An apology from Sail-World NZ to Xtra.co.nz subscribers

by Richard Gladwell on 10 Aug 2009 Sail-World New Zealand wishes to apologise to some of of newsletter subscribers who have not been receiving their Sail-World New Zealand newsletters since 5 July.

The issue below affects only those who have email addresses ending in @xtra.co.nz

It seems that Xtra have allowed Sail-World to slip onto a 'blacklist', its seems mainly because of Rolex and fake watch spam. We have experienced this issue before and went through Xtra's 'whitelist' process to get Sail-World newsletters recognised by Xtra as not being spam.

It came to our attention late last week that the problem had reoccurred. We attempted a work around rather than try and deal with Xtra.co.nz, however we found late this afternoon (27 July) that the workaround was not working, and we have once again had to apply to be 'whitelisted'.

The issue is caused by the way in which Xtra's webmail application handles the reporting of spam - which seems to be automated, and once a sender reaches a certain level of spam reports then your mail server is blacklisted.

The issue is compounded by the size of the Sail-World mail list which in New Zealand numbers some 15,000 newsletters per cycle or 45,000 newsletters per week, consequently it is very easy for Sail-World to reach a blacklist threshhold.

There are two work arounds for individual users:

(a) goto www.xtra.co.nz and login in with your email address (use the full address eg sailworld@xtra.co.nz and enter your password; your YahooXtra webmail application should open; go to the Spam folder and you should see the Sail-World NZ newsletter sitting in the Spam folder; select the newsletter and mark as 'Not Spam'

(b) use another ISP for your Sail-World newsletter subscription. This issue does not affect those with Vodafone, Googlemail, Hotmail or any other mail provider other than Xtra.

We have little confidence in Xtra's ability to quickly resolve this issue and recommend you follow the process in (a) above. You will need to do this even if you use Outlook or some other mail handling application, as the mail is not hitting Outlook, but is being stopped by Xtra.

We apologise for the inconvenience caused to those who use Xtra.co.nz as their mail provider and who have tried to resolve the issue by resubscribing to Sail-World. Unfortunately this will not resolve the issue as it is caused by Xtra, not by Sail-World NZ.

We are also sorry that you have missed some of our best newsletters and material because of the action taken by Xtra. We wasted hours on the phone and dealing with various call centres on the last occasion this occurred (affecting those who used domain email addresses hosted by Xtra).

You can see the newsletters you have missed by http://www.sail-world.com/NZ/newsletter_archive.cfm!clicking_here which will take you to our newsletter archive. We are sorry that you have missed our superb coverage of the Alinghi 5 launch, and close ups of the catamaran, plus out coverage of the Audi MedCup and the beautiful images of this regatta by some of the world's top photographers. You will also have missed some great shots of BOR90 sailing in San Diego, the Quarter Ton Cup being sailed in Cowes, the 29ers and 49ers in Lake Garda, New Zealand's win in the ISAF Youth Worlds and around 180 other stories.

Of course, if you are a regular visitor, along with 150,000 unique viewers per month, to our website www.sail-world.com then you will see all published stories and news, but will miss the Editorials.

Sail-World's New Zealand edition is published Monday night, Wednesday night and Friday night/Saturday morning NZT.

Once again we apologise for any inconvenience caused through this action by Xtra. We have no idea when it will be resolved, and have no confidence that it will not occur again.

When you check your so-called 'Spam folder' you might find that, as well as the usual rubbish, that there is a lot of other legitimate email in there as well!

We weren't going to start a mailbag on this one, but it seems we are not alone:

Xtra email Content Great article guys on the xtra issue. I have a company domain with a dot com address & have the same issue with our clients. A real pain in the.... Suggest to your subscribers to get a Google address - the issue goes away! Really enjoy getting your newsletters - can't imagine what I'd do if i didn't receive them!!!

Hi Richard, finally I managed to check my spam. Yes you were right there was 13 relevant emails that I should have received, including some from nnnn at nnn who I was still receiving emails from. Thanks for your help; hopefully they will not go there anymore. Cheers

Richard I found that your excellent publication was being consigned to SPAM. I think I have now sorted it.
I want to continue receiving it. Tell Xtra that it is definitely NOT spam

To: Richard Gladwell Thanks for email, Sorry have just found 18 Emails on spam. Will action as you advised.