Bill,

I wasn't talking about opening emails. I was talking about vulnerabilities of ISP's. AOL stunk 12 years ago when I first logged on through their dial up just to see what it was like. If your broadband provider doesn't require you to have anything to do with AOL, disable every avenue from AOL through your broadband service to your computer. Remove everything AOL from your hard drive, but do so only with AOL removal tools. Trying to pluck their poison from your machine without knowing which files have implanted themselves into your operating system will often result in a computer that will blink the on light when you turn it on, but won't do anything else.

Try MSN or Earthlink or NetZero or PeoplePC or SBC Yahoo or anything other than AOL. I seriously suspect AOL is the root cause of your problem, and the primary reason for eBay taking what might appear to be a negligent path in solving your problem. eBay knows AOL sucks too.