I used to be with AOL (had been for more than 10 years - is this some kind of record?) but I sh@tcanned them last year because of the email issues.
Although their support line people either pretended not to or genuinely did not know it, I eventually extracted an admission from them that AOL policy (as well as that of some other ISPs) is to block all outgoing email on Port 25 in order to prevent bandwidth from being consumed by compromised bot computers sending out reams of spam. This effectively prevented me from using my own-domain email address, since AOL's own SMTP servers will only handle email traffic sent under an AOL screen name.
BEags and Towers, may not be exactly the same problem but I did find a solution - signed up with fast.co.uk and am now a happy bunny once more (as well as saving £7 a month). Never regretted dumping AOL for a minute.
Gadget 