Emails from one retailer being bounced - can anyone help?

[#1]

@MisterW  My mistake, I don't use Plusnet email but I was certain that set up for additional emails contained username+username@domain. Must be another system I'm thinking of........................

[#2]

@Champnet The setup for  additional boxes (internally) is certainly that but an email recipient only sees one 'name' before the '@' symbol. I.E. If you set up a second address you set it as (mailboxname)+(primaryaccountname), but a recipient only sees (mailboxname)@username.plus.com

[#3]

@Champnet you're confusing the email address with the username for authentication with the IMAP/SMTP servers.

This isnt visible to the outside world, its purely in the email client. Traditionally this was <accountname>+<mailboxname> for secondary mailboxes but AFAIK you have actually been able to use the full email address as the username for authentication for some time now.

edit: John types faster than me

[#4]

@MisterW & @jab1 Thanks for the correction. I was looking at the difference between the two email accounts.

[#5]

I'm not sure if this helps or not after reading the discussions on the email address format, but the email address I actually use for mum's accounts is my primary PlusNet email address name@username.plus.com

My email address is a legacy ic24.net (madasafish/plusnet) email from years ago.

[#6]

@Polaris1 The address format 'discussion' was slightly 'off-topic' - think it is more to do with the Hobbycraft SPF record, and possibly peoples habit of not unsubscribing but rather marking mail they no longer want as 'spam' .

[#7]

Fair enough, I was getting confused.

Equally confusing (to me at least) is why, if emails to my Plusnet email address aren't getting through because they have been marked as spam somewhere in the PlusNet ether, how come the same emails are successfully getting through to me? 

Also, was there any conclusion as to what I can do to prevent this from happening again?  They lifted the block yesterday but based on recent events, it will probably fail again within the next two weeks and this is really my last shot at trying to fix this.

Thanks.

[#8]

@Polaris1 Can't really answer your last post myself -  slightly off my knowledge-base, but maybe @MisterW  (or another more clued-up email guru) will help.

[#9]

@Polaris1 have you tried @Townman s advice earlier ?

If that doesnt help, then I suggest you contact Customer services and explain the problem. There is a procedure whereby the possibility of false positive SPAM detection can be investigated

[#10]

Assuming you mean the following, I don't know how to turn off spam filtering, but I don't think it is me that is marking the emails as spam, they are just not getting to me at all (If I log in to web mail directly, they are not in the junk mail folder), which was why I was interested in the discussion that possibly it was Plusnet that was marking them as spam.  If it is the email header comment you are referring to, I thought I had managed to provide that information, but one person suggested something, and someone else thought it probably wouldn't work.  If I need to contact customer services, is there an email or is the phone number the only option?  There used to be a ticketing system but I can't find anything on the web site.

Another crude approach would be to turn off the spam filtering in the user portal.

Somewhat better, the real sender needs to be identified by inspection of the email headers and the domain be added to the whitelist.  This is a tad technical, very much depends on the email client in use as how to see this information.  In (proper) Outlook, click file and then properties on the mail item.  Look for sent from and reply to details.  Then use that as a white list member

Changing the subject slightly, another possible solution that was suggested was to use a different email address.  Please could someone provide clear, simple instructions, or a web address, on how to do this in case I have to resort to this option.  Sorry, but I have no idea how to set up an email address/domain as I have always used the email that was provided by the broadband provider.  Are there any recommendations as to what I should use or advantages/disadvantages of a particular provider (assuming there are options)?  I prefer to pick up my emails through Outlook when I'm at home, but ideally need a web mail option when I'm away.  Where would I find instructions for the settings to use in Outlook?  Apologies for the multitude of questions, but although this may be simple, it is really outside my experience.

Many thanks for all the help so far.

[#11]

@Polaris1 login to the Plusnet member centre, goto Manage account and then click Manage your Plusnet Mailboxes (at the bottom of the screen). Click the Spam tab ,

set should Spam filtering be enabled to yes

set  Discard Obvious Spam to Off

check the add SPAM to the subject

and then either check the Move to Spam folder OR move to Inbox depending on your preference

initially set the Agressiveness to 1 ( adjust this later as required )

then add email.hobbycraft.co.uk to the approved addresses

then click Update settings

See how that goes

[#12]

Thank you so much, I didn't know any of that was there.  I have changed the settings as you suggested.

I received today's regular marketing email from Hobbycraft to mum's account (which is normal after their IT department lift the block, it seems to work for a couple of weeks).  I just hope I wasn't too late in making the adjustments, assuming they work, and that was enough to trigger the spam thing again.

[#13]

---

@corringham wrote:

the email.hobbycraft.co.uk SPF record is simply :

v=spf1 include:mailgun.org ~all

so it only allows sending from mailgun.org domain - which is what is happening, so that's not the cause of any issues.

---

But I have read the headers correctly, this email came form mailgun.net which is not the same.

[#14]

Thanks for all your continued efforts.  Unfortunately the previous success only lasted about 2 days before the marketing emails were auto-blocked again.  There was no way Hobbycraft IT department were going to lift the block without me doing something totally different, so I was forced to set up an independent gmail account in mum's name and we are currently testing that to see how long it will work. Initially even that wasn't working as it seems all/any email address would be affected once the block was in place, but it has been working for about a week now, so I just hope it continues to work.  Not the result I wanted but having been trying to fix this since August 2023, I'm just thoroughly fed up, it shouldn't be that difficult to receive marketing emails!

Thanks again.

[#15]

If marketing / bulk senders do not follow the rules it will become increasingly difficult to receive their emails … particularly to a Gmail account.

There’s also the complications of community informed spam detection systems delivering false positives arising from unhelpful end user behaviours. People sign up to marketing services and then get bored / irritated by the deluge of marketing emails. Instead of doing the decent thing by unsubscribing from the marketing list they instead report the legitimate email as spam. The spam detection system is then “groomed” to profile legitimate email as spam, blighting everyone else using that anti-spam service.