Ah, I would have answered off-list, but since it's here, I can certainly reply here.
Preamble: if there's a better channel than Mailop to give Microsoft an educated feedback about an apparent disfunction of their service, please let me know. I already tried quite a few "official" others with no result. Also, we've been patient and polite, maybe too much. You don't take care of patient people's problems, you prioritize those of the loud ones (yellow jacket, anyone?). It's all human. As for Gmail Postmaster Tools APIs, if the email community doesn't make noise enough to be heard by Google that we want those and why, chances are we'll never get them (and I said I would work on making some noise, and still didn't yet, I'm also only human, apparently). A _lot_ of senders are hitting issues with Outlook.com. A lot of them understands that it's not an easy issue to fix, and that it's less a priority than catching phishing, pedophilia contents or other things that make Outlook's people sweat, but it doesn't mean that it's not a real problem that shouldn't be fixed at some point. A lot of senders are also staying quiet, for various reasons, but are still sharing the same legitimate frustration. So, dear readers, there's a new piece of information since earlier today: I found out that the "weird behavior" came back, but not on the shared IPs I said I switched that client into. Indeed, for an unknown reason that my team is trying to figure out, the client's last few sendings (those with the issue) were sent from their dedicated IPs. So with the same issue as before the switch of IPs. That means there's no new signal that Outlook.com or its users are _still_ considering the emails are unwanted with the new IPs. Although I understand that having the same issues after switching IPs could mean that there was a problem of traffic quality with previous IPs, and it's still there with the new ones, that would be ignoring the impact a domain name, a sender's email address, or other elements of an email can have. We know Microsoft relies a lot on IPs, but we also saw it stumbles quite often (some IPs with no traffic change, or no traffic at all, are getting blocked out of nowhere). Turns out that the only piece of news in my previous message was that despite whitelisting the sender's domain name, the "TimeTravel" behavior still occurs, which straightens me in the idea that there's a bug on Outlook.com's side. Now to reply Laura's points (there's nothing confidential here, I have not much to hide, and it could benefit to others in various ways): > 1) Mail going to the bulk folder? That sign says: Your mail is bad, our users > don’t want it and we’re going to protect them from it. This is the common understanding of it, yes. Minus false positives. Just in case I didn't say it already, this traffic is very legitimate opt-ins, messages are nice, inactives are excluded, 40% open rates on average, etc. : the perfect client an ESP can dream of. > 2) Mail going to the bulk folder after reaching the inbox because you > changed IPs? Our users are telling us that when we put your mail in the inbox > they don’t want it there. That would be a big hint indeed; but as explained, my case is in fact not in this scenario. > 3) The closing of tickets without any response? We’ve told you repeatedly > what you need to do to fix things and you aren’t paying any attention. We’re > tired of sending you the same information, and there’s nothing more we’re > able to tell you. That could work for several Support teams I know of, but copy/pasting irrelevant texts (because that's all the support agents are legally allowed to do) isn't what you're depicting. In the context of Outlook.com's support for instance, it doesn't work that way. Maybe it's "we are not allowed to answer anything else than the copy/pasted stuff so we just won't reply at all", hence my initial and unanswered request for escalation. If I continue to push for this ticket, it's in the hope that someone will be looking at SLA and other statistics like Support team managers do: time of response, number of tickets per agent, number of replies, etc. and that maybe some light will be shed on the case. Yet another channel where I try to be heard. > 4) The overruling of address book whitelisting? This mail is so bad and the > sender has such a poor reputation, we’re not going to let it go to the inbox > even when the user adds the sender to their inbox. Ow come on. Seriously? I prefer to consider you're trolling here. This would be a very bad way to deal with users' preferences, but after all, if a system thinks he knows better than its users, why not? (Yes I'm the one trolling now) Cheers, -- Benjamin From: Laura Atkins <la...@wordtothewise.com> Sent: vendredi 28 décembre 2018 14:00 To: Stefano Bagnara <mai...@bago.org> Cc: mailop <mailop@mailop.org>; Benjamin BILLON <bbil...@splio.com>; Michael Wise <michael.w...@microsoft.com> Subject: Re: [mailop] Outlook.com Support (whining time) On 28 Dec 2018, at 12:47, Stefano Bagnara <mai...@bago.org<mailto:mai...@bago.org>> wrote: On Fri, 28 Dec 2018 at 12:40, Laura Atkins <la...@wordtothewise.com<mailto:la...@wordtothewise.com>> wrote: I sent Ben a long-ish email with some specific information and suggestions. And I say this as someone who does delivery for a living. These types of complaints and “whining time” are wholly inappropriate for mailop. IMO the feedback from Benjamin is very useful for both Microsoft (sounds like Ben found a bug, considering the previous answer from Michael) and for us (so we don't waste days trying to understand weird issues when we know someone else already saw the same thing). This isn’t a weird issue, though. It may have been, at one point, but Microsoft is, overwhelmingly, telling Benjamin “enough of our users are reacting in a way that means your mail is spam that we’re going to put it in the bulk folder.” I outlined those signals in my mail to him, but I’m happy to share them here. 1) Mail going to the bulk folder? That sign says: Your mail is bad, our users don’t want it and we’re going to protect them from it. 2) Mail going to the bulk folder after reaching the inbox because you changed IPs? Our users are telling us that when we put your mail in the inbox they don’t want it there. 3) The closing of tickets without any response? We’ve told you repeatedly what you need to do to fix things and you aren’t paying any attention. We’re tired of sending you the same information, and there’s nothing more we’re able to tell you. 4) The overruling of address book whitelisting? This mail is so bad and the sender has such a poor reputation, we’re not going to let it go to the inbox even when the user adds the sender to their inbox. I understand Ben frustration: Outlook show a weird behaviour, he would like to do the right thing and submit feedback to Microsoft so to "fix the issue" but he didn't find the way. He could workaround the issue by moving the email to new IPs periodically but he invest his time trying to do "the right thing”. Moving to new IPs is one way to try and reset filters. In this case, it worked briefly. That tells us everything we need to know, and the problem here isn’t microsoft, in my experience. Your mail got put in the inbox, 2 weeks later it started going to bulk again. That, to me, is unarguably a sign that the recipients are the problem. They are acting in ways that tells Microsoft that the mail is unwanted. The moving back to the spam folder is the filters are reacting to user response. The recipients don’t want the mail, therefore Microsoft is putting it in their spam folder. IMHO "whining" is not necessarily something done to bore Microsoft or Michael, but simply sharing the "mood" after spending days trying to guess behaviours. Whining was his words, not mine. We all appreciate each other dedication to fix issues, but often issues with Microsoft are lost: Michael is not a superhero and no one expect him to be able to deal with everything, but I think we should encourage sharing the issues even if Michael was not subscribed to this list, because "operations" are often made simpler if you know someone else is experiencing the same issues. Laura, I think your answer to Ben could have been interesting for others here, but for sure I can say I'd be happy to read it in the mailop list. While there are significant issues with how Microsoft is delivering mail, there is nothing that has been said in this particular situation that makes me think that the problem here is Microsoft. laura -- Having an Email Crisis? We can help! 800 823-9674 Laura Atkins Word to the Wise la...@wordtothewise.com<mailto:la...@wordtothewise.com> (650) 437-0741 Email Delivery Blog: https://wordtothewise.com/blog
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