Please, have patience with us (Receivers). And, if you do navigate the gauntlet to contact abuse people higher up the escalation chain, I’m sure that they’re aware of their own problems withing their organization, but helpful criticism is always helpful — just don’t be a jerk about it.

Thanks for the great blog entry! I’ll be passing it around $WORK ( opensrs.com )

[Editor's note: I normally wouldn't approve a comment like this because of the obviously forged email address and lack of useful content. But I can't figure out who this guy thinks is a spammer with an un-reapirable reputation. Me? Return Path? The irony of such a poorly written comment on a post about how to communicate more clearly is not lost on me, though.]

In Return Path’s experience, there are really only two types of good conversations when there is a deliverability problem:

1) “I think I’ve got a [complaint|spam trap|whatever] problem. Can you confirm?” This requires having a pretty good feel for IP/domain reputation and where the ISP generally starts blocking or filtering. Once you’ve fixed the problem, let them know what you’ve done and the results you’re seeing. This tends to speed up resolution (if the problem doesn’t resolve itself because of your improved reputation).

2) Less common is the “We’ve looked at every reputation metric for this mailer and: (1)They look good relative to all other mailers; (2) They are at reputation levels where you rarely block; (3) BTW, no one else is blocking them” conversation. Requires a lot of data as well, but tends to drive better results as well. From time to time the answer is – “yep, this doesn’t make sense.”

In the end, your first point is the best – fix your reputation problems and you don’t need to talk to the ISP.