Sometimes I love living in the future. All the things that we can do online now can be so helpful and save so much time. Plus one can avoid the mall as much as possible for holiday shopping. And yet….
…. every week I am frustrated by the fact that when I answer email queries, I get some of my replies bounced back — just now I got 5 “permanent fatal errors.” Which means I can’t send email to those people no matter how hard I try. Which means they may assume that I am being rude and not answering their query. In some cases I’ve tried more than once, hoping the problem would clear up after a few days. And who knows how many of the replies I sent out are going to get caught in spam filters. Just last week I got my reply bounced back because of “inappropriate content” — and it was probably from the content of the sample pages, not the response I sent. The irony was that their ISP let them send it, but not receive it.
Now, granted, this tends to be only a small percentage, so most people will get a response.
Having no contol over the spam filter my own ISP uses, I’m sure that the other side of the fence may have the same issue in submitting queries too.
Weren’t computers and the internet supposed to make things easier and simpler?
Et in arcaedia, ego. 
People make mistakes.
Computer makes mistakes faster and more efficiently.
There is an interesting category of errors like the incoming but not outgoing spam filter catching stuff. One reason I like my ISP is that I have more control over my filter, but it is really hard to keep up with the constantly invasive spam dealers.
Yes, they were. And then people got involved and messed it all up. As they usually do.
Hey, this gives me hope! It isn’t that the agents I sent to didn’t answer my queries; my ISP must be doing some serious spam filtering. 😀
I think as with most technologies which were presumed to “make things easier and simpler,” computers and the Internet succeeded only in shifting the problems — cured some things and opened up whole new cans of worms that nobody anticipated.
Of course, having said that, I realize it implies that life would be SO much simpler (and presumably better) if we had just stuck to cuneiform and clay tablets…
Ohh, this can be frustrating. I’m in the middle of coordinating a contest right now and have ran up against this.
Yup. Computers do only what you tell them to do — never what you want them to do.
And that was totally the reminder I needed to go check the spam/challenge responses on my new email account. Silly inbox.
I always do a quick check of my spam-box in the morning – just in case something I am waiting for has been misdirected.
Spam filters
Yeah, my work e-mail has a tough filter on it. I was fortunate to remember to alter its settings after I sent out my query letters.
Your e-mail came through fine, but another person’s was marked as “Likely Spam.” It might have occurred because you replied as you, while the other agent used someone else to respond. I don’t know.
Regardless, I’m glad you are concerned about this subject. I don’t enjoy getting the cold-shoulder from agents, though I can only assume that’s what is happening.
It’s a lot easier to just assume, until facts prove otherwise, that any query which has not yet received a positive response is one that will ultimately be rejected. That’s how I treat queries for which no response is forthcoming, and I recommend everyone else do so too.
Ah, well. I received an email rejection today from you (on the query I sent a couple of weeks ago) just fine–haha! Thanks for the polite reject anyway (sigh). Back to the (penniless) drawing board.
Just think of it this way:
If you were still using snail mail, you’d be forced to wait weeks to receive the mail you sent that was deemed undeliverable. Isn’t this way much better?
C
Of course computers weren’t created to make life simpler and easier, they were created so people could make money.
I know I would rather read on paper as compared to online. (It hurts my eyes less, among other things.) Do you prefer email or a letter with a SASE?