Epoch Clients Dealing With Bounced Emails
 

Bounced emails. If you're an Epoch client, and some of your sales come from AOL, then you are already well aware of the problem of bounced emails.
By default, new AOL software blocks plenty of spam(and plenty of genuine email as well) and it seems as though a lot of Epoch signup emails are being rejected, automatically "bounced" and therefore automatically cancelled by Epoch.

Generally, we lose about 10-15 sales a day just on that problem, bounced emails. And the funny part is, we get emails from our customers daily, asking why their subscription was cancelled, saying that they did not want to cancel. We relay this info to Epoch, and they currently seem to not care too much, stating security reasons(which is understandable) are why they implement this procedure.

So, my question to you folks here at GFY is, have you dealt with this huge problem yet? What are some possible solutions if Epoch continues to be of no service? Any and all comments/suggestions are welcome. Thanks guys n gals!

From what I understand Epoch isn't changing this anytime soon. To me, it seems a simple, clean, reminder type e-mail on another e-mail address would correct this issue for Epoch.

Ask paycom for a list of your bounced emails from your members. I looked last month & I didn't see any valid aol e-mails being bounced, only mispells.

I think that's the first place to start. I'm sure they would but aol addy's on an exclusion list if all or a majority of aol emails were bouncing.

~Alli

Yes ma'am, did that. You see, when they first implemented this, I noticed just what you stated, simply misspelled emails. But now over time, it has just gotten so bad that, I have customers, who email me from their AOL email which they signed up with, asking me why I cancelled their membership when they didn't even want that.

Appreciate the suggestions Doc and Allison, keep 'em coming and bump bump bump!

Hmm I'll have to check ours too. I noticed a slight increase compared to the previous month, but if AOL is becoming more of an issue, I'm sure paycom would come up with a way to fix this. They'd be making less money too.

~Alli

Yes, that's exactly what I'm hoping. I'm hoping enough Paycom clients check their bounced emails and push this issue. If Epoch is doing this as a precaution for fraudulent transactions, and it is rejecting legitmate sales, then it really isn't scrubbing for fraud the way it should be is it?

http://www.bighip.com would solve this problem for them ;-)

Mainly the receipt option. We've been using it for our clients and works well.

Payment receipts are now delivered in the 'inbox' .
->

You're forgetting, I'm using Epoch, don't want to use a merchant or 3rd party. Need a solution for EPOCH! thanks

UPDATE:

I just did a signup for one of the sites under my own aol account. And guess what folks? The email went straight to the Spam folder. I challenge any Epoch client to do a test sale now from a valid AOL email and wait for the Receipt to come in, if it doesn't check your spam folder. I can't believe this issue hasn't been fully addressed yet I feel all alone. Please bump!

wow that sucks.. Sucks more than aol sucks.. and that sucks!

Duke

Please bump, this could affect many webmasters!

ya AOL new anti-spam has some bugs. From what I can tell if they receive to many emails from one domain name they auto block the emails.
BTW I have the auto cancel feature turned off with my new signups, I do not let a bounced email cancel a membership because there are email probs sometimes. :2 cents:

Most epoch/ccbill e-mails get dropped into the spam folders. The issue at hand happens when people use BS e-mails or if the ISP blocks the e-mail, not the client.

I know on my emails (I look through the returned ones to see if my emails have problems) that they block any emails that have landofvenus.com anywhere in the email msg.
this happens after to many msg's with my domain name in it are sent to AOhell, I can switch oout to venuscam.com and then they go through again, I do not know what their reset time is, but after a while the msg's get through again...untill I guess to many are sent then back to the block list.

I guess you're must be the smart one on GFY? ;-)

It's not a '3rd party' or merchant solution. It allows any company to have it's emails delivered.

AOL blocks emails for many reasons. One of the reasons is the url mentioned in the email.

->

Sorry, I must really be ignorant. Not to be negative towards that link, but what's the difference between SPAM and what is offered on BigHip.com? Looks like some shady spam operation to me, and I don't want anything to do with that.

I meant to post this earlier... but here you go.

There are basically two reasons why a membership might be canceled due to a bounced email from AOL.

1) Invalid Email - Meaning the bounce says user unknown or mailbox unknown.

2) Content of email is forbidden or blacklisted.

Due to the increased filtering/censoring of peoples personal email correspondence through AOL, Paycom has discontinued the second parameter.

Thanks Rand, for clearing things up! :thumbsup