Email to AOL returned (blacklisted?!)

I just moved a VPS over to KH from HG. My site has an opt-in mailing list for which press releases and other alerts are sent out. I sent out an email to my members yesterday and to my surprise I received a LOT of mail bounced back. I determined that the bounces were only from users with AOL email addresses.

I checked the IP address that my VPS is on and it does not appear to be on any of the blacklists. Has anyone run in to this before with AOL? I submitted a request to AOL to whitelist my IP and it was denied because I don't have a 30 day history of sending mail to AOL users. I'm not sure how I can do that if they are getting bounced in the first place!!! Who uses AOL anymore!?

Here's an example of the error:

SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
host mailin-01.mx.aol.com [205.188.155.110]: 521 5.2.1 :
(CON:B1)

I have learned that according to AOL, that error is:

• 554 CON:B1
  • The IP address has been blocked due to a spike in unfavorable e-mail statistics.

 

AOL is such a pain in the butt though I don't mass mail to there system this article may shed some light on this.
http://www.marketingtechblog.com/aol-postmasters/