Lycos delivery problems

Lycos has had some ongoing problems this week. Their alert on the issue says:

Some Lycos Mail users may be experiencing poor performance of their email service, including slow loading times while viewing or responding to emails and slower than usual mail delivery. The Lycos team is aware of these issues and are working to resolve the problems for all users. […] Additional equipment for Lycos Mail service has arrived and we are rolling it into service for all users. This will continue over the weekend and into next week. You should see improvements soon with your mail.  We are continuing to work hard to get this resolved for all of users and we are very sorry for any problems that you have experience thus far.

A number of delivery monitoring companies are showing slow delivery to Lycos addresses over the past week. It’s likely to take a little longer for this to resolve, but should get better as hardware gets installed.
I became aware of this because one of my clients started getting worried about poor delivery at Lycos. There was a problem, but it had nothing to do with my client’s mail. There isn’t a reputation problem, there isn’t a content problem, the recipient mailserver is just under a bit of strain.

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It doesn't matter what you say

“What should we tell the ISP?” is a frequent question from my customers. The answer is pretty simple. It doesn’t usually matter what you tell the ISP. What matters are your actions.
If a sender is having delivery problems then the solution is not to call the ISP and talk to them about why the sender’s mail should not be delivered to the bulk folder. Instead, the solution is to evaluate the email and the address acquisition process and the list hygiene process. Identify where potential problems are and then resolve those problems.
Typically, the ISPs won’t need to be contacted. The changes to the email will register and delivery will improve. In some cases, particularly when there’s been some major mistake, contacting the ISP and explaining the mistake and what steps have been taken to stop the mistake from happening in the future may help resolve the issue faster. But if nothing has changed, then there’s no reason for the ISP to expect anything to change.
It doesn’t matter what you say. It matters what you do.

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This is why the ISPs throw up their hands at senders

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This is exactly the kind of behaviour that drives ISPs bonkers about senders. The ISP has sent a perfectly understandable rejection: “5.7.1: too many recipients this session.” And instead of spending some time and energy on the sender side troubleshooting, instead of spending some of their own money to work out what’s going on, they fall back on asking the ISPs to explain what they should do differently.
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No. No. No.
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Senders have been begging ISPs for years “just tell us what you want and we’ll bother you less.” In this case the ISP was extremely clear about what they want: they want fewer recipients per connection. But the ESP delivery person is still looking for a contact so they can talk to the ISP to understand it better.
This is why the ISPs get so annoyed with senders. They’re tired of having to do the sender’s job.

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Delivery resources

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