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[mikeb]

OK, you might think this should be in OT 'chat' but my query relates to an e-mail (or lack thereof) that is apparently being sent when you register. I have reason to believe (but no absolute proof as yet) that if/when you successfully register for the ballot, you not only get a confirmation on screen but also an e-mail to the registered address. Other peeps have apparently got one but I most certainly have not. And yes, I am well aware that the site is having extreme difficulties due to demand and is badly set up in any case so the database is quite probably b*ggered beyond belief !

Has anyone on here registered and if so did you get an e-mail or not ? I'm kinda suspecting a first line spam deletion/rejection problem here as has happened with certain other service providers in the past (when purchasing Glastonbury Festival tickets from the single authorised Ticket Agency) when 10's of thousands of near identical e-mails were suddenly sent out and they all got silently dumped because it 'looked' like a spam attack !

The point is, assuming this isn't a wind-up, there might be a very significant (to me anyway !) problem here. The chance of success may well be less than that for winning the lottery on Saturday night but I'd much rather it was a ridiculously small chance than a zero chance because I didn't get the e-mail telling me I got lucky and providing further details of how to get my hands on the tickets !

PS: If I subsequently find this turns out to be some form of hoax or whatever then the thread will obviously need deleting

[mikeb]

Right then, it definitely looks like there quite probably is some problem here  

I've just this moment received said e-mail to another A/C with another ISP for a second registration.  It's certainly taken some time but this was done quite a long while after my initial attempt using my normal PN addy. Could still be en-route and there may be some delays somewhere though I guess.  The full (suitably edited) message is below so perhaps someone could check if PN consider this to be a valid message rather than something they have arbitrarily decided to delete/reject on receipt and not tell me about ?

Return-Path: <apache@ns.davidpeter.co.uk>
Received: from mwinf3209.me.freeserve.com (mwinf3209.me.freeserve.com)
   by mwinb3402 (SMTP Server) with LMTP; Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:02:22 +0200
X-Sieve: Server Sieve 2.2
Envelope-to: My_Name@My_Account.Another_ISP.com
Received: from me-wanadoo.net (localhost [127.0.0.1])
   by mwinf3209.me.freeserve.com (SMTP Server) with ESMTP id 6CD4A1C000B2
   for <My_Name@My_Account.Another_ISP.com>; Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:02:22 +0200 (CEST)
Received: from ns.davidpeter.co.uk (unknown [217.199.186.112])
   by mwinf3209.me.freeserve.com (SMTP Server) with ESMTP id 4F27F1C0009D
   for <My_Name@My_Account.Another_ISP.com>; Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:02:22 +0200 (CEST)
X-ME-UUID: 20070914090222324.4F27F1C0009D@mwinf3209.me.freeserve.com
Received: from ns.davidpeter.co.uk (localhost [127.0.0.1])
   by ns.davidpeter.co.uk (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id l8E5MHKs014252
   for <My_Name@My_Account.Another_ISP.com>; Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:04:02 +0100
Received: (from apache@localhost)
   by ns.davidpeter.co.uk (8.12.10/8.12.10/Submit) id l8DJv48g019847;
   Thu, 13 Sep 2007 20:57:04 +0100
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 20:57:04 +0100
Message-Id: <200709131957.l8DJv48g019847@ns.davidpeter.co.uk>
To: My_Name@My_Account.Another_ISP.com
Subject: Ahmet Tribute Tickets
From: webmaster@website.com
X-me-spamlevel: not-spam
X-me-spamrating: 19.002342
X-Agent-Received: from Freeserve POP (pop.freeserve.com); Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:16:01 +0100
X-Agent-Train-Legitimate: 0
X-Agent-Junk-Probability: 0

Dear  My_Full_Name

Thank you for registering for Ahmet Tribute tickets.

If successful you will be contacted by email by the 1st October and will be given information on how to purchase at this time.

For all other information please see FAQ’s provided on our website http://www.ahmettribute.com.

Thank you

[dtomlinson]

Wow, 20 million pre-registered

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6992623.stm

I've put my name in will see if I get an email.

[mikeb]

It appears to be taking a good 24 hours at least so that's not really going to help with the weekend and cut-off date looming is it.  Surely PN already KNOW precisely what e-mails they're deleting/rejecting/whatevering on receipt don't they ?  and in any case they can analyse the typical message I quoted above to see if there is something they don't like about it.

Four separate e-mails sent to four different PN addresses all appear to have gone missing but the single e-mail sent to another ISP A/C arrives eventually - doesn't this at least sound strange enough to warrant somebody doing, saying or looking at something ... like now ?

Apart from anything else, DNS appears a bit cooky:

rDNS lookup on 217.199.186.112 returns ns.davidpeter.co.uk

but DNS lookup on ns.davidpeter.co.uk returns "no match"

and the server naming, from field and message routing in general looks stupidly strange IMHO in any case but that's NOT really the point is it. I don't know who the guys are that are running this fiasco but I would strongly suggest that their car park is probably full horses tied to the railings rather than BMWs   

But come on guys, if poxy old freeserve can manage to lose/delete/bounce very significant quantities of my old A/C e-mails on a very regular basis and yet accept and deliver this particular one then is it really too much to expect the ISP I pay handsomely to provide my service to get it right and not apparently be dumping my important e-mails !

I fully accept that it could well be a problem at the sending end due to demand and database issues etc. but ...

[mikeb]

UPDATE:

It would appear from further investigation that various providers are being used to send out the e-mail confirmations and some are obviously a bit more competent than others.  The following quote is an identical e-mail that was actually received via a PN A/C within a few hours today:

Envelope-to: Name@Someones_Account.plus.com
Delivery-date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 17:55:48 +0000
Received: from [87.237.63.225] (helo=web01.dedilogic.com)
     by fhw-sunmxcore01.plus.net with esmtp (PlusNet MXCore v2.00) id 1IWFOO-0002Bc-E9
     for Name@Someones_Account.plus.com; Fri, 14 Sep 2007 17:55:48 +0000
Received: (qmail 17683 invoked by uid 48); 14 Sep 2007 09:37:56 +0100
Date: 14 Sep 2007 09:37:56 +0100
Message-ID: <20070914083756.17678.qmail@web01.dedilogic.com>
To: Name@Someones_Account.plus.com
Subject: Ahmet Tribute Tickets
From: webmaster@ahmettribute.com
X-Agent-Received: from Plusnet POP (mail.plus.net); Fri, 14 Sep 2007 20:08:22 +0100
X-Agent-Train-Legitimate: 0
X-Agent-Junk-Probability: 0

Dear Name,

Thank you for registering for Ahmet Tribute tickets.

If successful you will be contacted by email by the 1st October and will be given information on how to purchase at this time.

For all other information please see FAQ’s provided on our website http://www.ahmettribute.com.

Thank you

I'm very disappointed (understatement of the week ) that PN don't apparently see fit to at least formally comment on this issue not to mention answer the fundamental question as to whether the e-mail quoted initially IS or IS NOT considered by them as a valid and 'acceptable' message.  As usual, I am appalled and downright bl**dy annoyed that PN are apparently censoring my e-mail REGARDLESS of the fact that it may not be entirely unreasonable for the message to 'appear' suspect due to possible stupidity/incompetence of the sender and REGARDLESS of my acceptance of the necessity to do such things under CERTAIN very obvious and very clearly specified circumstances.  Numerous requests to date for PN to clearly state these circumstances have not resulted in any clear and understandable definition, simply references to compliance with unspecified RFC's etc. My request to analyse the e-mail for 'acceptability' and advise accordingly has also received no response in a timely manner.

However, what is quite clear here is that any PN customers who may have registered and not been lucky in being sent a 'good' e-mail will most likely have a zero chance of getting tickets for this event. I would suggest (without being able to provide evidence of the fact) that any applicants who have had the e-mail bounced or rejected will be removed from the ballot.  This seems entirely reasonable to me based on the assumption that if the address fails to accept the confirmation then it will also fail to accept an "invitation to purchase tickets" e-mail so there is no point whatsoever in keeping such applicants in the ballot.  It will merely serve to further complicate an already very difficult situation.   In any case, if such customers get sent further messages from the same source then they will obviously not receive them either. In addition to that, it is entirely possible that the future "invitation to purchase" e-mails could in fact be sent by any one of several providers i.e. could randomly have similar apparent deficiencies leading to the same problems as the message highlighted initially but not necessarily affecting the same customers.  If this is true then even those who have received a valid confirmation to date are at risk of having their very slim chance of getting tickets reduced to zero by what appears to be unspecified PN filtering actions.

I would guess that a similar situation is also likely with SOME other ISPs and/or e-mail service providers as well and based on past experience of such things, hotmail and aol customers spring to mind as being highly likely candidates for experiencing problems. Surprisingly, my list would normally have included freeserve/wanadoo/orange based on past proven poor performance in this respect but in this particular instance it would appear not to be the case.

I am currently about to set up a poll which will be visible to several 100K music fans to try to ascertain the scale of the problem. Once I have some indication of how bad this problem might be and which service providers are likely to be affected then I fully intend to contact as many media organisations as I possibly can (starting with BBC, ITV & $ky news, NME and various other music related press) to highlight this particular problem as well as the fundamental problem with service providers effectively 'censoring' customers e-mail without providing any clear and definitive guidelines as to what they consider 'acceptable' and what they consider 'unacceptable' so will therefore quietly delete/reject/whatever rather than delivery to a paying customer.

I very much hope that my investigations will determine there isn't a huge problem here but if there is then I also hope PN have some proper and valid answers ready if/when the time comes to 'face the music' on a public stage - no pun intended !

[Phil Richardson]

In all frankness, there is nothing to suggest there is a problem on the PlusNet side at all and both email headers quotes show delays.

Given the very nature of the emails in question, there is a high probability that these delays are the result of the campaign generating them.

A 13 hour delay in the first set of headers to a Freeserve address, that clearly show the delays to reside outside anybodies control, other than the campaign owners (the delay occured before attempts even took place to send it to Freeserve).

The second message headers being pushed to a PlusNet account in the region of 8.5 delay.

Censorship by ISPs?
I'm not putting my money on that what so ever.

A highly popular event that is sure to generate a mass administrative overhead, capable of causing problems for the campaign owners systems?
I'm off to the bookies because I recon I am quids in.

[jelv1]

Mike,

Regarding PN censoring your email.

I think that Plusnet can give you a 100% cast iron guarantee that some email addressed to you will be rejected. This will be where it is from sources which are highly probable are spammers (e.g. no valid rDNS). If you want to receive everything addressed to you, you need to either find an alternative provider of email services, or take it fully under your own control by opting for SMTP mail delivery and running your own mail server.

[mikeb]

In all frankness, there is nothing to suggest there is a problem on the PlusNet side at all and both email headers quotes show delays.

Given the very nature of the emails in question, there is a high probability that these delays are the result of the campaign generating them.

With all due respect, I'm not talking about 'delays' as such because these are only to be expected. I'm talking about the apparent loss (likely deletion/rejection) of several messages that have most likely been sent to PN addresses whereas other ISPs (generally speaking more picky about what they will accept) have received and delivered such messages even though they were sent out 10's of hours after the ones to PN addresses.  As I have already stated, I agree that delays are possible (although unlikely to be this long TBH) and I agree that SOME messages necessitate rejecting under CERTAIN conditions.

However, what I have been requesting for many months now is a clear definition of what constitutes an 'unacceptable' message that will be deleted/rejected without my knowledge and more to the point, whether the message quoted above is deemed 'unacceptable' in some way and has therefore most likely been deleted/rejected.

Please note that when I keep referring to 'censorship' etc. what I mean is ISPs deleting/rejecting stuff for whatever reason, without my knowledge and without clearly defining exactly what is deemed by them to be 'acceptable' for delivery is, IMHO, effectively 'censoring' my e-mail - i.e. deciding what messages I can and what messages I cannot receive ! I do fully understand the need for such filtering providing it is accurate and reliable but I keep on seeing apparent evidence of problems and mistakes in filtering and/or reports of various customers missing e-mails. This was not a problem I have ever suffered with significantly before (if at all) in ~10 years being with PN ... until very recently.  The likes of hotmail and FS/wanadoo/orange et al have been regularly and reliably losing/dumping/rejecting e-mails for years without telling customers about it - that's why I don't use them much now !!!

[mgillespie]

Thought I would mention, I also did not get the email notification.

Lets hope we don't miss the email telling us we are one of the lucky 22,000 out of the 22,000,000 people that registered!!!  Talk about lottery!!!

[mikeb]

(e.g. no valid rDNS)

Well, as I don't appear to have an answer yet, maybe we can take one specific point in isolation for starters.  Re: comment from Jelv quoted above, do PN delete/reject/whatever all incoming mail from IPs without an rDNS entry ? and if so since when (approximately) and where is this officially stated as standard practice ? 

The only reference to it I have seen is in the service.status post I think you kindly hightlighted for me the other day concerning recent (and ongoing) mail platform changes where it says "We currently reject mail from senders with no reverse DNS" and there were apparently changes 'improving' this process implemented yesterday and today. However, the way I read it is that the process was already in action and the changes are 'improvements' rather than an 'introducing' a new process into service. Maybe I missed a previous status post announcing this change as I have no recollection of it being introduced.

[jelv1]

I'd guess you'd have to search back through the announcements for 4 or 5 years (maybe more) to find when this started.

[mikeb]

Strewth ! That far back eh ?  I genuinely thought/assumed you meant somewhat more recently than that.  Regrettably, I haven't been scanning all service.status or service.announcement posts (as I usually do) of late, only those which look like they might affect me directly so have missed various bits of useful info buried away.  However, if it has indeed been the 'norm' for some considerable period of time then that *REALLY* does beg the question:

Why doesn't the process work reliably and consistently after so long ?

and the follow-up question:

Why do the recently implemented 'improvements' appear to have made the process even LESS reliable and LESS consistent than it was before ?

Arrrr, I be thinkin that thar squiffy responsible should be a'walkin the plank on the 'morrow o'er this nonsense   and ye son of a biscuit eater be gettin a jolly old rogering from I also 

[mikeb]

Still no answers then ?

And another of what appears to be a 100% valid and 100% non-spam regular e-mail not received over recent days   Here's a typical set of headers to be expected for the missing message:

Envelope-to: My_Name@My_PN_Account.plus.com
Delivery-date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:20:56 +0000
Received: from m1.amsnet.net ([209.123.82.21])
     by pih-sunmxcore18.plus.net with esmtp (PlusNet MXCore v2.00) id 1ILHrm-0007DS-4J
     for My_Name@My_PN_Account.plus.com; Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:20:56 +0000
Message-ID: <31720840.1187180450204.JavaMail.root@ptmail1.pt.local>
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 08:20:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Rockinbeerfest, RBF Festivals" <rbf@rbf.pmailuk.com>

So why don't you like this one as it also looks perfectly OK to me ?

[mikeb]

Ooooo looky see, Quelle Surprise, here's another 100% valid and 100% non-spam regular e-mail not received today unlike every other Thursday for way more years than I care to remember.  Typical headers for the missing message follows:

Envelope-to: My_Name@My_PN_Account.plus.com
Delivery-date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:30:37 +0000
Received: from [213.83.65.106] (helo=mail.seezz3.com)
     by pih-sunmxcore17.plus.net with esmtp (PlusNet MXCore v2.00) id 1IVraN-0001dV-Os
     for My_Name@My_PN_Account.plus.com; Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:30:36 +0000
Received: from user by mail.seezz3.com with ESMTP; Thu, 13 Sep 2007 17:28:50 +0100
Message-Id: <20079131728493192@BLADE5>
From: "seetickets.com" <donotreply@seezz3.com>
To: "seetickets.com" <mailing@seezz3.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 17:28:49 +0100
Subject: See Tickets New Tours and Events 

And you don't like this particular one because ......

This really is getting way beyond a joke now All the deleted/rejected/whatevered messages I'm noticing are primarily regular and consistently timed or otherwise expected messages from list servers etc. so it is d@mn nigh impossible to find out if/when/how they were lost although dead easy to spot they have been. BUT the one thing that is for certain here is that PN have their fat fingers in the problem somewhere because the probability of several different sources all having some problem or other that just so happens to result in messages to me not being received is remote in the extreme. The common denominator is almost without doubt PN, especially considering that there have been no significant (if any) examples of random missing mail over the past 10 years ... until recently when you started this bl**dy mandatory filtering on receipt nonsense.  And don't tell me it's absolutely necessary because of spam, blah, blah, blah ... or I will remind you that I (and no doubt many other people) didn't have any spam whatsoever for 10 years until 13th May this year ! So in my book that makes it entirely your problem to fix any difficulties YOU might be having without b*ggering up MY service beyond belief and expecting me to not only pay for it but sort the mess out as well thank you very much.

If I really wanted my e-mail to perform like an AOL or Hotmail service does then I would take my custom to them rather than be paying PN handsomely for what is supposed to be a reliable service from a reputable provider

[mikeb]

How many more examples do I really need to provide before PN tells me why they're apparently deleting/rejecting/whatevering my 100% genuine and 100% non-spam messages whilst simultaneously providing me with copious amounts of 100% very obviously spam messages ?

And once again, with feeling this time: What exactly are the new and apparently still unpublished PN requirements to (within reason) guarantee that e-mail is accepted and delivered to a customer in a timely manner ?