Sharing common mail account with multiple users on the same Mac

My parents recently switch to an iMac from a PC where they were using AOL. They had the PC set up with two users accounts and they did all their mail/internet using AOL.
With the new iMac, I wanted to set it up in the same way as the PC so I set them up with two user accounts and showed them how they can use Fast User Switching to switch back and forth. This works well for them because my father has mostly business stuff on the computer and my mom has mostly projects and they like to keep them separate.
Where they are getting into problems is that I have them both set up with Mail under their respective accounts to access their common AOL account. What seems to be happening is that in some cases one user will get a new mail whereas the other user might never see it. I had them configured using IMAP which I thought would be okay since the mail is stored on the server but now I am not so sure.
I'm thinking that it might help to set Keep copies of messages for offline viewing in the advanced tab to Don't keep copies of any messages, but I wasn't sure. Is a setup like this possible? Or is it just a recipe for trouble?

What you’re observing is probably an AOL issue, not a Mail issue. AOL automatically purges mail from the server after some time (just a few days if the messages have already been read). There is nothing you can do about it other than moving/copying those messages somewhere else to avoid losing them.
You may also want to read the following article. It’s somewhat outdated, but still useful to understand how AOL’s IMAP access works:
Accessing the AOL Mail System using IMAP - An Unofficial Guide

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