Forum Moderators: phranque
You apparently are on Hotmail's. They have recently begun much stronger filtering of incoming e-mail, and most questionable mail no longer winds up in the bulk mail folder - it just never arrives. Try sending the same mail from a different acount/IP combination and see if it gets through.
The only way I know of getting round it is as suggested, send emails on another isp.
Hotmail will ignore you, they have enough problems to bother putting you on their whitelist.
From our past experince, hotmail bans our IP/Account tempararily if it detects 100nds of e-mails going to hotmail from us within 24 hours or so. Once we are
banned all the e-mails we send to hotmail simply disapears.
But, as I said, this ban is temporary(At least in our case). After we stop sending e-mails and start fresh again on the next day, hotmail accepts the e-mails.
Why would we be? The ONLY emails we send out are order confirmations, "password reminder" type emails, and responses to customer inquiries. That's it. Why in the world would they block us?
This seems like a serious problem since there isn't much we can do here. Most people are NOT going to go through the trouble of setting up another email address just to use our service ... hmm ... any ideas for me?
It does get through if sent some other way. I think they use various ways to determine that "hey this email was sent automatically by XYZ server - it's probably spam" and then just junk it. That's the only thing I can think of but thats ridiculous because there are 1000s of legitimate sites that have legitimate reasons for sending emails via automated methods.
It is a big issue, and is about to get bigger.
Do hotmail have notes on their site about which lists they use?
Not an ideal solution but a possible one...
Not really. Most sophisticated anti-spammers don't bounce mail - they just quietly delete it. They don't want the end user - in their mind, a spammer - to know what the problem is.
Makes it a lot harder on the spammer - but also on legitimate senders as well.
There have been big problems recently, compounded by the mydoom worm, and it's possible to get blacklisted by isps without being on spamcop's blacklist.
Don't assume it's your domain to blame: it could be your isp, or one of the relays involved.
Open your own hotmail account, add yourself to your list and test it to see what gets through. It'll take some time, but it's worth the effort. Open some accounts at some other free providers, too.
1) First, before you do anything, confirm that your domain is being blocked by Hotmail by sending test messages. You'll probably find this to be the case, but it's worth the small investment of time needed.
2) Have your attorney send a courteous but firm letter to Hotmail stating that your business is suffering irreparable harm due to their unwarranted blocking of your mail; damages are accruing due to lost customers, lost orders, additional customer service time communicating with customers, etc., etc. Point out your squeaky-clean mailing history. Your lawyer may want throw in ominous-sounding words like "tortuous interference". The letter should probably state your intention to file suit if the problem is not corrected by a specific date.
Why take this approach? A small amount of attorney time may be a lot cheaper than redoing your entire mail system, which might end up not unblocking you anyway. Furthermore, if YOU contact Hotmail, your communication will end up in someone's inbox and may or may not get acted on. My experience with larger organizations is that ANY communication from an attorney has to get bucked up the chain and forwarded or copied to the Legal department immediately. (A company only has to have one default judgment against it because a mid-level manager was sitting on something to lay down the law on legal communications.) If unblocking you is a simple fix, I'd guess that they'd be happy to forward it to Legal with a note that says "we fixed this guy's problem".
You can cut down on the attorney time by doing the research and prep work yourself. Find the contact info for an appropriate Hotmail executive. Prepare a page of technical details - your domain info, IP address, mail server name, perhaps a printout of a mail header of a message that got blocked, etc., and attach this to the letter. I'd probably draft the letter myself so all the attorney had to do was reword it, add appropriate jargon, and hand it to his/her assistant to fix and mail. You might escape with less than an hour of billing if your attorney is cooperative.
There's no guarantee this will work, but it might end up being a better solution than shifting e-mail servers.
Sometimes if a problem is serious enough, it makes sense to tackle on multiple fronts.
One interesting thing I found out is that if you include the text "http://join.msn.com" anywhere in the body of your email it will bypass all the filters and your email will get through to the intended recipient every time.
It seems that if you do this their stupid filter system thinks you are replying to an email sent to you by a Hotmail user and thus it lets your "reply" through the gates.
Just a little tip for anyone else having the same problem. I've added a bunch of whitespace and the link to the very bottom of numerous emails where appropriate until a better solution can be found.
I just wish they would let you know the reason you are getting blocked. I'm so busy I barely have 5 minutes to post this message. Spending hours and hours finding a lawyer, research what I need to research etc. etc. is just such a pain. Overall it seems like I spend more time doing "BS" things like this than actually working and making money LOL. Oh well, life isn't fair ...
