I have a domain hosted at Bluehost.com, and email forwards are not making it to aol.com users. DNS and MX records are configured per Bluehost's instructions.
Bluehost has assigned me an IP Address. I have an A record email.[domain].com pointing to the assigned IP address.
Forwarding works to other domains.
After two hours on chat, I never succeeded in explaining the issue to them such that they understood. On the other hand, I had two hours to research the problem on my own.
I have a MX record, mail.domain.com pointing to an A record of mail.domaincom with my (assigned) IP address. That IP address, however, does not reverse resolve (PTR) back to my IP address, but instead to x-x-x-x.unifiedlayer.com. (And not surprisingly I can't modify reverse DNS for unifiedlayer.com, nor will bluehost adjust it for you). Furthermore, when I telnet to mail.domain.com:25 the mail server responds that it is in fact box[nnn].bluehost.com
So I have two potential non-standard mail responses that are likely to flag as potential causes for spam.
The solution is to find which boxxxx.bluehost.com is yours. Instead of pointing your MX record at mail.domain.com, instead point your MX record to the correct boxnnn.bluehost.com. That server has the correct forward/reverse DNS, and will be the correct response in the mail headers, making your email a lot more acceptable to spam filters.
An additional note. I only use Bluehost.com for mail forwarding, with no actual mailboxes created. To get to the email configuration screen (which contains the correct boxnnn.bluehost.com for your account) you must have at least one actual mailbox configured.
