COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN:
Verizon misroutes some residential e-mail addresses without warning; no fix in sight
THE SITUATION: Back in 2017, Verizon announced the shutdown of their e-mail services, to focus on their web, entertainment, and mobile communications platform. To ensure that customers had access to their mail, contacts and calendar information, they arranged to migrate customers on @verizon.net e-mail accounts to AOL.COM.
SAME ADDRESS, DIFFERENT HOME: Neither Verizon nor AOL were promising consumers new e-mail accounts, but they did allow them to KEEP their Verizon e-mail addresses, while storing their messages on AOL's servers. assuming they migrated by a certain time. This had been working well for nearly 5 years.
ROOT FOR THE HOME TEAM? Sometime in April 2022, without warning, messages sent to anything @ verizon.net e-mail addresses began BOUNCING BACK to the sender as un-deliverable. Further analysis of the bounce-back message revealed that the domain of the e-mail address had been changed - AFTER BEING SENT - to outlook.com, which for most former verizon.net users did not exist.
CORPORATE POLICY: The only e-mails which remain valid on the domain Verizon.net are ones used by Verizon CORPORATE EMPLOYEES, as they still use "Microsoft Exchange" e-mail systems hosting the Outlook.com domain. From testing we have done and verified, if you get an e-mail bounce-back from an e-mail address that references outlook.com yet you intended to reach VERIZON.NET or AOL.COM AOL.COM, please check with the recipient through other means - this is likely a false positive, albeit a strange one.
KEEPING YOU INFORMED: We will continue to monitor the situation and update this page as appropriate. You are welcome to comment by click the link below.