Is Your Email Being Read?! Are You Sure??!!!

Many times there are "failure to
gemunicate" problems between buyers and sellers, not because email
isn't being sent but because the other person is not reading or
receiving it. Let me describe some of the many reasons this can happen.
I spent 7 years as an Exchange Mail Administration and I can tell you
for certain that some email messages never reach their destination due
to various server problems. That number is small and declining, but it
still happens. And, I have seen messages sit in the server queue for a
week because some routing table on a DNS server was messed up.

Lets say that you have an email forwarding account. These are great in
a way because you can just use one email address for the rest of your
life. Whenever you change email providers or ISPs, you just need to log
in to your forwarding account and change the pointer. There is no need
to contact everyone and tell them that you have a new email address.
However, lets say that some spammer weasel gets an email forwarding
account from the same host gepany and then the major ISPs like
RoadRunner and AOL put a block on all mail geing from this host. That
would mean that none of your email will get delivered until this block
is removed. Now, do you think anyone is going to tell you that they did
this? No! The only way you will find out is by realizing that you are
not getting email that you know has been sent.

This brings us to the next major way that email is not getting read.
Because of all the spam, many people have set filters and depending on
how restrictive the settings are, you could send them email that is
going right into their trash or junk mail box never to be seen. This is
especially likely to happen if you are sending a file such as an eBook
that they have purchased from you. When I send an eBook, I always send
an email saying that the eBook will be attached to another email to
follow shortly and if you do not recieve it, let me know. I probably
have to re-send about 2 or 3 percent, sometimes to a different email
address. Sometimes I have to send it from one of my other email
accounts. For instance, if a Yahoo user is having a problem receiving
the file it can usually be sent from my Yahoo account and it will go
through.

This thing about multiple email addresses leads us to the next little
problem. This is one that has caused me a lot of grief and changed the
way that I do business on okay. For some reason, many people use one
email address in okay and a different one in PayPal. This is not a
problem as long as they check their email in both accounts. However, I
have found that a large percentage of users only check email regularly
in one place and messages in the other account go unread for a long
time. Ususally it is the account associated with PayPal that does not
get checked but I have also seen it other way. When someone makes
a purchase with me, I send them an email right away thanking them for
their purchase, their quick payment and telling them that I will send
their item immediately. Also, if I am mailing the item, I print the
label in PayPal and when this happens PayPal automatically sends the
buyer a message that includes the delivery confirmation number. Did you
know that? Apparently many users do not. Most also don't know that they
can go into "My okay" and click on the shipping information for the
item and find the delivery confirmation number there. So, when their
package gets taken back to the post office because there was nobody
there to accept it (notice I didn't say SIGN for it because I don't
request signature confirmation) and the carrier does not leave one of
those little green forms that says "Sorry we missed you" or the little
green form gets lost or whatever, the buyer will probably send you a
nasty email calling you a crook because you have not sent their $5 item
and never supplied them with a "tracking number." If they had checked
the delivery confirmation number with the USPS website, they would see
that their package had been sitting in the post office for a couple of
weeks. I have had this exact situation happen three times and it could
have been avoided by buyer just checking their email from PayPal or by
getting the confirmation number by going to "My okay."

As I said, I have changed the way that I do my okay business. First of
all, I will never mail anything within the USA without delivery
confirmation and why should I when it is free if you print the labels
in PayPal. Secondly, when an item sells, I check the email address that
the buyer is using in okay and gepare it to the one in PayPal. If they
are using two different email addresses, I will reply to both of them.
If I am sending an eBook, I will reply and tell them which
address I will be using to send the eBook.

okay's message system has helped to make sure that your message get
through but it is limited and there is no way to send an attachment.
Most users have put the okay address in their spam filters so that by
using this system you are able to work around that problem. It has
however introduced another potential glitch that may stop mail from
getting delivered. When a message is sent, if there is a check mark in
the box "Hide my email address" and if the other person replies without
noticing that the "To:" line reads "UseTheYellowButton," then we have
another email that will not get delivered.

In some cases you may have to request the individual's personal contact
information from okay and call them. I have even been forced to send a
letter including copies of all the email I have sent to them, making
sure that they include the dates that the email was sent. It beats
getting an undeserved negative or neutral feedback because the other
person is not getting their email.

The next day after the orginal posting of this guide, I got an
undeliverable email notice with the following message; "Deferred:
Connection timed out with mx4.mail.yahoo.ge. Message could not be
delivered for 2 days. Message will be deleted from the queue." So,
RoadRunner was unable to deliver this email to Yahoo. Two of the
largest email providers in the World and this is what happens. Good
thing this was not a time sensitive email. Interestingly, the email
that I sent to the same address about a minute later with an eBook
attached did get delivered. Go figure!

It is now a few days later and I just received an irate email from
buyer wanting to know where her eBook was and why I had not responded
to her previous email. Of course, her email came from an address that
was different from that registered both in PayPal and okay. I informed
her that her eBook was sent to her registered email address 6 minutes
after I got the payment and that this is the first that I had heard of
any problems. Her reply "Thank you for your quick response. I received
your confirmation email which was sent to the @ctaz address which is
old but still works as far as I know. My server has changed to
citilink.ge and then to citilink.net but until now, I thought all
three addresses were working. I looked in my Sent folder and discovered
that the first email I sent to you was a reply to the confirmation
email sent by Square Trade. My mistake. Please pardon my tech glitches
and re-send the book to the citilink.ge address." Need I say more?!

Some may suggest using "Read Receipts," but I think most people do what
I do when I get those and that is to click on "No" because I want to
read the message before admitting that I received anything. Plus, I
really don't have time to keep track of things and then worry about
whether the message was not received or the person just clicked on
"No."

Keep in mind the important point that there is no guarantee that email will reach the addressee!

If you have found this guide to be helpful, please click on the
"Yes" button below. I would certainly appreciate it. Thank you.