@ Ron Gaspard -- just like john2222, "I feel your pain". And just to join the club, I have been in I.T. and tech. support for over 30 years, including experience in operating internet-facing servers. I get what Cox is dealing with. I am just stunned with how badly they are dealing with it. I have surmised elsewhere in many of the threads that are being generated by this that Cox either bought third-party anti-spam software or hired a third-party service to do anti-spam filtering, and nobody at Cox has/had a clue about fine-tuning it. They likely went with default settings not appreciating how aggressive they were, and are probably being asked to pay a hefty consulting fee to the anti-spam vendor to tweak the software or fine-tune it for them. That's the corporate way -- when things go bad, be sure to have a third-party vendor to point the finger at. That's the way you protect your job.
And I think you are absolutely correct -- all people are not being treated the same, but each user is being treated differently. Not necessarily in a malicious way, but in a negligent, and arguably stupid way. I, and most likely you, and quite possibly john2222, have developed a "spam reputation score" to the anti-spam robots -- not a human, but the anti-spam software itself. Why? Because we send "spam looking" email to multiple recipients via Outlook (or Thunderbird, or whatever client you wish) in what appears to the robot to be an automated, bulk way, i.e., "spammy", so suspicious. The robot adds/increments a "score" to your IP address. If your 'automated' emails contain hyperlinks, your "score" goes up. If your email subject contains certain characters (like exclamation points -- a common spammer thing to get your attention), your "score" goes up. If you send a lot of these distributions, your "score" goes up. When your score gets high enough, your IP address gets blocked -- you can no longer send mail.
This works great for people who have become infected with malware. Nips the installed spambots right in the bud, and saves Cox from getting blacklisted by other email exchangers . . . because they have robots of their own watching for this exact thing.
It doesn't work so great for non-infected, non-spamming email users -- you know, like you, me, and john2222 (and the hundreds of other users in the other threads on this -- and the possible (likely?) thousands of others who never use Internet forums and merely suffer in silence).
OK, I'll admit it -- here comes a bizarre theory. When you have your lawyer looking into this, have her or him look into an age discrimination angle. The very pleasant Tier II young woman I had on the telephone was, to me, a young woman. I'm gonna roll with twenty-something I asked her point blank, "Do you never send an email to 10 people?". Without hesitation or reserve, she answered, "No". That gave me pause. I was actually not expecting that answer. I thought I had laid a trap. So it sinks in . . . she's a twenty-something. They don't use EMAIL anymore! SMS and Facebook and Snapchat! Hahahahahahahaha! I'm an ANACHRONISM!!! Hahahahahahaha!
Except it's really not that funny.
Oh, and a quick after-the-fact edit -- the argument that email is "free" is specious. It is part of a "bundle" we are PAYING for. Basic contract law. They offered, we accepted, and we forked over money. Contract.
