Contacting an ISP that doesn't have a postmaster page

How do you contact an ISP about a block that doesn’t have a postmaster page? While there’s no one answer, I do have some suggestions.
Start by contacting the postmaster@ or abuse@ addresses. For smaller ISPs, the same people handling outbound abuse are the people handling inbound filtering.
When you contact them have the following:

  • What IPs you’re sending from.
  • What the rejection message is (or if it’s not a rejection message, that the mail is undelivered or going to bulk).
  • The recipient you’re sending to.
  • The type of message.

Keep the message short and sweet. Do not send 5 paragraphs about your business model. I’ve been on the receiving end of the 5 paragraphs of your business model, as have so many of the ISPs that it’s turned into a joke among delivery: “Let me tell you about my business model…” They don’t care, they just want to know what the problem.
The message should have 3 (short!) sections.

  1. State the problem: “Mail I am sending from IP address is consistently going to the bulk folder. These are [sales receipts / tickets / bills / newsletters].”
  2. State what you’ve done to fix it:”We have changed our delivery in X fashion” (limited connections, improved data hygiene, stopped mailing very old addresses, fired the idiot sales guy who decided spamming was a good idea, whatever it is).
  3. Ask for a resolution: We’d like to know what you are seeing from our mail server that’s causing you to think this mail is unwanted by your recipients. I’ve attached a copy of the blocked / bulked message.

You MUST include the sending IP address in all correspondence. I can’t emphasize this enough. Without the IP, no one can help you. Without the IP they may even not bother to answer you. Without the IP the only response you will get it “what’s the IP?”
Also, don’t try and call. I know a lot of people prefer using phone to email, but in this case, use email. Calls are mostly useless.
The biggest issue is that getting an IP address over the phone is horrible. But when the IP is in an email, it’s a simple cut and paste into the internal tools. But there are also communication and documentation issues. Some ISPs like to have records of discussions about blocking and unblocking. On the communication level, when things are written down then no one is relying on faulty memories or hastily written notes about what needs to happen.
At smaller ISPs or even some small businesses, you can ask your recipients to talk to their support desk or admin.If the ISPs have customers telling them the email is wanted they’re much more likely to make filtering adjustments.

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At many non retail companies, however, the pace of work slows down. There are distractions and office parties and people taking long lunches to finish their holiday shopping. Non-critical departments are not staffed for official holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.
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I’d love to help, but there’s a limit to what I can do. Filtering decisions are made by the ISP, or their filter vendor, and sometimes they don’t happen as fast as we’d like. It’s frustrating for senders to have to deal with, but these are the realities of email delivery.

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For recipients, they usually don’t care. They just want the unsolicited mail to stop. It’s a position I have no problem with; I want the unsolicited mail to stop, too. But understanding why a particular sender is sending mail to addresses that never asked for it can be an important step in making it stop. Not by the receivers and the spam filters, they’ll just block the bad sender and move on. Or if they’re an ISP or ESP they’ll just throw the sender off for AUP violations and let the sender be somebody else’s problem.
In the broader context, though, this only changes the source of the spam. It doesn’t help the victim; the bad sender can always find another host and they will continue to mail people who never asked for that mail. And, in fairness to these senders, often they are mailing lists of mixed sources. Some of the addresses didn’t opt-in, and don’t want the mail, but a lot of addresses on their list did opt-in and do want their mail. Fixing their problem means they can mail people who want their mail. The sender is happy, the recipients are happy and the receivers are happy; everybody wins!
Everybody winning is something I can get fully behind.

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