How often does your e-mail "disappear"?

[photoengineer]

I have a client that I like working with, but there is a continual problem of disappearing e-mail. That is, I'll send them my final report, invoice, or other correspondance via e-mail, and it disappears. Then a week or two later, I get an e-mail from them asking when I'm going to get the report done.

Or, they asked me to make a change or two to the final report, but that e-mail to me disappeared, and then they had to follow up a second time to find out when I was going to get around to making the requested revisions.

Have you dealt with this problem? I use gmail for my e-mail system, and have never had a problem with disappearing e-mail with any other clients or anyone else that I e-mail - and I send and receive a lot of e-mail.

It appears that this particular client has something not setup right on their end.

Any ideas on how to best work around this, without offending the client? I'm starting to upload my reports to their FTP server because it appears to be more of a sure way of sending them stuff.

 

[msquared48]

They need to check their settings and rig their system to accept your emails. Probably being sent to their spam folder and being cleared automatically so they never see it.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
Motto: KISS
Motivation: Don't ask

 

[PersonalProfile]

I have had the problem and it was "higher" (excuse the laypersons speak) than the email software / filters etc.

Why not follow up with a phone call for the "important ones" (good for client PR regardless - and just to "keep things moving along").

I assume you are familiar with the various "proof of delivery / read etc" options available in most software.

Regards,
Lyle

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Or include "To ensure proper delivery on important attachments, please respond within 24 hours. If a response is not received, I will follow up with a phone call."

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[TheTick]

I used to tell my old boss: "If I need you to not see something, I will email it." Any important emails were augmented with a phone call or office visit.

 

[zdas04]

I get a hundred or so e-mails a day and send 20-40 a day. Virtually all of my correspondents get my e-mail. Two companies don't. One always gets them, but cannot reply because I use a proxy server. The other gets them in Alabama, and Bogota, but not in the field in Columbia.

A couple of other companies always say "we never got it" when I want something "no problem" when they want something.

I think the big issue is how clever the IT Security guys feel that they can be. If it were up to them the only allowed e-mail would be from them telling of the horrors of e-mail. If they feel they have a lot of power then they'll turn features on and off (usually to try to control SPAM) that block everything but companies with their own server farms or people using Yahoo Mail, GMAIL, or HotMail (but many put a filter on their system to block one or all of those).

Return receipt doesn't seem to be an answer either since the IT pukes regularly trash any e-mail with a return receipt requested or an open notification. That happens to me a lot.

David

 

[MikeHalloran]

A not completely unrelated issue is email disappearing after receipt.

A former employer used MS Outlook, with everything stored on a server.
Someone else's server.
Off site.
When that server crashed, we asked them to restore our retained email, sent, received, whatever.
That's when they told our IT guy (so he said):
There was only one server.
It was not mirrored or backed up. ... at all.
We could have had our stuff mirrored to another server,
or backed up on a regular basis,
for a rather large additional monthly fee.

Roughly three years of correspondence, all of it, gone, overnight.

It couldn't happen to you, of course.


Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Mike,

I recently pulled a boneheaded move... deleted my entire Inbox. Occasionally a message comes in with a virus attached (the usual spam). The AV catches it, quarantines it, etc., no problem. During my semi-monthly review of what the AV has caught, I usually go through and delete any files it quarantined but couldn't clean. One of those files happened to be my Inbox this time (never happened before) and I never noticed. Delete through AV is not the same as delete on the desktop where you can undo it My last mail backup was over a year old... that was bonehead move #2.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[MikeMech]

Assuming the emails are actually getting lost in transit, ask them to have their sysadmin "whitelist" your email address. You should do the same for their email address, or domain name. You both may also have to do this for your mail host.

I have had similar problems twice. Emails were getting flagged as spam due to some algorithm or quirky filter setting. Whatever the cause, whitelisting should give your emails a clear route all the time.

 

[beej67]

I cannot emphasize enough how awesome Google Aps is for small businesses. All of these problems go away in one quiet 'poof.'

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[drawoh]

beej67,

My ski club used Google to store trip reports. Google has since suspended this document storage service. From our point of view, this is inconvenient, rather than disastrous. This is because we have been cautious in our use of the "cloud". We are careful with personal information. The cloud provides convenient access to stuff, but permanent archives are on our local computers.

One issue you have to consider with the "cloud" is that the person who promises to provide the service and promises, cross his heart, to keep your stuff confidential, will lose control of his servers. He could get hacked. The company might re-organize. He could run out of money, and his landlord could secure the premises and the computers and hard drives.

You need to ask yourself how the "cloud" provider is going to make money off your stuff.

JHG