Purchasing

Mary Walker

Bounce Message
November 5, 2007

I noticed an interesting definition on Wikipedia, the free user-generated encyclopedia on the Internet, recently:

A bounce message or Delivery Status Notification (DSN) message or simply, a bounce is an automated electronic mail message from a mail system informing the sender of another message about a delivery problem. The original message is said to have bounced.

This got me thinking. How many email addresses do you have? Most of us have one at work that we tend to make sure it is working as our job depends on it. We also have the home email address and some have many of the free email address services. Wilford and I have a shared computer at home, bad mistake. We have the double sign-on and the double email address system. As to date, Verizon is still unable to get his emails in his inbox and mine in my inbox. I can send messages and sometimes they say they are from me and sometimes they just pop up with his email address.

At work, our IT people have very rigid rules: no advice to anyone about their personal equipment; it must have a fixed asset tag on the computer to get any real answers. I have found that most of our friends that have this great knowledge will look the other way when you ask them a computer question. Why is this? People ask me purchasing questions all the time and I feel honored that they think I know something.

Wikipedia also points out that “Bounces are a special form of auto replies. Auto replies are mails sent by a program – as opposed to a human user – in reply to a received email.” There are so many services to help you control the problem. Did you know they could sort the bounce?

• Hard bounce                mailbox does not exist
• Soft bounce                  mailbox full
• Out of office reply         J. Doe is on vacation until Dec. 1
• Unsubscribe request     Please remove me from the mailing list
• Subscribe request         Please subscribe me to the mailing list
• Mail blocks                  Sender rejected
• Message restrictions     Message exceeds limit of 16,000 characters
• Redirects                      User has moved; please try jdoe@example.com
• Delivery status Message still undelivered after 24 hours; will try for

72 hours.

• User replies                  I’d like to buy 5 widgets
• Read receipts               User has read the message

Well in some ways, today’s post is a cry for help. Working with ISM-Dallas affiliate, I have been tasked with checking out bounced emails. Now I am talking about 100-200 types of bounces. Some of the addresses have no relationship to the actual person’s name. If you belong to an organization and you are not receiving any email from them. The light should go off, something is wrong. Help these organizations out that you belong to and make sure your email address is correct. You might really be missing some information, maybe missing a speaker that you are really interested in, a training class that you wanted to attend. This will especially help the person that has this assigned task. I ask myself, why me? I have been around forever, how did I come up with this job? 

Posted by Mary Walker on November 5, 2007 | Comments (0)