No Post Update Email For 3 Months In Busy Thread

NonGeographicalMan

Today I suddenly received a post update email for the Visa Electron thread (http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=19812879#post19812879) in the Budgeting and Bank Accounts section of the forum after having not received any such email since my last post in the thread back on 3rd December 2008. Yet I now find that the thread has remained active in the intervening period and the thread has extended by a couple more pages since my last post in it.

My receipt of a post update email in this thread clearly seems to have clearly been triggered by the fact that last night (16th March) I made a post for the first time in the First Utility thread in the Gas & Electricity forum section (see http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1138441&page=3) So it appears that the forum software for some reason considered me to be a dormant member and did not send me post update emails in the Visa Electron thread (to which I was subscribed and was still a pretty active thread) but then when I posted in the First Utility thread the forum software suddenly remembered my subscription to the First Utility thread and then emailed me when the next post in that thread was made.

I know that the subscription to a thread works so that when a new post in a thread is made you get a post update email and even if further new posts are made in the thread you do not get another post update email until you use the link in the email to visit the thread again. However this does not seem to explain why I suddenly get an email for a thread that I have not posted in for three months and have not visited again at all in that time.

Something seems to be flaky somewhere with the forum's thread subscription and post update email notification system. To be honest this is not the first case of this I have encountered of this sometimes happening with a thread I am subscribed to in the moneysavingexpert.com discussion forum but it is the most extreme example of getting a post update email out of the blue after such a long interval.

Of course I expect some of you will now point to email spam filtering software as the cause but I have the moneysavingexpert.com email address whitelisted with my ISP's spam filtering service and also how can the coincidence between no update email in the Visa Electron thread for three months and then getting one for that thread as soon as I post in and subscribe to the First Utilities thread be explained?