Emails from one retailer being bounced - can anyone help?

[#1]

Hi,

Please note that I am non-technical and most of what I am saying in terms of the actual problem does not make sense. Apologies also this is a bit long, but I am getting really desparate to resolve this issue once and for all.

My mum and I both have accounts with Hobbycraft - mum does not have a computer or internet access, so I have set up her account using a different email address to mine.  I have done the same thing with numerous retailers so I can place orders on her behalf and differentiate the two accounts. 

I never had a problem with any of these accounts until about a year ago now when all emails from Hobbycraft to mum's account seem to 'vanish into thin air'.  They are not ending up in my spam filter in Outlook, and they are not even reaching the Junk mail folder if I log in to PlusNet directly.  Previously I used to receive duplicate emails, one to each account/email address, then one set of emails just stopped.

I have been having communication with Hobbycraft customer services to try and find out what is happening, and after escalating to their IT department they finally discovered (after many months) that their marketing emails keep being flagged as spam, which is causing mum's account to be 'auto-unsubscribed' from marketing emails, and even though myself and customer services keep re-subscribing, it keeps happening.  This means that mum is missing out on vouchers/special offers/ account updates etc

One email reply shortly after they initially identified the problem is as below

Customer Number: xxxxx | Email:xxxxx

I resolved the issue for this account back on the 11^th of June 2024 but I can see the issue popped up again on the 23^rd of June. This account was auto-unsubscribed because either the customer or email provider (more likely email provider in my opinion) flagged our marketing emails as spam, which prevented our emails being sent to this email address. I lifted the block today, but assuming the customer didn’t flag our emails as spam then it seems the root cause sits with the customer’s email platform which unless fixed could cause the issue to repeat in future.
 
I think it would be helpful if the customer adds our email address to their list of trusted senders to help resolve this (email@email.hobbycraft.co.uk).'

I followed the suggestion from their IT department and added the marketing email address and domain to the Safe Senders list.  Every time I successfully received an email for mum's account, I have marked it as 'not junk', 'selected 'never block sender' and anything else I could see that might prevent it from being seen as spam, but roughly every two weeks the emails stop again.  But the problem seems to be before the emails are even reaching me, in other words they are being picked up as spam by PlusNet somehow and not getting passed through to me at all.  

Hobbycraft IT department have checked again today and cam back with the following

We have lifted the block again on the email xxx

It had been rejected as your provider had marked this as spam again, please see below

You need to unflag all of our emails as spam otherwise sadly this will continue and each time we unblock it can block again.

There is also a screen shot that I can't work out how to post which shows the problem from their end

Invalid contact:

Channel: email

Reason: spam message rejected

Contact info: email xxx

Source: mailgunemail

How do I mark something as not spam that is being blocked before it even gets to me?  As i said, this has been going on for over a year now and (with the help of my IT department at work) they have ruled out a problem with my Outlook settings and done everything they can to assist.  The conclusion seems to be that it is something to do with PlusNet settings.  Can anyone help?  Please keep any replies simple with clear instructions.

Thank you.

[#2]

@Polaris1 Despite what you have been told, this is not a Plusnet problem as such, it is because many others  are marking these emails as 'spam' if they decide they don't want them any more, rather than doing what they should and unsubscribing.

This means that Cloudmark - the anti-spam filter service that Plusnet (and other ISP's) use, is getting enough 'spam' reports for this domain to trigger an auto-block. As to how this can be overcome, the only way I can think of, off the top of my head, is to use another email platform, such as Yahoo or Gmail.

This rather crude, and maybe one of our more email tech aware members can give you better advice it is not a problem I have encountered, so I have never had to delve deeply into finding a permanent solution - sorry.

[#3]

---

@Polaris1 wrote:

....
I think it would be helpful if the customer adds our email address to their list of trusted senders to help resolve this (email@email.hobbycraft.co.uk).'

....

There is also a screen shot that I can't work out how to post which shows the problem from their end

Invalid contact:

Channel: email

Reason: spam message rejected

Contact info: email xxx

Source: mailgunemail

---

We need one of the email gurus to come along and comment but it looks to me that the emails might be coming from mailgunemail, not Hobbycraft.
Site of the headers from one of the emails that got through might help.

[#4]

@Baldrick1 Maybe Hobbycraft use that third party for email transmission - not all companies have their own mail platforms.

[#5]

Sorry, as I said I'm non-technical so I can't work out how to post screen shots or to provide the information you requested.  However the Hobbycraft emails (to my account anyway) are showing as from email@email.hobbycraft.co.uk

[#6]

@Polaris1 The emails will show as from the address you have posted, but they may be sent via the forwarding service (mailgunemail) . We need the full headers to determine the route - although the spam filtering will be done by Cloudmark, so the route is a bit of a red-herring.

As I said before, this is due to people reporting emails they don't want any more as spam, rather than using the 'unsubscribe' option at the foot of the message.

[#7]

---

@jab1 wrote:

As to how this can be overcome, the only way I can think of, off the top of my head, is to use another email platform, such as Yahoo or Gmail.

This rather crude, and maybe one of our more email tech aware members can give you better advice it is not a problem I have encountered, so I have never had to delve deeply into finding a permanent solution - sorry.

---

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.

[#8]

Thank you, I was just going to reply that I had no idea what you meant by the full email header or how to get it - is this what you are asking for?  I have replaced all instances of my email address with 'xxx'

Return-path: <bounce+3c9963.9bbac-xxx@email.hobbycraft.co.uk>

Envelope-to: xxx

Delivery-date: Sun, 28 Jul 2024 06:08:31 +0100

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From: Hobbycraft <email@email.hobbycraft.co.uk>

To: xxx

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[#9]

@Townman 

Thanks for helping.

Would I be correct in saying that it is m238-162.eu.mailgun.net that should be added to the whitelist?

[#10]

hobbycraft.co.uk has a VERY complicated SPF record, ICBW but can't see the sending IP of that email in it!

That's not going to help any spam scoring...

[#11]

Ah - so my initial thought could be wrong?

[#12]

Not necessarily, that could be adding to the 'spaminess' score

[#13]

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.

[#14]

Having read & re-read this thread several times my gut feeling is there's a problem with the email address. Either the address Hobbycraft (mailgun) are using is wrong or there system can't handle the strange format of Plusnet's multiple address setup.

The spam or unsubcribe replies may just be the way the error merssages are being handled. At the moment I can neither prove nor dispove my theory.....

[#15]

the strange format of Plusnet's multiple address setup

what's strange about it ? its just <emailaddress>@domain , where the domain is <accountname>.plus.com

That's no different to anyone using multiple mailboxes on any other domain