"Your Spam-filter blocked our email"

[PrincipalSkinner]

99% of the time when I send an email I get a response (sometimes it takes awhile and/or multiple prods).

When I don't get a response, the reason is invariably: "Well, OF COURSE we responded promptly to your email--your spam-filter must have blocked our reply."

Is this legitimate, or just BS? I have all the customary security stuff in place. If 99% of the emails get through to me, what is it about the 1% that doesn't get through? Personally I think it's BS along the line of "The check we sent must have been lost in the mail" but I could be wrong.

Any comments/opinions? Thanks

[2+2 wannabe]

i've had e-mails blocked from poker sites by spam filters

[PrincipalSkinner]

How do you know for sure? What did you do to get the blocked emails? What did you do to prevent it happening again? Thanks

[Thythe]

I think it's legit. In fact I got a call from Absolute Poker wanting me to come back and play. They offered me a few bonuses and said they would send an e-mail detailing the offer. Next they said "are you able to receive e-mail from Absolute Poker? Your spam filter is blocking it is it?" I replied that it was fine, as I don't even have a spam filter. Seems legit if they bring it up first when I didn't even have a problem.

[2+2 wannabe]

[ QUOTE ]
How do you know for sure? What did you do to get the blocked emails? What did you do to prevent it happening again? Thanks

[/ QUOTE ]

through my old university they have a spam blocker that sends me a daily summary of spam they've caught - and i can reply and retrieve it if i want

[PrincipalSkinner]

Just did some checking. I use Mozilla Thunderbird for my email; and the Spamfilter isn't even activated! Could my ISP be using a spam-filter?? Seems unlikely since they would have no idea of what I would consider spam . . .How about Zone Alarm?

[Guthrie]

My poker site e-mail gets through, but nearly all casino e-mail is marked as spam. I use my ISP to filter spam, but I picked the option to have them mark it and send it to me, rather than blocking and returning what they think is spam. It's a pain to scan through all of it, but I don't like having important e-mails returned because some geek's program thinks it's spam.

[Patchmaster]

[ QUOTE ]
Could my ISP be using a spam-filter?? Seems unlikely since they would have no idea of what I would consider spam . . .How about Zone Alarm?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, your ISP may very well be using a spam filter. I had a huge problem with this with Road Runner. To combat spam they started using a couple email blacklists. I have my own domain name and all my email gets forwarded through the domain registrar to my real email account. Somehow, one of the registrar's servers got added to the blacklist. In effect, almost all my email was simply being dumped in the bit bucket. Ironically, about the only thing making it through were the 200 or so spams I would get every day.

I complained vehemently to Road Runner, but they either didn't understand or didn't care. Fortunately, Google had just widened their beta program for gmail, so I switched to that and haven't had any further issues with this.

The upshot is, yes, there's a very good chance your ISP is throwing away email you really want to get, and there's probably nothing you can do about it.

[MrTrik]

My ISP uses a quarantine program. When it blocks spam or virus infected stuff it throws it in a quarantine. Then I get an email with a link to see my quarantined stuff. I can either ignore those messages, delete them, or save them from a web based reader that protects me. This seems to be a great way of doing things because there have been times where I needed an email that came from someone on their lists.

Many ISPs use this sort of system these days, you may want to check around.

[MadMat]

Most ISPs use some sort of spam filtering, without it thier severs get bogged down within days (this happened to the one I work for)

I now use Gmail for all my gambling related mail, and mails from a lot of poker rooms / casinos end up in the spam folder, so I guess I'd never see them if they were going through an ISP with a decent spam filter.

Mat

[CLC]

I believe that in the "Internet Options" you can add a site to the "Trusted" List and anything they send you will come through. I have had e-mails blocked (a couple of bonus offerings /images/graemlins/mad.gif) and pop-ups blocked, especially since going to Service Pack 2. Once I added my gaming sites to the "Trusted" Sites List I seem to have no problems.