Ancestry emails - anybody else not getting them?

[At home in NZ]

It's a long while since I received any emails from Ancestry apart from the notifications about new Blog items.
I emailed Ancestry to tell them what my problem is and they have been less than helpful, as usual. It seems they either do not fully read messages or simply look for the bog standard answer to an issue and send that.

One of the responses told me they had looked at my email settings and could see which trees I had set up to receive Hint notifications, I gave them the sad news that they were looking at my site preferences and not my email settings page and included a screen shot of the email settings.
The response to that is 'We are sorry to hear that you are unhappy with the frequency that we contact you' and some other pearls of wisdom which are of no help in resolving my issue.

There has been no investigation into why my settings are not working, I have asked for one to be done. But am not holding my breath.

Just two of the boxes I have ticked to indicate I want emails about these things but do not get them:
New Content, Member Stories, and Ancestry News
and Promotional Offers and Events.

I wonder if anybody else has the same issue?

 

[Pauline]

I wonder if anybody else has the same issue?

No, but have you checked that the problem is not at your end? I assume you will have checked your spam folder, but some email providers simply ditch certain types of mail instead of delivering it to your spam folder.

If you haven't already done so, try changing the email address you use at Ancestry to one with a different provider. Or maybe set up a forwarding address that delivers the emails to you at more than one address (with different providers). Only once you've monitored things at your end can you be sure that the problem is with Ancestry.

Most Support teams start by providing standard answers as this will fix things for a good proportion of people. If it doesn't fix things for you, then you need to persist and explain that you've already ruled out the suggestions in their standard response.

 

[CarolB08]

This is interesting because I never get any emails from Ancestry either, so I am going to try the different email address approach and see if that makes any difference

 

[peter]

As Pauline said, there are some email providers who think they know best, and reject incoming email or (worse) put it into a 'black hole' so even the sender doesn't know what has happened. Hotmail and Yahoo are the worst of the big providers, and as Yahoo operate email for many ISPs the problem is bigger than it might first appear.

The only email provider I can recommend is Gmail, but you must look in the 'All mail' folder.

 

[At home in NZ]

have you checked that the problem is not at your end?

It took a while to make some progress, part of the response from my ISP: have known issue wherein some Business domain were having trouble sending to users, and it is due to the updated security filter we're using now. Whitelisting should be the first step.
Due to security also, some emails with hyperlinks and attachments were being blocked from emails.

Before you ask, I didn't ask them what they are going to do about it, it didn't occur to me at the time

I didn't know what whitelisting is, I do now and have added 3 email addresses, supplied by Ancestry, to my Contacts. I am now waiting to see if I get any emails from Ancestry, if anybody who is following this can tell me when the last one arrived I would be grateful.

Ancestry also advised me to use another email address which is something I am loathe to do. Because, I pay my ISP and they have already moved off the Yahoo platform which was supposed to alleviate some problems. Seems they made different ones!

Carol, have you had any success with your different email address?

 

[peter]

BT/Yahoo are currently blocking emails from LostCousins so goodness what they're doing to Ancestry, who must send out far larger numbers than I do. Unfortunately unless users complain to their email providers these problems aren't going to go away.

 

[Pauline]

I didn't know what whitelisting is, I do now and have added 3 email addresses, supplied by Ancestry, to my Contacts

Whitelisting will only help with emails that are actually being delivered to your email account. If Ancestry emails are being blocked/discarded by your email provider then whitelisting them won't change anything.

Whitelisting is for emails that are currently being treated as spam rather being delivered to your online Inbox. How spam is handled depends on your online spam filter settings, and what you have chosen should be done with email identified as spam. I have all mail identified as spam delivered to an online spam folder, and I check the contents before deleting anything. Some people have their spam filter set to automatically delete emails identified as spam.

 

[peter]

online spam folder

I'm glad you mentioned that - some people also have a spam folder on their own computer, and don't realise there is also an online spam folder.

 

[Bryman]

some people also have a spam folder on their own computer, and don't realise there is also an online spam folder.

Doesn't that depend on the protocol in use, ie POP3 or IMAP?
I still use the original POP3 because I don't access emails from more than one device. That deletes emails from the server when they are sent to me.

 

[peter]

Doesn't that depend on the protocol in use, ie POP3 or IMAP?

I've no idea, but the important thing is that people who have an online spam folder need to be aware that it exists - and in my experience some aren't.

Similarly people who use Gmail need to be aware that not all mail goes into their Inbox or Spam folder - sometimes you have to look in the All mail folder.

 

[Pauline]

Doesn't that depend on the protocol in use, ie POP3 or IMAP?

It shouldn’t. I have POP3 on my main computer and IMAP on my iPad. POP3 will only download what is in your Inbox folder so won’t download anything in your online spam folder - or junk folder, as it may be named.

 

[PhilGee]

I still use the original POP3 because I don't access emails from more than one device. That deletes emails from the server when they are sent to me.

That's because your client is set to the default "delete after download". You can change it to the (confusing) "leave on server" if so desired!

You can still use IMAP for one computer, though it's a bit messy to emulate POP3. Alternatively, you can set up IMAP access, with disabled send, alongside POP3, assuming your e-mail client allows this, and inspect your online spam folder through that, drag-n-drop emails into local folders or delete spam (it will go into the online "trash" mailbox by default, but you can change that). Just ignore the IMAP inbox and continue to get (and delete the online copy of) those e-mails through POP3.

Phil

 

[At home in NZ]

the important thing is that people who have an online spam folder need to be aware that it exists - and in my experience some aren't.

I initially contacted Ancestry in my effort to find out why I’m not receiving their emails.
Whitelisting was one of their recommendations and I got the same recommendation from my provider.

One would think that after receiving the same advice from two sources that it would be the answer to my issue.

I use Microsoft Outlook and only have one device, I am aware of the spam folder in my webmail which I do check now and again. It appears not to be used by the provider as I never find anything in it except emails I myself have marked as spam and to be reported as such.

I have blacklisted one particular pesky salesperson but I still get emails from that email address, if I go to webmail and attempt to re-blacklist I get a message to say the email address is already blacklisted.

When Outlook downloads the pesky emails they go into the spam folder. I delete them from there.

I will take these issues up with my email provider, yet again. In the meantime I remain in the dark about what is in the emails I have chosen to receive from Ancestry.