Shaw mail-filter blocking a Microsoft Live ID: AUP#BL

[mdk]

Today, I had a very unsatisfactory "online chat" with a Shaw Agent.

My friend's E-mail ID: <private_information_removed@live.com> to *ANY* "@shaw.ca" ID is being rejected with the "AUP#BL" (Appropriate Usage Policy # Black List) code.  

So, my friend cannot send anything to any Shaw E-mail ID.  Ouch!

With my friend beside me, during the chat session, we were unable to get that Shaw Agent to "unblock" the ID.

Finally, the Agent relayed the message:

As per [Shaw/Rogers] support team, you need to contact Microsoft and then Microsoft needs to send in the escalation to us [to remove her  ID from Shaw's black-list.

[MICROSOFT] don't need to unblock anything on their end.

It's just that the escalation needs to come from them.

Such a weird policy!

We were told that we needed to find a Microsoft web-page that had details on how to contact Microsoft, and then to convince Microsoft to contact Shaw/Rogers.  That was very unhelpful!

So, while the first-level Agent followed their training, e.g., interact with us, and escalate something that the Agent could not  immediately resolve, the second-level "support team" dropped the ball. Shame on them.

Another message relayed from the support team indicated that they could not find any evidence of "blocked" E-mail. Huh?  They must have been looking in the WRONG location.

I did send them the full message pointing to the Shaw mail-server as the source of the "AUP#BL' message. That was not sufficient for them to unblock her ID.

In summary, very unsatisfactory, and a waste of an hour(!) of my time.

[mdk]

I suppose that I could setup Outlook on a different computer, putting my friend's "@live.com" ID into the "FROM:" field, and setting "smtp.shaw.ca" as the "outgoing mail-server".  So, when sending a message, the "other company" to request to send the "escalation" message would be the owner of the "smtp.shaw.ca" mail-server, namely Shaw. So, it would be Shaw sending the unblock request to Shaw.  Really strange configuration, and I doubt that the Shaw Support team would understand this configuration, and I doubt that they would "unblock".

I suppose that I could configure Outlook with two "identities" -- the "@live.com" one and an "@shaw.ca" one. So, sending from one identity would be black-listed, while sending from the other identify would be allowed.

But, that's a lot of hoops to jump through, to show to Shaw the strangeness of their policy.