Delays responding to Postmaster requests

March 11th, 2008 at 12:01 pm

So how will this increase response time? Just in the last month alone, I’ve had responses from the Postmaster Dept. take anywhere from 2 days to over 9 days and this is average. For the last 8 months, I’ve noticed response times getting excessively longer whereas early 2007, the typical response time was 1-48 hours tops.

Just in the last week, I’ve had three emails go completely unanswered for 4 days on average. Not only is it actually taking longer for responses, the responses are effectively getting worse and less helpful the longer it takes for a reply to come in. I’ve filled out these forms long enough to know what information is vital and what is not so I know that lack of information isn’t causing the delays.

In turn, will this addition of man power actually make the Postmaster Dept. responses better and much closer to the actual issue? Case in point, I filled out the CFL form last week only to get a reply back about deferred emails (obviously, very off topic for the form).

March 11th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

ryan k is pretty hot!!

March 11th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

Sorry to comment here, but I can’t find a better avenue to contact the Yahoo! Mail team. All I want to know is if Yahoo has any plans to allow users’ whole sessions to be over SSL? At the moment, it’s just for the login. GMail lets you force a whole session through SSL by using the https://gmail.google.com URL.

Your interface is truly kick-ass, will you compliment it with extra security measures? To truly jump ahead of MSN and Google, why not offer “Last logged in” information too, as some banks do.

Thanks. I look forward to more of your innovations.

March 11th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

Hi Richard,
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I’m sorry about the frustration. The steps we are taking are to not only get caught up, but also make sure that response gets back to where we used to be.
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I also wanted to let everyone know that we are aware and are addressing the problem … and that if you already submitted your request to please be patient. We should be caught up very soon and repeatedly emailing for status only increases the backlog.
-
RyanK

March 11th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

Hi justme,
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Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll pass it along to the appropriate folks.
-
RyanK

March 11th, 2008 at 1:36 pm

Wow — a quick, polite reply; and to a blog comment to boot.

And from an “Internet company”.

Amazing, thank you. Yahoo! rocks. :)

(P.S: don’t let Ballmer get his hands on you!)

March 11th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

Ryan-

Thank you for taking the time to post an update on the Postmaster situation.

Outside of the standard best practices that ESPs work with their clients to put in place – is their anything we (meaning ESPs) can do to help improve the situation for Yahoo! and its CC team?

John

March 11th, 2008 at 3:18 pm

Man I am glad I don’t have to worry about that anymore, my previous company had a bulk mailing tool that would get us blocked repeatedly.

March 11th, 2008 at 3:44 pm

[...] by laura on 11 Mar 2008 at 04:44 pm | Tagged as: Yahoo Yahoo posted some suggestions about contacting their postmaster group over on the ymail blog.  They also explained what they were doing to solve [...]

March 11th, 2008 at 4:24 pm

John,
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Typically the suggestions are to make every effort possible to be thorough and accurate with any forms or applications that are requested. In this case however we are asking for a little extra patience.
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Our teams are working furiously to get through the backlog, and status inquiries are only making it harder for them. So normally I would recommend being a little patient, and in this case I’m asking for a little extra.
-
RyanK

March 12th, 2008 at 6:34 am

Ryan,
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Thanks for the quick response!
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If there is anything further we can do (in regards to how we send email) if/when there are other issues – please do not hesitate to let us know.
-
John

March 12th, 2008 at 10:18 am

Yahoo! should be lauded not only for working to solve the problem, but for being willing to provide extensive technical support for demanding non-customers in the first place.

The email marketing industry has a purely parasitical relationship with the big ISPs, and needs to learn some humility and patience.

March 12th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

Hello.
What about the Birthday bug?
Have you resolved it?

Thanks.

March 12th, 2008 at 6:34 pm

Talking about spam, I’d really like it if you wouldn’t automatically let through spam by people that are DomainKeys certified. They’ve broken the code (captchas) for Yahoo! and Gmail, so that little certification is fairly worthless.

On a lighter note, thanks for the blog. I really like it. And I really like my MailPlus.

Back to reality: I’m gone when Microsoft takes over.

March 13th, 2008 at 10:23 am

This is off topic, but can’t find out how to ask anywhere else. I have noticed lately that the search function in Yahoo mail isn’t working, or works only for the last week or so of emails. It won’t search back for emails going back a few months or even years. Any plans to fix this?

March 13th, 2008 at 3:57 pm

Are there any estimates on just how long it will take to get through the backlog of submissions?

Almost 1/3 of our list is Yahoo!, and we’ve been having deliverability problems for about 2 weeks (to the extend that hardly any of our mail is getting through to Yahoo!). I’ve gone back and forth with the postmaster team, filling out and sending back three different questionnaires that were sent to me, but it’s now been a week since I’ve heard anything at all, and none of the emails have even given us a hint as to what the issue might be.

Unfortunately the fail logs don’t give us much information (returning such errors as “Connection lost during RSET transaction” and that’s it), and although we understand that you can’t get back to everyone immediately, we’re getting frustrated that our overall delivery rates have gone from 95%+ to 65-70% due to the high concentration of Yahoo! addresses.

We are a responsible sender that follows best practices, and we will do everything in our power to resolve this issue, but with the fail logs not giving any real answers, and not getting any responses from the postmaster team, we’re at a bit of a loss as to what to do at this point.

Do any of the readers of this blog have any suggestions, or has anyone else been running into the same problem?

These are the two errors that we keep receiving while trying to send to Yahoo!:

“[MX ERROR] Failed to connect to MX server – 206.190.53.191 209.191.118.103 209.191.88.239 209.191.88.247 216.39.53.1 216.39.53.2 216.39.53.3 66.196.97.250 68.142.202.247 68.142.237.182″

and

“[MX ERROR] Connection to MX server – 206.190.53.191 lost during RSET transaction”

Signed,

Patient & understanding, but very frustrated

March 14th, 2008 at 3:45 am

What about microsoft suggestion

March 22nd, 2008 at 2:10 pm

I fixed my problems . . . I just don’t allow @yahoo.com email addresses to sign up for my mailing lists.

March 26th, 2008 at 4:35 pm

Hi Ryan,

Looks like the there are problems again with Yahoo’s SMTP server … same symptoms as last month, can’t send outgoing mail thru Outlook. Changed to all “plus” for POP3 and SMTP. What’s really going on?

Thanks,
Robin

March 27th, 2008 at 1:34 pm

Mar 27 14:50:29 mailhost postfix/qmgr[27984]: 497B11A21FE: to=, relay=none, delay=5.3, delays=5.2/0.03/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host g.mx.mail.yahoo.com[206.190.53.191] refused to talk to me: 553 Mail from XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX not allowed – [10])

We’re getting this right now. We’re not anyone’s black hole list. I checked. Nor do we fail the open relay test. The email address that you see above is my personal yahoo email addy. The email that was sent was sent from my personal work email addy. The email that was sent said “Test to see I can get this”

March 27th, 2008 at 2:27 pm

We applied for an FBL before the new FBL stoppage. It took 13 days from application until I was email the instructions. I did so and the next business day responded and overnighted signed docs and printouts to Mr Mark Risher. That was 3/10/08 and I have heard nothing since. Please help!!!! M

March 28th, 2008 at 4:59 am

We also are getting 553 Mail from xx.xx.xx.xx not allowed – [10] Errors.

Why can’t you elaborate on this specific error as it is not just us getting this silly error. My clients are miffed that Yahoo all of a sudden felt like they are blocking the world from their servers.

Can’t you either explain the [10] error or atleast give us more information as to where to gain further assistance to fix this matter?

If not, I will just let my client know that Yahoo is just globally blocking people in general and gonna ask his clients to not bother with emailing people at Yahoo, period.

Great way to isolate your network from the rest of the world.

Waiting for your reply.

March 28th, 2008 at 5:14 am

After further finding information about it, you guys are really funny stating that our servers are Open Relay servers. Your link that you gave at the Postmaster site had found no open relay servers and it seems like your mail servers have FAILED miserably.

Anyways, I leave this in your hands to RESET all servers with Error [10] and I will be informing my clients with a bulletin to let them know that you are “EXPERIMENTING” with some new BS, ended up blocking us, are too Busy to fix your own problems, and could take weeks or months to have us unblocked. I think that my clients will inform your clients (if they can ever reach them) to switch email providers to fix this issue instead.

March 28th, 2008 at 2:50 pm

My frustration is that I am marking as “Not SPAM” scores of LEGITIMATE PROFESSIONAL NEWSLETTERS from MAJOR IT INDUSTRY PLAYERS, and your system continues to dump them in the SPAM BOX.

A. What can I do to get them past your spam-miss-filter.

B. What will it take to get you to go back to your prior process until the new one is in better shape?

April 1st, 2008 at 12:57 pm

I have suddenly had a rash of “Error Code 2″ shutdowns of my mail and when I submit the report I get a polite but automated response saying “we looked and all is well…” or words to that effect.

If all was well my email would work as it did last week… What is this new problem and why can I not switch to compose or read without rebooting?

Thanks,

April 8th, 2008 at 8:57 am

We have been blocked almost daily for 2 months. We are removed later in the day but now are getting blocked for longer and longer periods of time. For every form we submit we only get a canned response that no one ever takes action on. When will there be some resolution or escalation?

April 8th, 2008 at 3:01 pm

We had a crisis on our hands since all alumni mail to alums of the Indian Institute of Technology who used YahooMail was being blocked, and 24-48 hours passed before we got the attention of someone at Yahoo thru direct contact. There has to be a better way of contacting Yahoo, and getting immediate attention in dealing with something as critical as mail blockages on legitimate domains.

I really think you need to have a phone number listed just for usage by legitimate sites and Postmasters.

Ram K.

April 8th, 2008 at 4:13 pm

Hello,
We are responsible email senders, mailing only to those who have opted in to receive our email communication, in the frequency promised. Over the past several weeks, we have been receiving a large number bounces from Yahoo with the codes below. Do you have any recommendations on how we can resolve this? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

1. 0] [Message Expired] [VALID DOMAIN] Exceeded MaxAttempts – [MX ERROR] Failed to connect to MX server

2. 0] [Message Expired] [VALID DOMAIN] Exceeded MaxAttempts – [INVALID ENDPOINTS] – could not be connected using VRIP

April 9th, 2008 at 5:42 am

Hello,

When we send mail from our SMTP server (196.1.53.22-smtp1.bol.co.tz) we get the following error..!

This is the Spam Firewall at smtp1.bol.co.tz.

I’m sorry to inform you that the message below could not be delivered.
When delivery was attempted, the following error was returned.

: connect to f.mx.mail.yahoo.com[68.142.202.247]:
server refused mail service

Please recitfy this as our customers need to send mails to yahoo mail boxes..thanks

April 13th, 2008 at 8:49 pm

Why am I not recieving some emails at all.
I have proof that they were sent to me by friends and customers??
I am losing money.
Thanks

April 14th, 2008 at 7:02 am

I manage an email service provider (ESP) service at http://www.listrocket.com. I’ve done everything I can to make sure our email is authenticated at the server level, including setup of SPF records, DomainKeys and reverse DNS on our email servers. We are clear of blacklisting and RBL listings. We’re on AOL’s feedback loop and have relationships with Comcast and Time Warner. Messages are always can-spam compliant. Our overall delivery rate is high, with the noted exception of Yahoo.
…
So, WHY OH WHY doesn’t Yahoo deliver our messages when we’re using an authentication standard THEY, Yahoo, advise for email sender authentication? This is ridiculous and maddening for scores of email administrators all around the globe! Just Google “yahoo deferred error” or read the rest of the comments here to see what I mean.
…
A certain percentage of our messages DO seem to get through, but many are bounced with the popular “451 Message Deferred” error. It really hurts business when I have to explain to our customers why Yahoo deliverability is low, and that it’s not the fault of ListRocket! Do you think they are going to believe that it’s Yahoo’s fault? Think about it. Yahoo, get your act together!

April 18th, 2008 at 2:51 am

I have the same problem as http://www.listrocket.com
SPF records, DomainKeys and reverse DNS

BUT WHY we have the same error???

421 4.7.0 [TS01] Messages from x.x.x.x temporarily deferred due to user complaints – 4.16.55

April 18th, 2008 at 6:08 am

I am receiving a 553 error on all outbound messages to yahoo.com from my smtp server. The host name is smtp.huntersamb.com, reverse DNS is properly setup and we are not an open relay. Can we please be lifted from this ban?

I am leaning towards implementing DomainKeys, but I doubt this is going to fix my existing problem, as none of my 350+ email end users can send any mail to yahoo with the following error:

log file:

Apr 17 21:48:52 hunternix postfix/smtp[22633]: C4C8DD0004C: to=, relay=c.mx.mail.yahoo.com[216.39.53.2]:25, delay=68525, delays=68516/0.01/8.4/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (host c.mx.mail.yahoo.com[216.39.53.2] refused to talk to me: 553 Mail from xx.xx.xx.xx not allowed – [10])

I have submitted form upon form with no response, gone to war with anybody from SBC/ATT to no avail. Furthermore, this is a brand new line that was implemented just 1 month ago.

I am looking for any help at all from the Yahoo! dept to get this block lifted!

April 18th, 2008 at 12:42 pm

hi i enjoyed the read

April 20th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

Is there a phone number to contact the Yahoo postmaster?

April 21st, 2008 at 11:24 am

@Matt Watson
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No, Yahoo! doesn’t have a postmaster phone number that you can call. And unfortunately there are some lengthy delays when contacting them through their postmaster site these days (we’ve been waiting for 3 weeks for an answer to some questions, and still nothing).
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There are quite a few people having some big problems with Yahoo! these days, and nobody can get answers. It’s quite frustrating to say the least, especially when you’re a legitimate marketer and follow all best practices.
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Alternatively, if you have a problem with AOL you pickup the phone and have a real person to talk to within minutes. It’s quite the contrast when compared to Yahoo! postmaster support.

April 23rd, 2008 at 9:06 am

Hello Ryan. Yes it’s frustrating. I run a local mailinglist off my cablemodem here in Framingham MA. There are about 1200 people on the list and it’s all opt-in with full unsubscribe instructions in the footer of every message.

According to the yahoo help files, one of the suggestions was to set your SMTP mailer up so that no envelope has more than 5 recipients. I actually set up sendmail to do that. The result is that I still get exactly the same problems:

* I get messages deferred.
* I get messages deferred with a “timeout waiting for input from a.mx.mail.yahoo.com. during client greeting”
* I get “temporarily deferred due to user complaints – 4.16.55.1″

Then on top of that, some messages try for days and then just finally reject.

If there’s any sort of experimental program that I could help with to get this problem resolved, I’m volunteering.

Let me know. :-(

April 24th, 2008 at 7:23 am

Hi Ryan,

We are a website design and hosting company. We have been experiencing delivery delays for over 3 weeks now. Errors:
Remote host said: 421 Message from (Our IP Address) temporarily deferred – 4.16.50

and

Reason: Remote host said: 421 4.7.0 [TS02] Messages from (Our IP Address)
temporarily deferred due to user complaints – 4.16.56.1

I have submitted every form that Yahoo has suggested and we are still having the same problems. I know that the error means the message is temporarily deferred and will eventually be delivered but we need to get this issue resolved. I do have a number for Yahoo that I called for support but was on hold for over 2 hours. We have several customers on this server and they are all experiencing the same delivery issues. Our mail server meets all proper industry standard.
Please contact me if you need any information as we are very concerned about this issue.

Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Courtney

May 8th, 2008 at 3:12 am

hi my email will not open what wrong i try many of time and no luck can you help,, or what did i do wrong ,,please let me know thank you….

May 8th, 2008 at 7:08 am

Hello Ryan,

I have been trying to set up Outlook to send and recieve my Yahoo Mail. I did the live chat with one of your customer care people and they helped right up until I got the error message “Your e-mail server rejected your login” and then they responed “we are aware of the problem and please continue accessing the email via web based interface” Is this an isolated issue with my computer or is it affecting everyone trying to use Outlook for their Yahoo mail? Your rep did not make that clear and didn’t seem to want to answer those questions. I am very frustrated right now as I have been trying for weeks to set this up and can’t get a clear answer to the problem? Thanks!

May 9th, 2008 at 9:05 am

I responded to your reply to my initial inquiry on April 11th. It is now May 9th, and I have received no response back. I resent the message over a week ago due to this extreme wait.

How long do you expect us to wait?

May 12th, 2008 at 3:57 pm

—– The following addresses had permanent fatal errors —–

—– Transcript of session follows —–
554 could not connect and send the mail to g.mx.mail.yahoo.com

help!!!! i have mail server i need send mail!

May 15th, 2008 at 1:39 am

dear john

because of paypal i lost my mail id. ineed it, its very important for me. if u do this i will be very thankful to u

May 15th, 2008 at 4:32 pm

I’m completely frustrated with Yahoo’s postmaster support. We recently changed IP addresses for our outbound mail from an ecommerce server. We found that all email receipts sent from the three domains on that server were then being delayed to Yahoo accounts with a 421 error code. This caused excessive inbound call volume to OUR support group because those receipts contain activation codes. If a customer has to wait hours to get the email, they think the transaction didn’t complete properly.

I filled in the postmaster support request form. I gave all the information THREE TIMES to various individuals who requested the same information over and over again. I reiterated multiple times that this server does NOT SEND BULK MAIL. That the emails are TRANSACTIONAL in nature. I gave sample emails. We have a PTR record. We use SPF.

But nobody in Yahoo Postmaster support seems to understand that AT ALL. I keep getting asked the same questions over and over. It is so bad that we have had to put a warning to our customers telling them NOT TO USE A YAHOO EMAIL ADDRESS for the transaction.

This has gone on for WEEKS.

I _really_ would like to remove that message from our site(s) but I can’t seem to get anyone at Yahoo to understand the issue. Repeated requests to speak to a live supervisor have been ignored.
Our email is still being delayed. My last request was replied to with a questionnaire about what Yahoo email account I was using. Which has NOTHING to do with the original case number!!! They don’t even READ the case.

I would dearly love to speak to a real LIVE person at Yahoo and get this issue resolved.
Does Yahoo really want retailers to put warnings to their subscribers telling them NOT to use Yahoo mail because delivery to it is unreliable?

May 16th, 2008 at 10:26 pm

i understand these issue. But I have another one – my “yahoo” email has ben sporadic for the last week. What’s up?

May 16th, 2008 at 10:28 pm

sorry about the typos. i am extremely tired. i apologize again.

May 17th, 2008 at 1:21 am

Yahoo has a know mail sever bug in some, but not all, of their mail servers.

Some transpose caps to lower case and so verification fails, giving the random 553 errors.

We should not HAVE TO, but the quick fix is to change the from-to and verification from-to mail address to all lower case.

This is a known bug. Apparently others such as Rogers refused to admit it.

May 19th, 2008 at 1:02 pm

We have started putting notifications to our users to stop using Yahoo mail and upgrade to Gmail. Despite the fact that we never send spam, verify email addresses, use SPF, remove bounces and send emails only to registered members who have not opted out, our emails consistently go to spam folders, amazingly, even after users have categorized them as “not spam”. We are not black listed anywhere and have very low spam ratings. Yahoo false positives are an enormous drag on our business and has cost us a lot of money and reputation.

When we fill the white listing forms or request attention to this matter, we never get replies.

May 21st, 2008 at 12:05 pm

Yahoo’s behavior here is ridiculous. I believe the postmaster department is swamped. The plague of 451 deferrals alone must be enough to keep an entire team busy! (Google for “yahoo mail deferred” and you’ll find plenty of examples, some going back nearly two years.) If Yahoo wants to get rid of the backlog of trouble tickets and eliminate a whole lot of complaining, here’s an idea: STOP DEFERRING OUR EMAIL.

I don’t send spam. I’m not an open relay. My server is not misconfigured. STOP DEFERRING MY EMAIL.

May 24th, 2008 at 4:49 am

Sounds like thousands or possibly millions of paying customers have been significantly inconvenienced because of a poorly strategized technology campaign. Not enough preventive maintenance thinking was considered priored to implementation. And sbc/yahoo/sbc whomever needs to own up to the responsibility or people will likely begin to take their business elsewhere.

My recommendation is that yahoo needs to reset things to the way it used to be, where users could use technology they are paying for without challenge. The parent company can work on the problem until its fully resolved. And then communicate with everyone, humbly requesting user action, plus trust that there will not be the 553 error situation again.

People’s time is valuable and comes with it a human capital expense. Every person this situation is impacting, both the paying consumer and persons at yahoo/att customer service time is being wasted in millions of dollars. The cost of doing business for both for both sides of the equation is likely totally astronomical proportions. And since many small businesses use your company’s service like mine, you are killing our abilty to serve our own internal and external customers in a timely, qualitative way. And in today’s economy, this is inexcuseable.

May 30th, 2008 at 7:48 am

I have to say that your Postmaster on-line help service is horrible. We have been trying since May 9th to have our IP address removed from your SPAM blocker with absolutely no success. We continue to provide the detailed information you ask for including domain name, IP addresses, etc. At this point we are getting over 1000 undeliverable emails per week that are trying to reach those people you call YOUR customers (yahoo account holders). I’m pleading for any assistance your can give our company to get this resolved. KMM71534094V97991L0KM

June 10th, 2008 at 8:32 am

For the past year I’ve been in an endless loop with the Yahoo Postmaster regarding applications to become “prioritized.”

Each time the response I receive is a 100% form letter, and it’s clear the respondent isn’t reading any part of the original thread. For example, asking me to provide IP addresses and log samples when they are all already contained.

Worst is when I’m told these messages are being “temporarily” deferred but in fact there’s nothing temporary; they’re being returned outright as undeliverable, no matter what kind of delays I set for retries on my server.

There is something seriously wrong with Yahoo when I can’t send mail to people who have been exchanging email with me for years and years.

I do not have these sorts of problems with ANY other mail server on the planet. Our messages don’t even wind up in spam/junk folders as “potential” abuse. Even deliveries to Hotmail addresses go through without a single problem!

June 24th, 2008 at 7:00 pm

I have tried for four days now to get my e-mail to come up, but everytime I do it says my id or password is wrong…then it gives me the security question, but when I answer the question it tells me that the info does not match profile info…my daughter had the same exact problem with her’s a couple of weeks ago…we have never had any problems with yahoo mail or logging on at all until now…it is also very frustrating because of all of my files and bookmarks that are VERY important to me will not come up…I have made a new yahoo account…but I reeeaaalllyyy wish I could use my account that I have had for a long time…if you could please help me with this issue, I would soooo appreciate it!!!! My e-mail account that I would like to have back is srenetod@yahoo.com….if I could at least get a response back letting me know something that would be excellent. Hopeful, Suzanne

July 22nd, 2008 at 7:02 am

Hello guys. I stumbled upon this place and wanted to say hi.

Weird Facts

August 19th, 2008 at 4:58 pm

msn submissions…

.) Some individuals or companies have abused the TrackBack feature to insert spam links on some blogs (see sping). As a result, TrackBack…