emails sent to xtra.co.nz

[At home in NZ]

Nothing has changed at my end.

It won't change until Spark identifies the problem.

I use Gmail to divert my Ancestry emails because Ancestry would not talk to Spark.

It might help if you were to contact Spark to ask them why they are bouncing your emails.

 

[peter]

It won't change until Spark identifies the problem.

I use Gmail to divert my Ancestry emails because Ancestry would not talk to Spark.

It might help if you were to contact Spark to ask them why they are bouncing your emails.

It would be much better if Ancestry, which is of a similar size to Spark, contacted them - it must be a much bigger problem for Ancestry, but more importantly they have thousands of employees and a wealth of technical knowledge.

But perhaps Ancestry have concluded that it's Spark's problem, not theirs? If you use Gmail for Ancestry, why aren't you prepared to try it for the forum? My time is too valuable to be wasted on technical issues that two billion dollar companies can't be bothered to sort out.

For what it's worth, my guess is that even though Spark have supposedly stopped using Yahoo as their email provider, they are still using some of the same infrastructure. In Britain BT said they were switching from Yahoo, but all they did was change the branding.

 

[Pauline]

It might help if you were to contact Spark to ask them why they are bouncing your emails.

I may be missing the obvious here, but if the emails are actually being bounced, doesn't the bounce message indicate on what grounds the emails are being rejected?

 

[At home in NZ]

It would be much better if Ancestry, which is of a similar size to Spark, contacted them

I have said, Ancestry would not talk to Spark. When I was trying, for many months, to get them to find out why I was not getting their emails the guy at Spark emailed them, they told me months later they had not responded to him and why.
I was forced to set up a Gmail address because of that, even though I do not like free email systems.
If you won't talk to Spark, we are at an impasse.

Pauline - if you can't see the banner across the top of the page, the opening thread in this discussions says it all.

 

[Bryman]

my guess is that even though Spark have supposedly stopped using Yahoo as their email provider, they are still using some of the same infrastructure.

Spark claim to have completely divorced themselves from Yahoo. All emails stored on Yahoo servers outside of NZ were identified and retrieved to be placed on servers located in NZ. Management of those NZ servers has been outsourced to a dedicated NZ owned and located IT company so all infrastructure has been replaced.

. . . Unless, of course, they are being economical with the truth.

 

[peter]

I may be missing the obvious here, but if the emails are actually being bounced, doesn't the bounce message indicate on what grounds the emails are being rejected?

Indeed it does: 554 5.7.1 Message rejected due to possible spam content

I suspect Ancestry, who send out far more emails than I do, are experiencing the same problem.

Normally problems like this can be fixed by white-listing the send, but presumably that hasn't worked - otherwise we wouldn't be where we are now. I can't change the content, and these emails are sent at the request of the recipients themselves - hat's why it is down to the email provider to fix.

In case it helps, emails are sent from info@lostcousins.com and the server is pop.netservers.co.uk (which is not the server used for most other LostCousins emails).

 

[Bryman]

Normally problems like this can be fixed by white-listing the send, but presumably that hasn't worked

That was the advice that I was originally given by Spark but all other transmissions (as far as I know) from the same sender get through so there must be something else blocking them. It is difficult for me to get involved as I don't know when such messages are being sent. A bit like, "Please let me know if you don't get this message."

Although there appears to be only a couple of us affected so far, this could escalate if other email providers follow with similar 'spam' restrictions.

 

[Pauline]

Indeed it does: 554 5.7.1 Message rejected due to possible spam content

Thank you - I had dismissed the banner message and didn't think to reinstate it before asking.

Normally problems like this can be fixed by white-listing the send, but presumably that hasn't worked

So while the reason why Spark is treating forum alerts and Ancestry messages as spam is unknown, presumably the real issue here is why they are automatically rejecting possible spam rather than allowing individual customers to decide what they want to do with such messages?

Personally, I would not be at all happy if my email provider started doing this. I have the option to choose what I want to happen to emails deemed to be spam - delivered to my online spam folder, automatically deleted, or automatically rejected. I use the first option as this gives me the chance to retrieve emails wrongly marked as spam, and also to white-list the sender if it happens on a regular basis.

 

[peter]

Personally, I would not be at all happy if my email provider started doing this.

I agree. But at least they sent the email back.

 

[Bryman]

I have just received a notification about the post applied by Helen7 to the discussion "Father's occupation on marriage registers". I have not been informed that the problem giving rise to this thread has been resolved but this does seem to be promising.

 

[At home in NZ]

I have just received a notification about the post applied by Helen7 to the discussion

I have received a notification too, about Bryman's post in this discussion.
I have just examined my 'my fault tracking' status, in my Spark account and it's still under investigation. I will leave it like that until we are sure it's fixed.

 

[peter]

I haven't received any bounce-backs since corresponding with Spark, which is good news.

 

[At home in NZ]

I haven't received any bounce-backs since corresponding with Spark, which is good news.

Good news indeed. Fingers are crossed here.