Not received M&S email

[#1]

I think that the issue has been stated fairly clearly...

1. There has been a historic issue with the reputation management of M&S email servers
2. That resulted in some emails from M&S being rejected by Plusnet
3. It is strongly believed that M&S systems stop sending to email addresses where the recipient email service has refused delivery
4. Some impacted users have found resolution by having M&S (in some manner or another) "reset" the email address status on user accounts

If M&S made technical contact's details generally available, Plusnet would have already have sorted this with their technical team.  Plusnet have made further attempts to identify such a contact - in the meantime only M&S customers experiencing the issue have a legitimate call on the M&S Customer services team.  You could point them to this forum topic.

[#2]

Plusnet users are not alone in experiencing difficulty in receiving M&S emails - see 4 (talktalk.co.uk)

That post makes a very important observation - the action of other users might lead to the bulk emailer's email services being deemed suspect thereby bringing about the issues reported here.

If enough people report emails as being deemed 'SPAM' (rather than unsubscribing from a service the signed up to) the such can lead to that bulk email server being deemed the source of SPAM and being blocked by receiving services.  MARK AS SPAM should only ever be applied to emails being received from parties one has never had any dealings with.  If people are receiving communications they no longer want to receive, they should go and unsubscribe from the sender, not mark the otherwise legitimate email as being SPAM.

[#3]

I am also experiencing this problem with M&S e-mails.  I raised a call a while ago with Plusnet support.  After a lot of going and froing they asked me to add the M&S e-mails to the white list accessible from my account management page.  I have done this and turned off the spam filter but still no e-mails from M&S.  I am not an IT person and have no idea where to go with this.  E-mailing M&S made no difference but if they did reply it either wasn't;t sent or got blocked along the way.  Is there anyone who can help with where to go from here - even if that is the form of words needed to send to M&S.

[#4]

@KimFrank I am not really familiar with this topic, as it doesn't affect me, but have you read it through - there is plenty of advice from both those affected by this issue and also some very knowledgable fellow PN customers?

[#5]

I've given up trying to resolve this problem, as both PlusNet & M&S are blaming each other, rather than working together to find a solution.

I've asked M&S to send their emails to my Gmail address and that works fine.

Perhaps I'll move all my email traffic to Gmail and then move to another Internet provider who is IT proficient ??????

[#6]

This is not a matter of blaming each other, it is though a matter of seeking clear evidence that these emails are actually being sent, rather than M&S simply suggesting that they have been sent.

Did M&S reset your Plusnet email address within their systems?

Did they then verify that the email left their email servers?

Did you then pass that information to Plusnet for further investigation?

Yes there was a problem, yes Plusnet sorted it, yes there is evidence that M&S stopped using some Plusnet email addresses, yes there is evidence that after M&S reset the status on some Plusnet addresses users once again saw their M&S email ... the big unanswered question is did they reset your account?

Sad that users always want to believe that the fault is with Plusnet, when probably it is not.  The fact that emails are received to a different email address is not proof that the problem is with the target service.

[#7]

I'm glad that I'm not the only one having problems receiving emails from M&S - both emails relating to online orders and emails relating to Sparks offers etc!

When I did receive Sparks emails, there was often a significant delay between M&S sending it and it actually arriving in my Plusnet Inbox. The emails appeared to bounce around in the ether for up to 48 hours before actually arriving in my Inbox. For example, the last Sparks email that I actually received indicated that it was send by M&S at 16.19 on 7 April 2020 - but it didn't arrive in my Inbox until 23.45 on 8 April (more than 24 hours later).

I contacted M&S Customer Services - but that was a waste of time. So I escalated the complaint within M&S and had some lengthy correspondence with the Chief Executive's Office. They tried to be helpful and referred the matter to their Technical Team to investigate. But the end result was an email from the Chief Executive's Office saying: " I have spoken with our IT team and while this is not the answer I was hoping for, they have informed me that they have checked all the areas of our systems and your email address is showing in our mailing list and shows that it is receiving emails. They have said that they can see that your subscription is active and there is nothing they can do. The only other thing I can suggest, is that you contact your service provider to see if they can shed any light on why these are not coming through to you….I am so very sorry, but there is nothing further I can do, I am at a complete loss as to why you are not receiving your Sparks email."

I note that in message 24 Townman said : " There was a specific problem some months ago which has been resolved. "  Can he confirm what that problem was? That might allow me to go back to M&S to point them in the right direction.

Thanks.

[#8]

Well done PR5! I am having no success using the normal support channel at:

M&S Service Team <r&r.contactus@customersupport.marksandspencer.com>

I have created another email address for my domain and redirected incoming emails there to my usual address. This works OK. Clearly there needs to be a meeting of minds between M&S and Plusnet as us users are just stuck in the middle.

[#9]

I have added the M&S customer, news and sparks e-mails to my white list.  I have been in touch with M&S and their technical department.  M&S have confirmed that they reset the sending of e-mails (in case they weren't being sent as they had been rejected in the past); M&S have confirmed that e-mails are being sent from their servers.  I have given up and set up a g-mail account instead.  I contacted M&S yesterday and the e-mail came straight through.  At last.  I now have the faff of going into websites to change my e-mail account from the Plusnet one to the g-mail one.  A friend mentioned that they had hear (I do not know now valid this is, just a thought) that because I use a Mac using MacMail that updates to the IOS increasing security cause this issue.  great that security is increased not s o great if you don't get e-mails.  I did check the e-mails on Plusnet webmail too and they weren't arriving there either. 

[#10]

---

@PR5 wrote:

But the end result was an email from the Chief Executive's Office saying: " I have spoken with our IT team and while this is not the answer I was hoping for, they have informed me that they have checked all the areas of our systems and your email address is showing in our mailing list and shows that it is receiving emails. They have said that they can see that your subscription is active and there is nothing they can do. The only other thing I can suggest, is that you contact your service provider to see if they can shed any light on why these are not coming through to you….I am so very sorry, but there is nothing further I can do, I am at a complete loss as to why you are not receiving your Sparks email."

I note that in message 24 Townman said : " There was a specific problem some months ago which has been resolved. "  Can he confirm what that problem was? That might allow me to go back to M&S to point them in the right direction.

---

The issue was that a configuration issue incorrectly treated some M&S servers as being the source of spam.  That resulted in M&S emails being rejected.  M&S email systems then "black-balled" those email addresses so that M&S servers no longer sent emails to those addresses.  Contemporaneous experience from those who found someone helpful within M&S had their email addresses reset within M&S' systems and their Plusnet addresses started to receive emails again.

The response from M&S above shows a degree of technical ineptitude.  Their IT people cannot assert that your address is receiving emails, the only thing they can assert is that their system attempted to deliver to that address.  I would suspect that they believe that their services might be processing emails to be sent, but that is not the same as producing evidence of a message actually leaving their email server.

[#11]

---

@KimFrank wrote:

that because I use a Mac using MacMail that updates to the IOS increasing security cause this issue.  great that security is increased not s o great if you don't get e-mails.  I did check the e-mails on Plusnet webmail too and they weren't arriving there either. 

---

If the issue were changes in iOS email security rules then you would not be able to access any emails at all.  That said, that issue is very old history (a) it is possible to by-pass iOS's attempts to mandate encrypted server connectivity and (b) Plusnet mail servers have supported encrypted connections for quite some time now.

[#12]

It is a shame that the "someone helpful within M&S" is not recorded somewhere. The first line response from M&S is inept and nothing gets forwarded to anyone competent.