BT Email Problems

stereox33

I own a small finance company. 6 weeks ago we decided to use the services of a marketing company to establish new leads via the internet. On a review with them last week we discovered that 30% (over 100) of the leads they had forwarded to us we had not recieved. They had proof that BT (who we run our email and website through) had received the leads but had not forwarded them onto us.

At first we thought it maybe some sort of spam filter but BT advertise that they do not block spam just tag it. After numerous phone-calls , which involved speaking to people in India,England and Scotland and we still have no answers from BT who 4 days later are still "looking into the problem with their back-office team". One technical chap , when asked about the spam issue , told me that it wasn't actually true that their servers don't block spam. When I asked him about their advert saying they didn't he said that "a few people have said that"

I have a bill from the marketing company of several thousand pounds plus I have lost potentially significant revenue from these missing leads. Has anyone on this forum had experience of suing BT for similar loss of revenue?

Jon - South Wales

poppy10_2

stereox33 wrote: »

At first we thought it maybe some sort of spam filter but BT advertise that they do not block spam just tag it.

No they don't. Their website's business email section states that:

we employ four levels of advanced Anti Spam protection so that you can continue to work without fear of your mailbox being filled with unnecessary clutter. First of all we protect using Mirapoint Spam Filter (3 layers) at the perimeter which immediately deletes identified spam before it hits your inbox. Secondly we use Microsoft's Intelligent Message Filter to further increase the chances of catching SPAM - this mail is placed into your Junk Mail folder for you to action accordingly.

Seems like BT were up-front and open about their spam policy from the start.

I don't really see the problem here. You hired a spamming company, they sent you spam leads, and BT blocked it.

stereox33

I don't know where you've got that cut n paste from but this is actually the one that sits on their BT Office website

"No spam filter is 100% accurate, some emails we have tagged as *SPAM?* may not be spam to you, some emails which are spam to you we may not have tagged as *SPAM?*. Instead of making the final decision for you, and deleting emails which we have identified as spam on the BT Business mail servers, we have provided you with the final decision on what is spam to you. If you create a message rule to automatically move emails tagged as *SPAM?* to your Deleted Items folder or Personal folder then you will still receive all the benefits of a spam filter, but with the control to make the final decision on what is spam to you. "

This means that every business that is using BT for emails is not able to choose what it recieves. The marketing emails I recieved were in exactly the same format as the ones I didn't just with different names and addresses in the body of the message.

The bit that you have cut and pasted is not true either as these mails are NOT placed in your junk folder they are "silently" deleted so you would never even know it had been sent to you!!

JustPassingBy

stereox33 wrote: »

I don't know where you've got that cut n paste from but this is actually the one that sits on their BT Office website

http://btbusiness.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/7680/c/2048,2052,2069,2108

http://btbusiness.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/6257/c/2048,2052,2069,2108

http://btbusiness.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/6149/c/2048,2052,2069,2108

This means that every business that is using BT for emails is not able to choose what it recieves.

It's one of the perils of putting the filtering of your mail into the hands of others.

JustPassingBy

stereox33 wrote: »

On a review with them last week we discovered that 30% (over 100) of the leads they had forwarded to us we had not recieved.

Not good - but your marketing company will have copies of the sent mails.

stereox33

They have but some of the enquiries are up to 6 weeks old and pretty much useless to us now.

More worrying is the loss of enquiries from other sources such as our website or other advertising that BT may have deemed "spam".

This is not something that just affects me but anyone using BT Connect.

DVardysShadow

You need a proper hosted email service suiting a commercial user. Not the freeby consumer oriented ISP offering.

poppy10_2

DVardysShadow wrote: »

You need a proper hosted email service suiting a commercial user. Not the freeby consumer oriented ISP offering.

BT Business email is not a freeby consumer oriented offering. The clue is in the name.