897 Bounce Removals in One night??

[boundless]

Well, this is an interesting one...

Before I upgraded, I never got any notification of bounce removals - could have been because my cron job was running in the wrong place for a while. Anyway, over the past couple of weeks I'd get an email or two with notification of a couple of people being removed due to bouncing. No problem there.

This morning, however, I had 897 emails with bounce removals!! That seems highly unlikely....

Is there anything that could cause the system to "think" that users are bouncing when they really aren't and remove them erroneously?

Bob

[DW]

Bob,

There may have been a problem with the notification before - then again, you did mention receiving a few... You should be able to see the reason why these clients bounced by looking at the bottom of the notification email for the bouncing server response.

Regards

[melanie]

We're having this issue as well - at first I thought bounce was working better than it was previously and it was simply cleaning out list.  However, this weekend it bounced me...and my boss..from one of our lists.  And I know this is incorrect - neither of us have bad email addresses, neither of us is over limit on storage - there is no reason for the bounce.  Its been doing this since the upgrade to the most recent version.  For now I have disabled bounce - we can't afford to lose subscribers.  If you can find any information on this it would be greatly helpful.

[boundless]

We're having this issue as well - at first I thought bounce was working better than it was previously and it was simply cleaning out list.  However, this weekend it bounced me...and my boss..from one of our lists. .

Yes, I sent a mailing this morning not only to my leads, but also to my students and noticed that I'd lost a lot of them. I have no way of getting them back, because I don't know exactly who was dropped - so now I"m just going to have to wait for them to ask why they're not getting mail...

[melanie]

I figured part of it out - but I must admit I'm still confused.  Part of our problem was the address our bounce notifications was going to - that account was full.  But I still don't think its working right - two examples:

We had a user signup to the list on 4/7 at 9:40 PM.  She bounced within 2 minutes - but our bounce settings are for 3 bounces in 60 days.  We have no followups setup, only a welcome email - so she should have only bounced once.

I sent an email using something other than listmail - testing the email function of another program on our site.  Sending that email bounced my boss off the newsletter list - even though she has a functioning email account.  I'm greatly confused.

[boundless]

I figured part of it out - but I must admit I'm still confused.  Part of our problem was the address our bounce notifications was going to - that account was full.  .

Mine was too...thanks for pointing THAT out...but yeah, still some questions.

Bob

[DW]

Please enable bounce notifications for your list(s) and check the reason given, at the bottom of the notification, for possible clues.

We had a user signup to the list on 4/7 at 9:40 PM. She bounced within 2 minutes - but our bounce settings are for 3 bounces in 60 days. We have no followups setup, only a welcome email - so she should have only bounced once.

I wonder if your server is sending out bounce messages that aren't bounce messages - ie.  it might send a notification when a message is delayed and ListMail is interpreting it as a bounce.  Again, I'm going to need some information about the reason the user was removed that can be found at the bottom of the bounce notification emails.

I have heard of rare problems with the mailbox method of bounces - if you're using mailbox bounce processing, try using bounce.cgi

Regards

[melanie]

This is the one from my boss.  I send it through our message boards, which aren't even remotely related to Listmail.  I've fixed the junk account that they were bouncing too.  I changed the email address for my boss for her protection  And we are using bounce.cgi.  marsvenusjunk@yahoo was our bounce account - its not anymore.


---------- The bouncing message follows ----------

From MAILER-DAEMON Tue Apr 26 11:59:00 2005
Received: from mta156.mail.scd.yahoo.com (mta156.mail.scd.yahoo.com [66.218.86.72])
   by ecaz.svwh.net (8.12.9/8.12.9) with SMTP id j3QIx0fb001426
   for <a1392@ecaz.svwh.net>; Tue, 26 Apr 2005 11:59:00 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 11:59:00 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <200504261859.j3QIx0fb001426@ecaz.svwh.net>
From: MAILER-DAEMON@yahoo.com
To: a1392@ecaz.svwh.net
X-Loop: MAILER-DAEMON@yahoo.com
Subject: Delivery failure

Message from yahoo.com.
Unable to deliver message to the following address(es).

<marsvenusjunk@yahoo.com>:
Sorry your message to marsvenusjunk@yahoo.com cannot be delivered. This account has been disabled or discontinued [#102].

--- Original message follows.

Authentication-Results: mta156.mail.scd.yahoo.com
  from=marsvenus.com; domainkeys=neutral (no sig)
X-Originating-IP: [209.133.1.14]
Return-Path: <a1392@ecaz.svwh.net>
Received: from 209.133.1.14  (EHLO ecaz.svwh.net) (209.133.1.14)
  by mta156.mail.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; Tue, 26 Apr 2005 11:59:18 -0700
Received: (from a1392@localhost)
   by ecaz.svwh.net (8.12.9/8.12.9) id j3QIdFwg027645;
   Tue, 26 Apr 2005 11:39:15 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 11:39:15 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <200504261839.j3QIdFwg027645@ecaz.svwh.net>
To: xxxx@marsvenus.com
Subject: Testing ( From Ask Mars Venus Coaching Discussion )
From: "Ask Mars Venus Coaching Discussion" <xxxx@marsvenus.com>
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: IPB PHP Mailer

[DW]

Here's the reason the message bounced as per Yahoo.com's reply/bounce:

<marsvenusjunk@yahoo.com>:
Sorry your message to marsvenusjunk@yahoo.com cannot be delivered. This account has been disabled or discontinued [#10

Are you sure the account is still operational?  What happens if you send a message from another account (ie. HotMail, Yahoo, Outlook) - does it arrive?

This one looks like a legitimate bounce.  Do you have any notifications from the large batch that was removed?  If not, maybe you could add a few of the addresses back to your list to see if it happens again.

Regards

[melanie]

So Listmail will bounce a user even if the email sent to them wasn't sent from Listmail?  In this particular case I was sending emails from a forum but the email program in the forum wasn't working correctly - it took me several tries to get a completed email to go through - I didn't realize doing so would bounce an email that was also on Listmail.

I'm going to renable bounce with the original limits today and watch it closely in the morning.  Its not a newsletter day so I shouldn't lose too many people if it doesn't seem to work.  I'll let you know when I get one that doesn't seem quite "right."  

The reason I am so concerned - my boss is signed up for our newsletter on 5 different accounts - hotmail, yahoo, comcast, her marsvenus account, and gmail.  This last newsletter she was bounced from all but the yahoo - and she swears none of them were full.

[DW]

ListMail should not remove anyone who you didn't sent to from ListMail - that is, unless the "Return-path" of your forum messages is the same as your "Bounce to Email" (Return-path) in ListMail.

On a shared server it is not uncommon to be temporarily blocked from sending to Yahoo, HotMail, AOL, etc. when someone does a very large list-mail to those ISPs.  Unfortunately, this can result in your users being removed when they have legitimate accounts.  You'll have to check the ListMail notifications / bounce messages to be sure.  You may also be able to generate a bounce by sending a manual email to the failing accounts from your email client (Outlook, HotMail, etc).  The bounce would then come back to your sending account where you can read it.

Regards

[melanie]

Okay - here we go.  Our membership program sent an email last night to a member saying their credit card was declined.  The membership program doesn't use listmail, it uses sendmail.php. That email bounced them from the newsletter list.

The email account I'm using for listmail bounces isn't used for anything else - its brand new and I added it to listmail bounce yesterday.  We are using bounce.cgi.

Bounce message below (with email addresses removed)

_____________________________________
A user has been removed from your list: Newsletter

Their information was as follows:

Email: xxxxx@yahoo.com
First Name:
Last Name:

refering email:
City, State:
referfname:
referlname:

IP Address: 198.81.26.40 (198.81.26.40)
Ref. URL: http://www.marsvenus.com/newsletter.php

Unique ID: 5a9f1d7

---------- The bouncing message follows ----------

From MAILER-DAEMON Thu May  5 00:03:39 2005
Received: from localhost (localhost)
   by ecaz.svwh.net (8.12.9/8.12.9) id j4573dwj004044;
   Thu, 5 May 2005 00:03:39 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 00:03:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON>
Message-Id: <200505050703.j4573dwj004044@ecaz.svwh.net>
To: a1392
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/report; report-type=delivery-status;
   boundary="j4573dwj004044.1115276619/ecaz.svwh.net"
Subject: Returned mail: see transcript for details
Auto-Submitted: auto-generated (failure)

This is a MIME-encapsulated message

--j4573dwj004044.1115276619/ecaz.svwh.net

The original message was received at Thu, 5 May 2005 00:03:39 -0700 (PDT)
from a1392@localhost

   ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
xxxxx@yahoo.com
    (reason: 554 delivery error: dd This user doesn't have a yahoo.com account (xxxxx@yahoo.com)

• - mta300.mail.scd.yahoo.com)

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to mx2.mail.yahoo.com.:
>>> DATA
<<< 554 delivery error: dd This user doesn't have a yahoo.com account (xxxxx@yahoo.com)

• - mta300.mail.scd.yahoo.com

554 5.0.0 Service unavailable

--j4573dwj004044.1115276619/ecaz.svwh.net
Content-Type: message/delivery-status

Reporting-MTA: dns; ecaz.svwh.net
Arrival-Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 00:03:39 -0700 (PDT)

Final-Recipient: RFC822; xxxxx@yahoo.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Remote-MTA: DNS; mx2.mail.yahoo.com
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 554 delivery error: dd This user doesn't have a yahoo.com account (xxxxx@yahoo.com)

• - mta300.mail.scd.yahoo.com

Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 00:03:39 -0700 (PDT)

--j4573dwj004044.1115276619/ecaz.svwh.net
Content-Type: message/rfc822

Return-Path: <a1392>
Received: (from a1392@localhost)
   by ecaz.svwh.net (8.12.9/8.12.9) id j4573dwk004042;
   Thu, 5 May 2005 00:03:39 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 00:03:39 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <200505050703.j4573dwk004042@ecaz.svwh.net>
To: xxxx@yahoo.com
Subject: Subscription Renewal Failed
From: "Mars Venus Membership" <xxxxx@marsvenus.com>
X-Mailer: aMember (http://cgi-central.net/)

Hello xxx,

Your subscription was not renewed automatically by membership system
due to payment failure: "DECLINED".

You may update your credit card info here:
http://www.marsvenus.com/amember/member.php

Thank you.
--
Site Staff <xxx@marsvenus.com>


--j4573dwj004044.1115276619/ecaz.svwh.net--

[melanie]

Any ideas?

[DW]

I wonder if the reason the users are being removed from ListMail is that they are bouncing in both your script and ListMail. Is it not possible that your site would send the user TWO messages in short succession (a day or two), one from ListMail and one, for example, from your credit card script?  When this happens, a single bounce (the one you see, from the credit card script, not processed by ListMail) might appear to be causing the removal in ListMail but really isn't.

The only other idea I have deals with the Return-path, which you state is different for each type of message so shouldn't pose a problem...

Regards

[boundless]

We are definitely losing legitimate email addresses due to returned mail that is bounced in error (or something). For example, I got a few the other day that simply said the mail was rejected, however when I sent the person email to the same email address from my email program, they received it fine.

So I'm guessing there might be issue with the fact the email is coming from our host server which might be on some kind of blacklist?? In any case, I've GOT to figure a way to solve this. Is there ANYTHING I can do here? Paying customers are dropping like flies from our support system because of this - so once again, I've turned bounce-removal off for now...

Bob