emails not getting through

[Cassie]

I am tearing my hair out at your Chat and ticket customer service. Neither seems to be able to give me a straight answer to my problem.

So out of desperation I am turning to my good friends on here.

I have a shopping cart and get an email directly from it when someone places an order. That email goes to 2 different email addresses set up within the cart and I have had no problems up to now.

Suddenly on Monday the email address which is hosted by WEBUK stopped arriving. I know I was still getting orders as the emails to the other email address was arriving - hosted my someone else.

WebUK Chat and Ticket keep blaming the shopping cart provider. They had not changed anything and point out they are being blocked by a spam filter at WEBUK end. But WEBUK keep blaming the cart and say there is no filter etc.

If anyone is interested I have full transcripts of the chat and the ticket number is #BZD-52050-806.

I really don't have the time or the energy to keep being piggy in the middle. The limited amount of time/nunnery I do have after my OP should be directed at my customers not in sorting out your filters.

[optrex]

cassie
is your cart hosted on a server with webuk? I take it as you are in the VPS forum that you have cpanel access and you can see the emails you are not getting in the email queue manager? Are they still queued?

[Cassie]

Originally Posted by optrex

cassie
is your cart hosted on a server with webuk? I take it as you are in the VPS forum that you have cpanel access and you can see the emails you are not getting in the email queue manager? Are they still queued?

Sorry optrex you've lost me a bit.

I have shared hosting but the cart is hosted elsewhere but my domain which the emails are going to is hosted on here. I can give you spacific domains etc if that will help

The cart is set up to send me 2 emails when someone orders. It is one of those that is not getting through. I know emails can sometimes take a while but it just seems really fishy that they suddenly stopped on Monday, I then got a few old (missing) ones yesterday and all of them yesterday afternoon and now today they are all missing again. It is like they are getting stuck somewhere.

Not sure what VPS is or how to find the email queue manager. This is the forum I have always come on for months with my problems so hoped one of my old friends would help me.

[jon123]

Cassie didn't you mention a while back that you couldn't use your own mail servers here, and you had to forward email instead? Or have I got that wrong?
If it is true I am not sure how that works, but seems to me that if the company you got the domain name from is imposing this kind of restriction on you, then you should transfer the domain to someone else.

If it is a .uk domain then you could move it to 123-reg for nothing.

If i misunderstood your problem then please ignore this post
http://www.123-support.co.uk/cgi-bin...hp?p_faqid=372

[Cassie]

There is no problem with the cart or where that is hosted.

The email address which is the problem is for a domain which is hosted on webuk and YES I do think it is a problem with the person who I get the domain from - WEBUK - which is why I am posting on here.

I think the issue you might be referring to is about the wanadoo issue but that is my dads broad band not mine.

This has worked for months with no problem. Now all of a sudden I am not getting the emails. I have not changed anything. The shopping cart has not been changed. The person hosting the site has not changed any thing. The only person that leaves is WEBUK.

If anyone wants more info I will pm them the email addresses etc.

I am running out of ideas and WEBUK just keep blaming aitsafe who supply the cart. aitsafe keep saying that the emails are going from them fine but being blocked by the WEBUK email servers. WEBUK says that isn't possible and say it is aitsafe. I am a piggy in the middle and getting p****ed off.

[jon123]

Ignore my post above. I didn't understand who WEBUK were. I thought this was a domain name provider but I think you are refering to this company here arn't you, unless I am mistaken again !

All i can sugest is that you send emails to the address you are having problems with and see if they are coming through. If you pm me with the address then I will send you 3 tests from different addresses if you like.

[Cassie]

Thats the curious thing - normal emails are getting through so tests wouldn't help.

I have no filters set up on this email account, no forwarders, nothing.

The (webuk - this company) appear to be only bouncing emails which are from web@aitsafe.com.

On advise from the shopping cart supplier I changed a setting in the cart so that the emails appear to be coming from one of my other email addresses (also hosted with webuk). That worked for a few hours and then they too stopped coming through.

There must be some filter somewhere or somehow they are blacklisting the email addresses. They are saying there is no filter on the email servers at their (webuk) end.

I will pm the emails anyway

[optrex]

really without logs or a non delivery report or access to either of the servers exim or mail queues, we are not going to be able to do much.

[Administrator]

Hello Cassie, Please let me know the Ticket # as I need to check exim_mainlog and /etc/localdomains entries on server hosting your email accounts.

[Cassie]

just pm'ed it to you

[Pommie]

I am also having an issue with non delivery of email.

A concrete example - a potential holiday property rental customer used my online form yesterday to send an enquiry. I never got it, but luckily he called me before he sent it so I knew to expect it. When I didn't respond he called me again so I did not lose the booking this time.

SO I tried sending a booking enquiry myself using his hotmail address. It never got through. I sent exactly the same enquiry but changed @hotmail.co.uk to the domain of one of my clients. It arrived immediately.

Now I have an account level filter that theoretically at least redirects all spam > 5 to spam@mydomain.co.uk.

Something is clearly sweeping up a WHOLE LOAD of email before it gets to my account level filter, and it is clearly also sweeping up some very valid emails.

At the same time the filter is misscoring really obvious stuff

A rather obvious spam about buying a degree gets this

X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0
X-Spam-Score: -9
X-Spam-Bar: -
X-Spam-Flag: NO

An email trying to sell me an Exclusive offer of Gucci Chanel Prada Versace Footwear Enjoy Wholesale Prices Designer Shoes gets

X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.1
X-Spam-Score: 1
X-Spam-Bar: /
X-Spam-Flag: NO

That bored girl who wants to chat with all of us gets

X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.1
X-Spam-Score: 0
X-Spam-Bar: /
X-Spam-Flag: NO

and a very kind chap from Nigeria who wants me to help him with his lottery funds gets through with

X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.6
X-Spam-Score: -25
X-Spam-Bar: --
X-Spam-Flag: NO

But because someone is using a hotmail address their stuff never even hits my filters ??????


This is costing me money. My formmailer has been fired 24 times this month.

I have tested it 8 times, support tested it once and I have received 1 enquiry from someonne who has already booked but used the form to contact me. His email address was not a free hotmail/btinternet one. That leaves 14 - Yes 14 instances where I have not received enquiries sent by the form.

I accept that it is possible that some of these came from RBL'd IPs and that some may have been completed with "Buy Viagra Here" but in February I got 12 enquiries via the form. In march when this problem began I got only two.

I have no idea what you have changed, or why Spam Assassin has started showing negative numbers.

however, if I don't get the ability to filter the first level of spam to an account where I (yes ME not WebhostingUK) can decide if I want to read or delete it then i will have to move my business to a hosting provider where I can as this is proving potentially very damaging to my business.

Does anyoen else here have similar bizarre scoring on their stuff?

I have had numerous "chats" about this and have an open ticket DEW-27272-531.

I have pointed out that in this forum I have been told that something is wrong and needs fixing but nobody in support that I chat to seems to find it odd that there are 2 scores as shown above , one of which is 10 times the other, or that obvious spam should receive a negative score

I have been promised that someone will change something, but nothing seems to have happened.

All help will be gratefuly received!

[Pommie]

So they closed the ticket with

We have set following spam assassin protection setting on server, It is default we can't chanage it.
1)Server do reject mail at SMTP time if the spam score from SpamAssassinTM is greater than 20.0.
2)Server do reject mail with a spam score is greater then 15.0 with a bounce message (not at SMTP time).
3)Server do reject mail at SMTP time if the sender host is in the zen.spamhaus.org [INFO], or bl.spamcop.net [INFO] rbl etc..

and coincidentally I got this email, in reply to a mailshot I sent out, 2 minutes after I read that.

Dear John.

I wrote to you sometime ago to book the lodge for christmas week. As I have not heard from you I have had to book another holiday somewhere else.

Kind regards G***** R****

Guess what? - she has a Yahoo address.

That just cost me £700

As support won't answer this question in spite of being asked multiple times

Can you please explain why I was told my spamassassin was misconfigured when I posted a query about having two scores showing e.g.

X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0
X-Spam-Score: -9

Can you please explain why some obvious spam gets a NEGATIVE score

Can you please explain why although according to the above non RBL spam with a score of < 15 should be getting through to my account, and my filters should then push anything with either SPAM in the Spam Bar SPAM in the Subject Line or ++++ in spam bar to my spam account. I have recived nothing in the spam account apart from the email from support in the last 24 hours.

Don't tell me that no spam with a score between 4 and 15 hit my account because I won't believe you!

And are you telling me that all hotmail and yahoo accounts are RBLd then? According to the headers, enquiries sent by the form don't even go through the spam assassin check (Presumably because they originate from kent.webhosting.uk.com) so if there is not a globa;l RBL on Hotmail,and Yahoo there must be some other reason why you are deleting my enquiries. What is it?

[jon123]

Hi Pommie.
I don't want to get in the way of you fixing your problem with Spamassassin and wish you good luck in seeking an answer to your problems. But I was curious in the way your mailer script works and thought I would ask if that was ok.

It was the second para that caught my eye:

SO I tried sending a booking enquiry myself using his hotmail address. It never got through. I sent exactly the same enquiry but changed @hotmail.co.uk to the domain of one of my clients. It arrived immediately

I just wondered what difference a potential customer's email address had to do with whether the mail got sent/received or not and how you managed to send via THEIR address?
OR are you saying that it is the email address (hotmail, yahoo) in the message body that is treated as spam?

I am obviously not understanding it fully (nothing new there), but doesn't the form contain fields such as 'name', 'email', 'message',etc And all that info is sent to your email address wrapped under the message body of the email?
For instance: I use phpmailer for web forms and when one is filled in I will receive something like:

You have received a mesage from ****** for the Dorset Submariners Associates programme.
The email specified is ******* and the username for login is : *****
Their branch is the ***** branch of the Submariners Association
They can login with the username above and the password they supplied.
To activate this account please Click on the link below.
Dorset Submariners

(****** Denotes form fields)
I never fail to receive the form because the sender (me) and subject stays the same and everything they have filled in is part of the message body. Granted I use an obscure email address to send or my isp email address, and spam assassin isn't enabled on these account. (which kinda doesn't help you does it).
anyway I wish you luck with your problem

[Pommie]

Hi Jon

The script sends the email as from the enquirer. It does not seem to pass through the spam assassin scoring system at at all as can be seen from the headers below. The From value in the header is their email address.

Your post gives me possible workaround idea.

I changed the $reply_to_field[0] value to my own email address.

Results

1. User enters hotmail address, reply to set to my address - instantly received
2. User enters hotmail address, reply to set to their address - nothing received
3. User enters hotmail address, reply to set to my address - instantly received again

Maybe the admins round here can explain why this would be?

And why no spam email between 4 and 26 has been received by my account for 48 hours?

I can't hang around much longer if i'm goimg to be losing half my emails!
Worse than that I am now going to have toe xplain to the advertisers on mmy other site why I'm having to change the way tehir forms work, and the intelligent amongst them will realise that this means they may have lost some enquiries themselves.

Unless of course WHUK can fix whatever is going on here????

Return-path: <nobody@kent.webhosting.uk.com>
Envelope-to: info@*mydomain*.co.uk
Delivery-date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:43:44 +0000
Received: from nobody by kent.webhosting.uk.com with local (Exim 4.6
(envelope-from <nobody@kent.webhosting.uk.com>)
id 1Jbhiq-0003ld-8d
for info@*mydomain*.co.uk; Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:43:44 +0000
To: info@*mydomain*.co.uk
Subject: W********* Lodge - Enquiry Form
X-PHP-Script: *mydomain*.co.uk/html/formmailer.php for 80.189.65.242
From: <**Their email address**>
X-Priority: 1
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Message-Id: <E1Jbhiq-0003ld-8d@kent.webhosting.uk.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:43:44 +0000
X-NAS-BWL: No match found for '**Their email address**' (783 addresses, 0 domains)
X-NAS-Bayes: #0: 0; #1: 1
X-NAS-Classification: 0
X-NAS-MessageID: 5359
X-NAS-Validation: {5151215F-5F21-4D2D-952B-C99FB048799B}

You have received an Enquiry regarding Windermere Lodge :
Title Mrs
FirstName A**
LastName W******
Email **Their email address**
ConfirmEmail **Their email address**
Telephone ***their phone number **
HowHear Google Advert
Enquiry Hello

Can you tell me if your lodge is still available from Fri ** ******? It would be for 2 adults and 2 children - could you also confirm the price.

Also does the shop have a wide range of groceries or is there a supermarket nearby?

Kind regards

A**** W****
Sender IP 88.xx.xxx.xx

[optrex]

personally I would request spam assasin be disabled then junk your spam using your own rules/ whitelist and blacklist if possible (depending on your hosting plan).

I have a VPS so use CPanel and the amount of issues it causes, its just not worth running it.