AOL Email Delays Due to Glitch

ABC news reported...

Millions of AOL users encountered delays sending and receiving e-mail for several hours Thursday before the company identified and fixed a software glitch.

AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said the company was still investigating the cause of the problems, which lasted from about 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Millions of messages had been stuck in a queue, he said, as users faced difficulties accessing their accounts, particularly through AOL's Web interfaces.

"Currently all queued e-mails sent by AOL members and individual Internet users during the temporary hiatus are being successfully delivered to e-mail inboxes," Graham said in a statement. "There is no longer any member impact on the AOL service from this rare and isolated incident."

The glitch affected both AOL.com e-mail for paid subscribers and its free AIM.com offering, which the Time Warner Inc. Internet unit began offering a year ago to lure nonsubscribers to its ad-supported sites.

As of March 31, AOL had 18.6 million subscribers in the United States. According to comScore Media Metrix, AOL had 43 million active users of its AIM instant-messaging service in April, all of whom are eligible for AIM.com e-mail accounts.