Emails to hotmail blocked - anything we can do?

12,000+ hotmail customers are upset with us

[limitup]

We have over 12,000+ customers and/or users that registered with us using a Hotmail address ...

Recently we found out that all of our order confirmations, responses to customer inquiries, and any other email sent to our customers/users with a hotmail address is not getting through to them.

The emails don't bounce or appear in the recipient's junk folders - they just disappear into a black hole.

We do not spam, have never spammed, and never will spam. All I can imagine is that due to the volume of email we send to hotmail users their system thinks we are spamming.

I don't want to raise my blood pressure by talking about how stupid this is and the retarded way big sites deal with the spam problem ... at this point I just want to know if there's anything we can do about this?

I heard something about a new "bonded sender" program where you pay a fee and Hotmail/MSN will let all your emails through. Man, what a racket ... a total ripoff for the legit business owner ... but we might be tempted in doing it depending on the cost.

[Essex_boy]

I was going to suggest the bonded sender, looks like Micro$oft do it again!

[limitup]

I just checked out Ironport's bonded sender program and it doesn't seem that bad. We send less than 500,000 emails per month so it wouldn't cost that much.

The thing that I'm concerned with is the allowed complaint rate of only 1 complaint per million messages. That seems riciculous! I've operated double opt-in ezines before and we would get a lot more than 1 complaint per 1,000,000 messages sent, just because people forget they subscribed, etc. etc.

Does anyone here currently participate in Ironport's bonded sender program, and can you share your experience so far?

[limitup]

What I forgot to mention is that after your allowed complaint of 1 per 1,000,000 messages, you get hit $20 per complaint. That seems like it can add up pretty quick ...

[jweighell]

I have this exact problem with AOL. Every message I send to someone with an AOL account just disappears, with no indication that it didn't get there.

I actually use Hotmail for my personal email, but I've disabled the Spam filters as it was filtering emails I wanted.

[jim_w]

What I hate is the black hole thing. I remove names from my mailing list when they bounce, unless the route to the server and the like is the problem. Without a notice that the mail wasn't delivered, I can't remove the addresses.

[mattglet]

As far as AOL goes, just request to be put on their "white list". We send out a daily newsletter to our subscribers (about 15,000) and we found that AOL was rejecting us. We simply filled out their white list request form, they reviewed our site, and we now have a 100% pass-through rate on their servers.

If you are legitimate business sending legitimate emails, you should have no problem being added.

-Matt

[limitup]

Wow I never knew about that. Where do you find the request form to be put on their whitelist? Thanks!

[mattglet]

AOL Bulk Sender Request Form [postmaster.aol.com]

Hope this helps.

-Matt

[Sunshyn]

Thanks mattglet

Anyone know if there's a different form for those of us who never send bulk mail but are just tired of their emails concerning customer orders being blocked? Otherwise, I guess it couldn't hurt to fill out this one, could it?

[sun818]

How about building an "order history/status" page on your web store?

[Vivi_Labo]

Please check out:

deliver-my-mail.sitesell.com/

It's not allowed to make links here, so type http:// before above domain name - not www.

Vivi

[Sunshyn]

How about building an "order history/status" page on your web store?

Had one for over a year now and still get too many upset customers complaining because they "did not get the email" telling them about the problem.

[limitup]

Yeah and it's not just order confirmations. It's also password reminders, important announcements and updates, responses to customer inquiries, etc. which is a real drag and drives support costs way up.