E-mailing via Compuserve (was Editors: Follett/Wensberg ...)

[Eric Van Tassel 101233.342@xxxxxxxx]

On 8 September Robert Hemenway  wrote in part

>I wrote you a rather long letter ... Tried sending it to your
>Compuserve address, but the server reported that it was refused access.

My understanding is that C'serve likes to think its customers mainly write
to one another, so "internal" addresses are simple: 00000,000 (that's a
comma in the middle). To turn this into a grown-up Internet address the
comma has to be changed to a full stop: <00000.000@xxxxxxxx>

It sounds as if, in this case, it's the string of numbers and the absence
of a human tag that's caused the confusion. C'serve assigns (or did a
couple of years ago) just numerical addresses to new subscribers; since I
joined, it's become possible to change the no.string to a literal string,
but I'm too lazy (and have put 101233.342 on various templates etc.), so my
name plays no part in the e-mail address.

Other correspondents haven't reported a lot of difficulty in addressing me.
But anyone who wants to grouse about C'serve's service has my support. I
use it only because I'm on a tight budget (already strained by the fact
that none of the benighted British phone companies has seen fit to offer
unlimited local calling, USA-style) and C'serve is the cheapest provider I
can find. (It's US$10 a month, I believe, and last time I looked the
nearest competitor was about US$16.)

I hope Hemenway will try again. I've e-mailed him direct in the hope that
"Reply" will work for him.

Cheers
Eric Van Tassel