Lawful Path Forums

I'm having problems with a Patron that I've never had before, and it's prompted me to write this note.

The Patron sent us funds for Gregory Allan's book How to Survive Hospital Costs Without Insurance. Our system delivers ebooks through an automated email system, and emails us a Cc: copy, which amounts to confirmation the ebook was sent, which is the best you can do with email, since you can't really verify delivery.

An hour or so later, the Patron sent us an email saying he had not received the book. I replied with an email explaining about our autodelivery system, and that the email might be in Patron's spam folder. I also offered to send the file again manually, if Patron could not find it.

But here's the rub: If our system's first email went into Patron's spam folder, then my second personal email might have also gone there, which apparently it did.

The next day I got another email from Patron. It was evident Patron had not received either the ebook, or my personal email. Patron was upset, and threatened to file a claim with Paypal.

In response, I sent Patron an email through a Gmail server, hoping that might get through her spam filter. I also went to Paypal's site, and tried to find a way to contact Patron through them. No such option was offered, and I determined I would only be able to use Paypal to contact Patron AFTER a dispute had been filed.

None of the emails I've sent to Patron have bounced. I have no doubt this is a spam filter issue.

Today Patron filed the dispute. I have responded, offering to telephone Patron if he will send me his phone number. Trouble is, my note will only go to Paypal, and I don't know if Patron will even get a copy.

So here's the lesson to be learned from this:

If you send us some money and didn't get what you paid for-- please check your spam filter. If that doesn't work, give us an alternate email address, or leave us a message on this forum. Send us your phone number. Anything that enables us to contact you, so we can resolve your issue.

Thank you to all our patrons, for your support of this site.
--Gregory Allan, editor.

Editor,

I also sell eBooks on the internet and have had the same problems. I don't use automated, I send everything manually, but the problem still exists. I do require a contact phone # in the order, however that doesn't even work sometimes, some people will not use a valid phone #. After it gets to the point of PayPal dispute, things gets a whole lots better. If you send them an email through PayPal, they will get it. Spam filters will filter a lot of automated responses and will filter some plain emails also. When you reply to an email from someone, the spam filter will usually let it go through, however even then some will not, that sounds like what you have run into. PayPal should go through because when the customer complains, you have to respond and then they have to respond to your response and as long as you only respond through PayPal after the complaint, PayPal can see all responses and will help you get it solved. The biggest problem with Spam filters is when you tell the customer that's where the email probably is located, there first question is, what is a spam folder? Then you do have problems.

Thanks, Wireworks.

My main purpose for opening this topic was to give people an alternate place to go for help, if they are somehow otherwise unable to contact us.

By the way, what ebooks do you sell? Since you're an actual contributing member here, I don't mind if you put in a plug.

Notice the first link at the top of the list in blue on the left of the page.

The outcome of Paypal's "investigation" was that Paypal sided with lawfulpath.com. Not because we were right, but because they do not guarantee virtual goods. So the funds, which Paypal had frozen pending their decision, have been released to us.

I'm writing for the benefit of this patron, and any others in the future who might have the same problem. We made every effort to contact these people, but we only had an email address, and apparently they were not receiving our email. I even sent an email to postmaster@[patron's-domain] (it was a college), asking the postmaster to please contact the people if he had alternate means. Nothing.

This Forum should have served as an alternate means of contact. This is the only area of the Forum which does NOT require registration to post.

I feel bad for these folks, but there's nothing more we can do. If we can somehow establish contact, I will be happy to send them the book, or refund their money, whichever they choose. But the ball is in their court.

I just realized I never posted the follow-up to the message above, regarding the patron who did not get their book.

In the end, they did get their book after all. They finally contacted me through Paypal, just as Wireworks said they could. I sent them a link where they could download the book directly, and everyone was happy.

I've got another of these pending right now. Same thing exactly. It's only the second time this has happened, and we get quite a few orders for this ebook.

I responded through Paypal, and I'm hopeful the folks will see my response and find satisfaction.

For the past few months most or all emails I've sent to Yahoo and AOL servers (they are both owned by the same parent company) have either gone to the recipient's spam folder, or have not been delivered at all. This goes double for any emails sent automatically by this server.

This results in any items ordered from our catalog not being properly delivered to patrons using Yahoo or AOL for their email provider.

Some of these folks have been using the "Contact Us" facility of this Forum software to contact me, without realizing the only way for me to contact them back is via email-- which is already the problem.

A better solution is to post a message in the Help section where I will see it and respond. You won't be able to join the forum to post elsewhere, because your email provider no longer employs competent technicians. Changing email providers will solve this and many other problems for you.

Today we received an order for an ebook paid for by a patron with an icloud.com email address.

The automated system emailed the book to the patron as usual, and I received an automated message from icloud that the email had not been delivered.

Sometimes this happens because email services are configured to reject all "bulk" mail, which is how my automated mail would have been classified. Sometimes attachments from unknown addresses are refused.

So I sent a manual email, with no attachments, asking the patron to contact me. That message also bounced back, undelivered.

I followed up by using a seldom-used gmail account to try and contact the patron. That message also bounced.

Evidently icloud.com's email service is completely useless. I have no way of contacting this patron.