Can't send email to Yahoo? You're not alone!

[GatorRichard]

OK guys, I know a lot of you cannot email Yahoo users or Yahoo users cannot utilize services you offer because the emails bounce back. I am fully aware of this and have been working to get this resolved. I've been in sporadic contact with Yahoo since February 5 2008, one day after I was aware of the issue. I did not contact Yahoo at first because I thought it was only a single user and after it reached about 8 people, I then contacted Yahoo.

Do understand that I'm aware of the issue and I have been emailing Yahoo so please do not think we're not doing anything. The problem is, as other people have remarked in other posts recently, Yahoo's support is very hit-and-miss. Their support times are getting longer and longer as time passes. Jamyn S. waited 6 days for a first reply from Yahoo about an issue and I actually waited 9 days recently about this very issue. I can understand all of the frustrations you guys are feeling right now because trust me, I'm thoroughly frustrated with the fact that our customers cannot utilize a free service and we can't get any support. I'm preparing an email to go out tomorrow to some higher ups in the company that will hopefully get someone moving on this issue.

Right now, users are getting this error:

421 4.7.0 [TS01] Messages from x.x.x.x temporarily deferred due to user complaints -
 4.16.55 This error message indicates we are seeing unusual traffic from your IP  address,
 and that emails from your mail server have been generating  complaints from Yahoo! Mail
 users. Please note that this is a temporary  error, and your mail server may automatically 
re-try sending emails at a  later time.

The IP changes in each message and I've got a running log of blocked IPs. If you submit a ticket and I say that I've contacted Yahoo but am waiting on their support, understand that I am waiting, I'm not sitting on my laurels on this. If any of you guys actually know people that work at Yahoo -- I do not unfortunately -- and have contact numbers for them, please PM them to me and I will see where they can get me.

Here's an update as of 3/12/08 from brent

"I put my top investigator in charge of getting a hold of someone at yahoo. He was able to find their buildings phone number and when calling he requested to speak with the security department at yahoo. He was then transferred to a security guard at their main headquarters. (armed guard type security)

This security guard by mistake transferred us to yahoo's internal network administrator. He wasn't to happy that we reached him however has agreed to try and help us anyway. He's currently contacting yahoo internal email addresses.

He said if you email any of the email addresses you are told to contact it's equivalent to emailing blackhole@yahoo.com

Here's a few of the blackhole email addresses we've been contacting....

mail-abuse@yahoo-inc.com
ynoc-request@yahoo-inc.com
cc-priority@cc.yahoo-inc.com
cc-concierge@cc.yahoo-inc.com

He went on to say it's so impossible that yahoo employees won't even be helped at the above email addresses. "

[Rockoids]

Originally Posted by GatorRichard

OK guys, I know a lot of you cannot email Yahoo users or Yahoo users cannot utilize services you offer because the emails bounce back. I am fully aware of this and have been working to get this resolved. I've been in sporadic contact with Yahoo since February 5 2008, one day after I was aware of the issue. I did not contact Yahoo at first because I thought it was only a single user and after it reached about 8 people, I then contacted Yahoo.

Do understand that I'm aware of the issue and I have been emailing Yahoo so please do not think we're not doing anything. The problem is, as other people have remarked in other posts recently, Yahoo's support is very hit-and-miss. Their support times are getting longer and longer as time passes. Jamyn S. waited 6 days for a first reply from Yahoo about an issue and I actually waited 9 days recently about this very issue. I can understand all of the frustrations you guys are feeling right now because trust me, I'm thoroughly frustrated with the fact that our customers cannot utilize a free service and we can't get any support. I'm preparing an email to go out tomorrow to some higher ups in the company that will hopefully get someone moving on this issue.

Right now, users are getting this error:

421 4.7.0 [TS01] Messages from x.x.x.x temporarily deferred due to user complaints -
 4.16.55 This error message indicates we are seeing unusual traffic from your IP  address,
 and that emails from your mail server have been generating  complaints from Yahoo! Mail
 users. Please note that this is a temporary  error, and your mail server may automatically 
re-try sending emails at a  later time.

The IP changes in each message and I've got a running log of blocked IPs. If you submit a ticket and I say that I've contacted Yahoo but am waiting on their support, understand that I am waiting, I'm not sitting on my laurels on this. If any of you guys actually know people that work at Yahoo -- I do not unfortunately -- and have contact numbers for them, please PM them to me and I will see where they can get me.

Since there's no link to send you a PM, I did write you as an update to the service ticket I filed on this issue. I hope to hear from you soon. While I don't have personal contacts at Yahoo, I can, as you know from my PM, shine the light of publicity on a nasty practice of this sort, just as I've done in the past with Hotmail.

[Goddess Dix]

Originally Posted by rockoids

Since there's no link to send you a PM, I did write you as an update to the service ticket I filed on this issue. I hope to hear from you soon. While I don't have personal contacts at Yahoo, I can, as you know from my PM, shine the light of publicity on a nasty practice of this sort, just as I've done in the past with Hotmail.

click on the user name to send a pm to that user. it will be one of the options available in the menu that pops up.

[Sam]

http://forums.hostgator.com/private.php?do=newpm&u=6485

[Rockoids]

Originally Posted by Sam

http://forums.hostgator.com/private.php?do=newpm&u=6485

Says I don't have privileges to do that

[GatorRichard]

Originally Posted by rockoids

Says I don't have privileges to do that

I see your ticket response and I'm about to respond now.

[Rockoids]

Originally Posted by GatorRichard

I see your ticket response and I'm about to respond now.

Thanks Richard. Thank heavens Microsoft doesn't own Yahoo -- yet. It would be 100 times worse then

Sent from my iPhone -- Dude!

[petevenne]

If it helps I just switched from Ipower to Host Gator and I was getting same error messages intermintenly. I still have more problems with blocked emails to Yahoo than Host Gator than I did Ipower,, but Ipower really sucks!!!!!!

If you retry sending messeage they will eventually go through..

Pete

[richinri]

This problem also exists with mails that are forwarded from a hostgator account to yahoo. Messages keep popping up and disappearing in various yahoo areas about this issue from several other providers. It was explained to me that yahoo blocks IP numbers at one time for whatever reason and then never removes them. Thanks for your continued efforts on this. I almost lost a client that insisted his mail be forwarded to yahoo and couldn't do it.

[newview]

I'm still experiencing this issue as well.

Every time I send an email to my confirmed opt-in phplist I begin getting these bounces:

===============
Connected to 66.196.97.250 but greeting failed.
Remote host said: 421 4.7.0 [TS01] Messages from 69.93.216.24 temporarily deferred
due to user complaints - 4.16.55.1; see http://postmaster.yahoo.com/421-ts01.html
I'm not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long.
===============

I sent a message to my mailing list yesterday and today I started getting bounces. I filled out the form indicated in the bounce (for the third time) and submitted two tickets to HG but NOTHING ever resolves the problem.

[whatrevolution]

I just sent 5 emails each way. 5 to my Yahoo address from my HG address, 5 to my HG address from my Yahoo address. The 5 from Yahoo to HG landed immediately, in the time it took to switch windows. The 5 from HG to Yahoo have fallen into a black hole, and I expect them to fall out eventually...

This is, btw, consistent with my other experiences recently. For instance, email from my residential LAN box to HG lands immediately, too.

Personally, I've had no issues trading email between myself and a friend who uses GMail.

I HAVE been unable to receive email from a hostingrails.com user, who showed me that it was bouncing back to him as undeliverable; which I pegged on his service's DNS, not ours.

Also worth noting because I saw it elsewhere here, when you send email between HG addresses, it's always going to succeed unless HG is having major internal problems... the message never had to leave the HG network.

[newview]

I *think* HostGator is just now running into the Yahoo Greylisting problem.

[whatrevolution]

Originally Posted by whatrevolution

The 5 from HG to Yahoo have fallen into a black hole, and I expect them to fall out eventually...

3 of those 5 have recently hit my Yahoo[...] inbox.

A similiar test of outgoing from HG to Gmail just showed me email #4 hitting GMail immediately, and 1,2,3 & 5 still not landing yet. More relevant to this same problem having been discussed elsewhere here, but I think it noteable while we have HG's attention.

Edit: Email #5 landed ~10 minutes after #4.

Edit: Email #1 landed ~15 minutes after #5.

Edit: #2, 3 & 4 came in while I was gone.

Edit: The Yahoo[...] ones, too.

So they did all make it through, but out of order and in odd timing. I think this shows that HG mail has some severe bottle necks, where its mail load balancers are sometimes going to send your mail through the grinder and take hours to get the message out, and sometimes it will hit the fast track.

[newview]

I am currently experiencing bounces (currently at 17) RIGHT NOW, about 1 every ten minutes from an email I sent yesterday afternoon. I currently have 237 @yahoo.com email addresses on my mailing list.

**Most of these @yahoo.com subscribers have been members of my mailing list for years, through multiple web hosts.

***Bounces are ongoing & now up to 24 and I've submitted another ticket, #KED-2483353.

[gtgeorge]

Originally Posted by newview

I *think* HostGator is just now running into the Yahoo Greylisting problem.

Greylisting usually silently discards emails which is what occurs with Hotmail. When they send a bounce message it is more a blacklisting. At least you know your message did not get through.

[newview]

Originally Posted by gtgeorge

Greylisting usually silently discards emails which is what occurs with Hotmail. When they send a bounce message it is more a blacklisting. At least you know your message did not get through.

The bounce message from Yahoo is reading (emphasis mine):

<[some_email_address]@yahoo.com>:
Connected to 66.196.97.250 but greeting failed.
Remote host said: 421 4.7.0 [TS01] Messages from 69.93.223.19 temporarily deferred
due to user complaints - 4.16.55.1; see http://postmaster.yahoo.com/421-ts01.html
I'm not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long.

Greylisting does exactly that . . . "temporarily rejecting" any email from a sender it does not recognize. But for some reason . . . it appears Yahoo is permanently rejecting legitimate mail.

Edit: I'm starting to wonder if emails sent to yahoo are automatically "temporarily deferred" after reaching some magic number of successful deliveries, and if these emails sent to yahoo are greylisted for so long that they expire and drop from the mail servers queue.

[dvduval]

Thanks for this. I was having a problem, and now I know!

[newview]

Originally Posted by dvduval

Thanks for this. I was having a problem, and now I know!

Just received this in response to my ticket.

Dear Customer,

We are working hard on this issue. Our highest level admins, our CTO, and our
CEO have all been working to contact yahoo and get this resolved on a systematic
basis. We are making some progress, but we have to work our way up the yahoo
chain to get this resolved once and for all.

I understand that it is a frustrating issue, but I promise you our most senior
staff are all working on this issue around the clock.

We will update the forum when this is resolved.

If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to contact us.

NateC
Level2 Server Admin
Hostgator.com

[River]

I hope something will be done soon. This is an awful error from Yahoo. How can they ban Hostgator, because of "user complaints" as the silly yahoo msg say? Hostgator is an honest, nice host.

Well, Yahoo is huge yeah, but being so large would hopefully make them responsible instead of just arrogant... -sighs-

[::Quick::]

I too am getting this problem. Hope it can get fixed quicky.

[newview]

Originally Posted by River

This is an awful error from Yahoo.

Oh, I agree. I don't blame HostGator in the least.

I blame Yahoo completely for creating the problem in the first place, with their clueless greylisting implementation, and exacerbating the problem by dragging their feet providing any kind of solid support for those suffering from the problems they themselves created.

[ChapStickMan]

What options do we have for sending emails to Yahoo! users from the HostGator mailserver? We use MS Outlook on the desktop and send emails to Yahoo! email address through a different gmail account that we've setup for the business. This is tedious since we have to remember to look at the email and respond accordingly if it's to a Yahoo! email account.

I am happy with HostGator hosting but the inability to reach Yahoo! email addresses is presenting a serious challenge to our business. We send double opt-in emails to inform customers that we've added new products to our website directly from the HostGator server. Not being able to reach these customers is NOT good for business because business doesn't stop just because we're unable to send emails to Yahoo! email address. Heck, the invoices we receive from HostGator aren't stopping, are they? :-)

Can they (HostGator) change the IP address of the mailing server to get around this problem? I just fear that if this isn't resolved quickly I will have no choice but to switch to another web-hosting provider. Again, I don't want to do this and go through all the hassle of switching over but business is business and I can't afford to lose business because of a problem affecting a HostGator server.

I would think that changing the mailserver IP address seems like it would fix the problem. Any thoughts?

[Rockoids]

Another solution is for you to contact Yahoo support directly about this problem and send them information on the mailings you do. We finally were able to do this and we managed to overcome most of the difficulties. I fear this has to be done on a case-by-case basis, if Yahoo is not going to allow all HostGator/Planet IP numbers to be accepted otherwise.

[newview]

Originally Posted by rockoids

Another solution is for you to contact Yahoo support directly about this problem and send them information on the mailings you do.

I've tried this three times via the forms that Yahoo has pointed to in their "ignore-bot" responses to me. Basically they are telling me that if I am not the mail administrator, then they want me to have the bona fide mail administrator contact them. Well . . . that's HostGator.

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

Please note that if you are not the administrator of the mail server in question, kindly contact your email administrator directly with the error message you are receiving.

If you are seeing a 421 error code in your SMTP logs indicating that the messages you are trying to send are "temporarily deferred due to user complaints," this means that we have observed unusual traffic patterns from your IP address and have been getting considerable complaints from our users regarding emails from your server.

This is not a permanent error; your system may automatically re-try at alater time. If, however, you are seeing this same error consistently over an extended period of time, we encourage you to provide us with more information so that we can help diagnose your problem.

For bulk mail senders, please visit the URL below to review our best practice recommendations and request assistance.
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mai...ster/bulk.html

If your mail server does not primarily send bulk mailings, please reply to this email and indicate the mail streams that are being sent from your email server(s), e.g., personal/corporate emails, transactional mailings, mailing list postings, newsletters.

Furthermore, if you haven't already done so, please provide the pertinent information about the issue:

a) Detailed description of the problem (including when it started);
b) The sending IP address(es) affected;
c) Specify all types of emails being sent from the outgoing mail server;
d) The specific error code(s) your servers are getting from our MTAs;
e) SMTP logs showing the entire mail transcript, from the initial attempt to connect to our MX up until the connection is eventually deferred/blocked.

Your patience during this process is greatly appreciated.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Mail. Your case number is 46031934. Please reference it in all future communication about this particular ticket.

Regards,

Samuel Cyprian
Yahoo! Mail Customer Care
http://postmaster.yahoo.com

Hello Michael,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

If emails sent by your servers are being delivered to the Yahoo! Bulk Mail folder and you would like to prevent this from occurring, please complete this application to help us determine where your email is most appropriately delivered.

We ask that you provide responsive, complete, and truthful information.
Please note that by submitting this information to Yahoo!, you agree to adhere to the Yahoo! Terms of Service (TOS). You may review these Terms by visiting:

http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

1. Please provide all ACTIVE IP addresses you are currently using to
send mail:

Each IP address:

*IP Address:
*Mail Server Hostname:
*Primary Mail Server, Fail-Over Mail Server, Bulk Mail Server, Etc:

NOTE: At this time we can only consider active and correctly configured
mail servers/IP addresses for possible addition to the whitelist.

2. Do you have a dedicated IP address or do you use a shared mail
server/IP address (i.e., the mail server/IP address is hosted by a
service provider and is also being used by organizations other than your
own)? If you use a shared server, please specify which service provider
you use.

3. Please indicate all types of email being sent from the servers above,
e.g., personal/corporate emails, transactional mailings, mailing list
postings, marketing messages, and/or newsletters? (Indicate which IP
sends which type of mail, if applicable.)

4. If you send periodic or subscription-based mailings, please indicate
the means by which a user is signed up for your subscription list.

a) Do you take any steps to confirm that the subscription is valid, or was initiated by the true owner of the email address?

5. How many subscribers do you currently have? And approximately how
many emails do you send on a monthly basis?

6. Do you remove email addresses from mailing list if emails to them
bounce--i.e., for soft (4xx) and hard (5xx) SMTP response codes?

a) If yes, how many bounced emails are required before you consider
an email address to be inactive and subject to removal from your list?

For soft bounces:

For hard bounces:

7. How long does it typically take for an email address to be removed
from your list once an unsubscribe request has been received?

8. Please provide the URL of your web site, including the links to your
Privacy Policy, Affiliate Policy, and/or Terms of Use pages, if available.

9. Please copy and paste a text-only example of a recent mailing,
including the full Internet headers. Or, include the entire error
message you're seeing in your SMTP logs if email is being deferred or
blocked.

10. Where possible, Yahoo! uses DomainKeys to determine the original
sender of a message. Do you plan to or currently use DomainKeys to
authenticate your mailings?

(NOTE: Signing emails with DomainKeys does not guarantee whitelist
status or inbox placement. It may, however, make your mailings eligible
for our Complaint Feedback Loop (CFL) program. Basically, when you're
enrolled in the CFL program, you will be forwarded a copy of the sent
email every time a Yahoo! Mail users clicks on the "Spam" button for any
of your DomainKey-signed mail. Each complaint should be reviewed and
appropriate action should be taken to reduce your complaint rates.)

11. Please provide the following contact information:

Company name:
Contact Information (Name and Phone Number):
Postal Address:
Email address:

Once you have completed your application, please send your answers to:

mail-abuse-bulk@cc.yahoo-inc.com

IMPORTANT REMINDER: Due to security purposes, our custom messaging system is unable to access HTML web pages or attachments. As such, as opposed to sending an HTML formatted page or an attachment, we will needyou to copy and paste a text-only copy of any sample email that you are providing us.

Your patience during this process is greatly appreciated.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Mail. Your case number is 46034960. Please reference it in all future communication about this
particular ticket.

Regards,

Ashlar
Yahoo! Customer Care
46034960
For assistance with all Yahoo! services please visit:
http://help.yahoo.com/

[GatorRichard]

Hey guys,
I was on vacation last week so I was not personally handling anything. I do know that my supervisor spent a considerable amount of time trying to contact Yahoo through any means available to us and still, they are reluctant to offer assistance on this since it's not only affecting Hostgator customers but a number of their own customers. In light of this information and the fact that we've spent the last 4+ weeks trying to get this resolved, Yahoo's more than content sitting on their haunches on this issue.

I did receive a phone number today which I've called a few times and I just spent nearly an hour with Yahoo's phone support trying to get any assistance, all questions basically ended up with "please fill out the online form". I guess Yahoo doesn't see this as a serious issue.