Email wierdness

[Vaughn Treude]

Hello all:
    Here's a wierd one for you Internet gurus.   I've been having strange
problems with me email.  Let me give you the background...
    I was formerly with Qwest DSL, using their ISP.  Around the beginning of
the year (I think), they said they were forcing everyone to MSN, so I signed
onto Getnet.  At the time, I was also subscribed to PLUG.  Since I too busy
with my work to keep up with the PLUG traffic, I decided to unsubscribe for
a while.  But since I'd changed email addresses, I simply neglected to
resubscribe on the new address.  I meant to unsubscribe from PLUG on my
previous address (tv6@qwest.net), but I'd forgotten my password, and I
didn't think the "email the password to yourself" option would work anymore,
so I neglected to do anything.  I figured the messages would bounce and the
system would remove tv6 - forgive me for taking the lazy way out, I hope it
didn't cause the system any problems.
    Anyway, a couple of months ago I resubscribed to PLUG under my new
address, treude@genet.net.  Then a couple of weeks ago I stopped getting
PLUG messages.  I complained to Getnet, and the support guy asked for the
ISP of PLUG's server.  I sent that to them, and never heard back from them.
I was also unable to get through to Getnet by  phone; I'd always get put on
indefinite hold, or leave messages no one would return.  (I'm about ready to
dump those guys.)  Brian Cluff at PLUG suspected that Getnet was somehow
accidentally filtering the PLUG traffic as  spam.  I let this problem go,
because I had bigger problems (my old contract is up, and I'm trying to find
new work.)  But about two days ago, all my newsletter email stopped coming -
Tech Oasis, WebPro News, Arizona Tech Council, everything.  I can send test
messages to myself, and I had a colleague send me one as well, all of which
worked.  But it scares me that I'm missing something important.
    Normally I use Kmail on my Mandrake 8 system.  But as a test, I switched
over to Outlook on my Windows 2K box.  I discovered that I had neglected to
remove my "tv6" Qwest mail account.  I also discovered, to my great
surprise, that I was receiving mail on that account - those missing PLUG
messages, and others I should have received, like some auto-responses I got
for submitting my website's URL to some search engines.  These messages
appear to be coming through pop.phnx.qwest.net.  How is this possible?
Could it be that Kmail's configuration is hosed, and Outlook is just
deceiving me?  I haven't been paying Qwest's ISP fees, and I changed my
forwarded alias vaughn@nakota-software.com over to Getnet.  So how can they
come through Qwest's POP?  Is it possible that Getnet is now filering email
from my web host (westhost.com) which does the email forwarding for my
alias?  (But I did send a message to myself as nakota, and that came
through.)  It definitely doesn't make sense that I'm missing the
autorespones.  I did also set up the Getnet mail server on Qwest, but when I
check it, it gives me nothing, and when I do a receive from the Qwest
account, I gest messages.  (Since Outlook also does automatic message
receiving, it's hard to be 100% sure.)  Anybody have a guess as to what
could be going on here?
    More importantly, anybody have a suggestion for a better DSL ISP?  (I
prefer not to go with cable, so no suggestions for Cox please!)

In extreme puzzlement,
Vaughn Treude
Nakota Software, Inc.