Some Gmail users not receiving confirmation emails

[KendalB]

Since the Gmail outage a couple of weeks ago, we had an influx of audience members with Gmail addresses saying they are no longer receiving confirmation emails. To help these folks now, I am manually sending them their unique links to log in, which is a huge time stink for me each Monday morning as we do webinars five days a week. Is anyone else experiencing issues with Gmail users? Is there a solution for this? It doesn't affect all Gmail users—just a select few apparently.

[AshC]

@KendalB  You can call into Customer Support with any address' that is not receiving our Emails, to see if we have stopped sending due to failed delivery.

[geoffwebinar]

We now have hundreds of our viewers who no longer receive confirmation or reminder emails. What do they all have in common? They have a gmail email address. Some we have suggested to contact logmein to have them request to have the logmein "Blocked Email Filter" checked. Three times today so far, the viewer has let me know that logmein doesn't see their email address being blocked. Twice today the viewer has told me that "LogMeIn" says it's good now. Is there a resolution to this repeatable bug?

[KendalB]

I called last week and was on the phone with someone very helpful and professional. The small sample he checked with me on the phone indicated half showed as blocked. I sent him the list of 70 emails (99% Gmail addresses) of those clients who emailed me indicating they no longer received confirmation emails. He told me he would check each one and make sure they were cleared. However, this week I was inundated with emails from clients again saying they still aren't receiving confirmations after they register—this is three weeks in a row. 

[geoffwebinar]

When I called, the representative told me that I would have to cancel all of my webinars (all 120+ of them) and recreate them. I, too, am inundated with client emails wondering why they don't receive their confirmations/reminders any more. Been with GoToWebinar for 10+ years.

[AshC]

Hi @geoffwebinar and @KendalB

I appreciate how frustrating this situation is. 

Many, but not all GMail accounts were affected by an outage on Google's side recently (December 14th, 2020), which in turn caused problems with services utilizing their communication platforms.  In our case, unfortunately this resulted in automatic blocking or returning of some email attempts during a specific period, where we stopped sending emails to avoid additional conflict.

When we send too many emails to a user who returns them we run the risk of being labeled 'spammers' by the provider themselves, which can result in all of our emails being blocked.

After contacting GoTo Customer Support directly with affected emails in order to clear them from our 'bounce email' list, those who continue to report mail delivery failure should check their own spam folders and blocked lists within their GMail account settings.

[geoffwebinar]

Thank you @AshC for your thoughtful explanation. Our problem began December 29th when we announced our new year's lineup and subsequently viewers signed up then. Would they be affected by the Dec 14th incident? We utilize GoToWebinar's API to permit a viewer to register for more than one webinar at a time. Some are registering for all 120+ webinars using the API. Is it reasonable to predict that those who use this tool will now be on the blocked list because they registered for so many at once? And why would GoToWebinar Support explain to me that I would have to delete every webinar and recreate them? Most of these webinars already have 2,000+ registrants. Support said nothing about the explanation you propose here. And who do I really call or email with a list of affected email addresses? Seems very difficult to resolve this.

[AshC]

@geoffwebinar  Registering for 120 separate webinars at one time will trigger 120 confirmation emails being sent, which can easily overload an email provider, which may automatically place GoToWebinar emails on the Spam list.  Have you considered schedule recurring webinars where you offer one registration for an entire series of similar events?

[geoffwebinar]

@AshC thanks for your recommendation. Makes sense. I have considered scheduling recurring webinars. However, many viewers only want to receive the reminder/follow up emails for those webinars with a topic that they are interested in. If I have everyone just sign up for recurring webinars, then they'll receive unwanted communication, so that's why I've not gone down this road.

[geoffwebinar]

@AshC - I have now received four completely different explanations from different LogMeIn/GoToWebinar techs.

1) The first tech told me to delete the webinars I have set up. As I've setup 120+ of these, and most of them already having 1,000+ registrations, this doesn't seem feasible.

2) The next tech told me that they checked their sent emails and see that some were sent and some were not. They referred me to the API team to investigate this.

3) The next tech told me that because of the gmail incident, that most gmail addresses were added to the Blocked Email Filter list, and suggested to have our customers call in and request to be removed from this list.

4) The next tech told me that "it isn't their fault at all, it's Gmail's." He told me that they don't block any addresses from general free e-mail domains (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.), only from company domains. He said it's Gmail's fault. Our customer explained to him that they have received messages from LogMeIn in the past with no problem, but he insisted the problem is not coming from them. He did, under protest, check the filter list for my address but said it is not there.

Four different stories from four different GoToWebinar techs. My customers are still not receiving their confirmation emails. One customer wrote this to me this morning, "So it looks as though I will be unable to register for any Webinars at all. That is very disappointing."

Yes, this is disappointing.