bell Canada values your business and is committed to providing our Sympatico customers with excellence in customer service. We're continually evaluating our business and looking for more efficient ways to serve our customers. Your continued support helps us to achieve this goal.

If you feel your concerns were not addressed directly, or if you ever have another question, don't hesitate to let us know. That's why 310-SURF (310-7873) exists. It's there to help us help you.

As a special thank you for being such a loyal customer, we would like to offer you $10 of FREE downloads from the Sympatico Music Store, powered by Puretracks(TM). Just click on the link below to receive it. http://memberservices.sympatico.ca/cgi-bin/ca.exe?wts:pid=60&sid=eg&epid=70988266&a=1275182500&b=153101

Thanks again,
Your representatives
at Sympatico Member Services

EPILOGUE

All communications about this issue up to the last message shown above were via email. Waits, holds, and general inefficiency normally deter at least this customer from wishing to phone the company. But after the last message above, on May 20, I phoned the Bell Vice President's Group, which is supposed to provide special assistance for overcoming obstacles. I spoke with a fellow called Roger who readily grasped the problem and said he'd transfer me to the "executive office for complaints," where they had the power to initiate a technical investigation into the issue. The transfer brought me to an automatic attendant. I left a message and await callback.

As of now, messages sent to tomrsn@sympatico.ca still produce no bounceback.

Kevin, above, said he had received an "invalid recipient" message upon sending to tomrsn@sympatico.ca. To explain, that is because he was sending from Sympatico's own email server. I get the same result when using Sympatico's server to send a test message. On sending from any server other than Sympatico's, however, no such message results. Of course, most Internet users in the world aren't Sympatico customers and don't use a Sympatico server, so none of them would receive an "invalid address" notification on sending to tomrsn@sympatico.ca.