jfh82
Posts: 77
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Post by jfh82 on Jan 21, 2019 11:40:43 GMT
I recently made a formal complaint to AC about consistent problems receiving Survey Monkey emails. They don’t go to trash/junk – they simply don’t arrive full stop. Several times now I have missed the opportunity to respond to an important vote on loans I’m heavily invested in because of this. AC themselves seem to acknowledge the platform is unreliable; every update states words to the effect of “if you don’t receive the email contact customer services”.
Well, if I don’t receive the email I won’t know I’ve not received it – you’re relying on me checking the update pages on any number of loans regularly and noticing the update. I’ve a background in IT, and I was expecting a substantive investigation, perhaps consulting server logs, email transaction records, basically proof that their system handed the message over to my mail host. Or if it failed to do so, some bounce messages.
Sadly not, they took over 4 weeks to respond in full with the eventual conclusion being simply; “we’re not responsible for your choice of email provider” [paraphrased]. I very much suspect that the Survey Monkey Platform isn’t processing the emails correctly/fully and that in certain instances messages just are not sent. As I use a major email host (Outlook/Hotmail) as I’m sure many others do, I’m quite confident Microsoft aren’t routing emails to a black hole and never sending a mail delivery error to the sender.
My frustration is if AC know survey Monkey is unreliable, why continue to use it. If Survey Monkey can’t or won’t provide adequate logging/error handling/failure reporting – why use it!?
I suspect others have also failed to receive similar communications, it would be good to know if it really is just me that has this problem or if we can demonstrate that it is a big problem and they need to do more about it… |
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oldtimer
Member of DD Central
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Likes: 156
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Post by oldtimer on Jan 21, 2019 11:49:45 GMT
I always get them ok. I use a gmail account.
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liso
Member of DD Central
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Post by liso on Jan 21, 2019 12:15:38 GMT
I use Outlook and AFAIK I receive all relevant Survey Monkey emails. AFAIK.
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SteveT
Member of DD Central
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Post by SteveT on Jan 21, 2019 12:18:26 GMT
I too receive all Survey Monkey emails OK, across 3 different email providers for 4 accounts (2 different Hotmail, PlusNet and iCloud)
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cb25
Posts: 3,528
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Post by cb25 on Jan 21, 2019 12:19:20 GMT
I use Outlook and AFAIK I receive all relevant Survey Monkey emails. AFAIK. I use Outlook and have failed to receive Survey emails on at least two occasions that I know of (and nothing in Spam etc). As with jfh82 , no real answer from AC
I had this response from chris "All vote emails are sent via a third party solution so there's not much I can do to guarantee delivery of emails. Unfortunately that's just the nature of emails with spam filters, blacklists, blocks, etc. We do want to bring votes "on site" so that they're integrated in to the lender dashboard, however there's a long list of items ahead of that on our to do list. Certainly not in the plans for Q1."
(but I don't use filters, blocks etc)
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oldtimer
Member of DD Central
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Post by oldtimer on Jan 21, 2019 12:37:18 GMT
I used to run an internet based business and we frequently got complaints that our emails had not been received. 9 times out of 10 it was the customers ISP spam filters that were blocking emails which had certain content that was incorrectly considered spam by the filter. You may be able to set up a safe senders list perhaps on your isp but that does not always fix the problem.
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Post by chris on Jan 21, 2019 14:04:34 GMT
(but I don't use filters, blocks etc)
Unless you run your own email infrastructure then I'm afraid you do use filters, blacklists, and other mechanisms and checks that block emails. ISPs use all those techniques in order to combat spam and they can easily catch legitimate emails and silently discard them. Naturally they try and minimise that happening but there'll always be collateral damage.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Jan 21, 2019 14:05:28 GMT
Several (all?) of the 'bulk senders' (as used by ABLRAte, RS, etc) have policies which remove email addresses from the 'send' list after a bounce or two (to avoid them getting labelled as spam sources, by sending too many bounced emails). It takes positive action by <someone> to get a dead address reactivated, and 9 times out of 10 the actual originator doesn't even know (or care?) .. they need to go look at their bulk-sender's 'we have a problem with these' list, which is available to them (but not you) somewhere.
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cb25
Posts: 3,528
Likes: 2,668
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Post by cb25 on Jan 21, 2019 14:09:23 GMT
(but I don't use filters, blocks etc)
Unless you run your own email infrastructure then I'm afraid you do use filters, blacklists, and other mechanisms and checks that block emails. ISPs use all those techniques in order to combat spam and they can easily catch legitimate emails and silently discard them. Naturally they try and minimise that happening but there'll always be collateral damage. I accept that my ISP does that. Odd though that I get some, but not all AC lender votes. Last week, got at least one, missed at least one.
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Post by chris on Jan 21, 2019 14:11:43 GMT
Unless you run your own email infrastructure then I'm afraid you do use filters, blacklists, and other mechanisms and checks that block emails. ISPs use all those techniques in order to combat spam and they can easily catch legitimate emails and silently discard them. Naturally they try and minimise that happening but there'll always be collateral damage. I accept that my ISP does that. Odd though that I get some, but not all AC lender votes. Last week, got at least one, missed at least one. It can be as obscure as the cloud server IP address being used by one email host was once blacklisted years ago when it was in use by someone else, and then you have random luck as to which server Survey Monkey happens to use from within their pool for one specific email. The way emails work in general is currently quite flawed.
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sl75
Posts: 2,092
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Post by sl75 on Jan 21, 2019 15:23:27 GMT
I had this response from chris "All vote emails are sent via a third party solution so there's not much I can do to guarantee delivery of emails. Unfortunately that's just the nature of emails with spam filters, blacklists, blocks, etc. We do want to bring votes "on site" so that they're integrated in to the lender dashboard, however there's a long list of items ahead of that on our to do list. Certainly not in the plans for Q1."
Maybe an interim measure that could be slipped in to the site sooner than the full on-site voting infrastructure: create a "voting page" which merely consists of links to the surveymonkey site (the same links that are already sent out by email, or presumably also provided if a lender somehow figures out they're missing an email and contacts customer support within the voting deadline).
This would also later allow for a near seamless transition to an on-site voting system, as the main "voting page" would already exist, and the only user-visible change would be that the links would go to an internal rather than an external page.
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Post by chris on Jan 21, 2019 15:41:42 GMT
sl75 - I agree it would be an improvement, but the Q1 schedule is already full so it can't be sneaked through. I'll keep it in mind though for the next prioritisation meeting.
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cb25
Posts: 3,528
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Post by cb25 on Jan 21, 2019 15:51:25 GMT
.. the Q1 schedule is already full .. Are you able to say what's coming?
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Post by chris on Jan 21, 2019 15:55:51 GMT
.. the Q1 schedule is already full .. Are you able to say what's coming? Designated bank accounts is definitely coming. Most of the rest will be behind the scenes changes to our CRM solution or other background services, some of which will enable more exciting things for lenders further down the road. There's a LOT of infrastructure that lenders don't get to see.
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pikestaff
Member of DD Central
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Post by pikestaff on Jan 21, 2019 16:25:45 GMT
jfh82 , cb25 Returning to the issue raised in the OP, chris is right that the issue is caused by your ISP's spam filters. I had the same problem in 2015. (My ISP is Virgin.) My solution, which has been 100% reliable to date, was: - open a gmail account, - register it as my email address with AC*, - have it auto-forward all AC emails to my virgin account. To set up the auto-forwarding within gmail I created a new filter (find under Settings > Filters and blocked addresses) with the rule: Matches: from:(assetzcapital.co.uk) Do this: Forward to [my Virgin address], Never send it to Spam * AFAICS it is not currently possible to change your registered email address online (presumably for security reasons) so you would need to phone AC to do it.
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