Does this fall under....

"Covering your ass" or "No clue, whatsoever"?

Let me explain :-)
Mike hasn't had any new email since January 1st, but there are people out there that swear left and right, that they have emailed him.
I realize I haven't seen anything coming in either, so I chat with Earthlink.

First I ask my question about why? and get transferred to another person.... I'm assuming that the question is not understood, and move on.
With the second person, I explain again, and ask if she can see where the mail gets stuck, because we are not receiving it..... I get 3 questions back. While I'm still typing the answers, the questions get repeated, so to be courteous, I answer the questions twice.(Who knows maybe the questions are parked in 2 different places, right? LOL) The answers require some checking on the other end, followed by checking on my end. At MY end, everything is just as I left it.... On their end, there is nothing, other than that the email gets picked up by an unknown mailprogram, and deleted from the server. I explain that we don't have it set up that way, and can she see the IP address, retrieve the messages somehow, follow the papertrail etc. No on all accounts.
My next question upon further review, logical to only me, is: So my email is hacked, and I can't do anything about it, because you don't know where it goes?
To my astonishment, this is the answer I received:

You emails is not hacked. However your email address is set up on an email program that you are not aware of

To which I question: Is that not the same thing? And promptly get the reply, "No, not at all! There is just an email program you don't know about accessing your email."  WTF????

I explain, that as soon as I have ANY email-addresses stored in my online contacts, the email starts sending out spam.... so something isn't right, and hasn't been right for a while?  Can Earthlink block my emails from being forwarded?
Answer: Everything looks good, and no they can't, I have to "not fill in a forwarding address in the preferences, delete the one that is there and take off the command to delete from server after forwarding. It is not something on their end, but it has to do with the unknown mail program."

Ok, here is where I get frustrated....
I told them:
1- We don't have it forwarded
2- We only delete from the server manually, as we go along, when we're done with the emails
3- There are no email addresses in the "to forward to" fields, so there is nothing to take out

I asked them:
1- How can my email start forwarding all of a sudden to an email program that is not known to you (or me) and the account not be hacked?
2- How can all the forwarding email fields be empty, and email still forwards?
3- How can I have "delete from server" NOT activated, but emails disappear after being picked up by "an unknown email program"?
4- How come you can't see what is going on? Don't you have some kind of tracking system?

The answer?  Change your password every couple of days, and deactivate the unknown email program!

ARE YOU KIDDING ME !?!?!?

At this time, after checking, she acknowledges that between January 1st, and 10 minutes ago (!) there have been 30 messages forwarded and deleted. The last 7 were taken WHILE SHE IS CHECKING THE ACCOUNT AND SHE DIDN'T NOTICE!?!?!?

At 3 in the morning, I just threw in the towel..... I couldn't hear one more time that everything was just hunkiedorie, except for the unknown program, and having to change my friggin' password every couple of days until who-ever is doing this, moves on....... So I bade her good night, changed my password, had a shot of Kahlua and went to bed.

There is one thing I learned from this conversation though..... I wanted to go into IT, but I may be too ??? (inquisitive, smart, interested in doing the job right)  to do the job. No offense intended to the people that work IT and do a good job, just some food for thought intended for people who don't give a hoot, and really shouldn't be let loose on any kind of customer service platform.

Needless to say,  I'm thinking we're changing companies! we're paid up till February 1st, so I have 2 weeks to get this done.

Any thoughts on how to fix this are welcome, by the way :-)

Don't forget to hug a loved one, and change your passwords, OFTEN :-)