Orcon, Is this for real or a scam??

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Orcon, Is this for real or a scam??

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TinyTim

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#823332 22-May-2013 07:14

dacraka:
quentinreade: No worries - it's worth checking.
For future reference, most of our bulk emails (apart from accounts) will have noreply@orcon.net.nz as the email address.
Cheers!

Personally I think that companies shouldn't have "No Reply" email addresses as it implies that they don't want you to communicate back to them very easily. If they had a proper email address, then it would help customers cummunicate back to the company that little bit easier.

Yes. The message I get when I receive an email from a 'no reply' email address is 'you're not important enough to us to want to hear from'. <Bin>.

FireEngine

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#823333 22-May-2013 07:38

TinyTim:
dacraka:
quentinreade: No worries - it's worth checking.
For future reference, most of our bulk emails (apart from accounts) will have noreply@orcon.net.nz as the email address.
Cheers!

Personally I think that companies shouldn't have "No Reply" email addresses as it implies that they don't want you to communicate back to them very easily. If they had a proper email address, then it would help customers cummunicate back to the company that little bit easier.

Yes. The message I get when I receive an email from a 'no reply' email address is 'you're not important enough to us to want to hear from'. <Bin>.

This is a valid point and I will raise it for discussion again internally.

Please understand though that any bulk mailing first of all generates a number of bounce backs/failures where customers have changed/discarded an email contact address or there is a transient email issue at the time. Secondly it will generate a lot of "out of office" type replies.

All these replies, if sent to a support queue, take time to deal with - all of which is time agents spend away from real issues and cost to real customers - and the volume means it is quite substantial effort/time/cost.

The alternative is to give or have a known good address to which the human recipient can knowingly forward the bulk mail to to get a further answer/clarification etc etc.

Hope that helps understand the context in which that "noreply" decision is often made.

Regards FireEngine

quentinreade

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#823334 22-May-2013 07:39

That's why we include a support link in our emails. That takes people through the proper channels here and works better for both them and us :)

Comms chap

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old3eyes

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#823370 22-May-2013 09:09

mattwnz: Did you really need to ask. Obviously a scam. I got one for my Xtra email account, and it is identical.

Based on your enlighten response next time I'll tell them it's a scam even if Orcon on day does send out an email asking people to login and validate their accounts that are not tied to a current Internet account . I'm sure they must have thousands of dead "email for life accounts" taking up lots of space on their servers..

Regards,

Old3eyes

TinyTim

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#823378 22-May-2013 09:24

FireEngine:
TinyTim:
dacraka:
quentinreade: No worries - it's worth checking.
For future reference, most of our bulk emails (apart from accounts) will have noreply@orcon.net.nz as the email address.
Cheers!

Personally I think that companies shouldn't have "No Reply" email addresses as it implies that they don't want you to communicate back to them very easily. If they had a proper email address, then it would help customers cummunicate back to the company that little bit easier.

Yes. The message I get when I receive an email from a 'no reply' email address is 'you're not important enough to us to want to hear from'. <Bin>.

This is a valid point and I will raise it for discussion again internally.

Please understand though that any bulk mailing first of all generates a number of bounce backs/failures where customers have changed/discarded an email contact address or there is a transient email issue at the time. Secondly it will generate a lot of "out of office" type replies.

All these replies, if sent to a support queue, take time to deal with - all of which is time agents spend away from real issues and cost to real customers - and the volume means it is quite substantial effort/time/cost.

The alternative is to give or have a known good address to which the human recipient can knowingly forward the bulk mail to to get a further answer/clarification etc etc.

Hope that helps understand the context in which that "noreply" decision is often made.

I don't want to hijack this thread - and it's nothing specific to Orcon. I see as dealing with the autoreplies as a cost of doing business. The lists I manage have a 'Errors-to:' field in the header which automatically deals with bounces. The out of office messages get through, but they should be filterable. (Granted, my lists have no more than three or four hundred email addresses, but they are used nearly daily by different senders. The worst is the people who don't read the subscription instructions in the signature and send emails to the sender asking to unsubscribe. Dealing with those is enough to drive anyone around the bend. Maybe the 'no-reply' is the way to go afer all...)

mattwnz

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#823444 22-May-2013 11:20

quentinreade: That's why we include a support link in our emails. That takes people through the proper channels here and works better for both them and us :)

A spammer could also do that and you have just told spammers what you do to make their emails look more legitimate. These emails shouldn't include any links as links can easily be made to look legitimate. Some banks who email customers also send links which could easily be faked , but the ones that are clued up tell you to visit their website and don't include a link in the email to click.

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mattwnz

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#823446 22-May-2013 11:23

old3eyes:
mattwnz: Did you really need to ask. Obviously a scam. I got one for my Xtra email account, and it is identical.

Based on your enlighten response next time I'll tell them it's a scam even if Orcon on day does send out an email asking people to login and validate their accounts that are not tied to a current Internet account . I'm sure they must have thousands of dead "email for life accounts" taking up lots of space on their servers..

They would be able to tell which are being used or not, and could disable their password prior to deleting without sending and announcement. Email is not the method to do this for security and the high number of phishing emails. You only have to read the first line of most phishing emails or look at the links to see they are fake

freitasm

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#823447 22-May-2013 11:26

FireEngine: Please understand though that any bulk mailing first of all generates a number of bounce backs/failures where customers have changed/discarded an email contact address or there is a transient email issue at the time. Secondly it will generate a lot of "out of office" type replies.

Easy. Make the FROM: address a non-existent one (but don't call it "noreply", call it "service" or whatever doesn't exist) and make REPLY-TO: a valid address.

Bounces go to non-existent address, valid replies from people who click REPLY button go to existing reply-to address. A few automated replies will send to REPLY-TO but not servers' standard SMTP replies.

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Kyanar

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#823451 22-May-2013 11:29

quentinreade: That's why we include a support link in our emails. That takes people through the proper channels here and works better for both them and us :)

I suggest talking to your web guys. Any helpdesk software worth it's salt has some sort of rules engine for creating routing rules for messages - you probably already have rules in yours to route to billing vs accounts vs support. Just stopword "Out of Office AutoReply"and related stuff.

FireEngine

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#823486 22-May-2013 12:23

Kyanar:
quentinreade: That's why we include a support link in our emails. That takes people through the proper channels here and works better for both them and us :)

I suggest talking to your web guys. Any helpdesk software worth it's salt has some sort of rules engine for creating routing rules for messages - you probably already have rules in yours to route to billing vs accounts vs support. Just stopword "Out of Office AutoReply"and related stuff.

Of course sometimes we need to know if the customer is out of the office and unable to reply....

Regards FireEngine

quentinreade

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#823514 22-May-2013 13:18

^^ and we send via multiple platforms, for different purposes.
The one I was referring to that we use for bulk mail is really designed as an emarketing tool, and is used to send (sometimes) several tens of thousand emails at a time. Normally they highlight a special offer, an important announcement or changes, new product launch, those sort of things.

Comms chap

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DarthKermit

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#823681 22-May-2013 17:49

old3eyes:
mattwnz: Did you really need to ask. Obviously a scam. I got one for my Xtra email account, and it is identical.

Based on your enlighten[d] response next time I'll tell them it's a scam even if Orcon on[e] day does send out an email asking people to login and validate their accounts that are not tied to a current Internet account. I'm sure they must have thousands of dead "email for life accounts" taking up lots of space on their servers.

I'd expect they'd have a policy to remove inactive accounts after a set time, eg six months or a year. Hotmail removes them after 3 months I think.

But if someone is still automatically paying for an ISP connection, there's no need to remove his/her account.

Whatifthespacekeyhadneverbeeninvented?

FireEngine

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#823703 22-May-2013 18:45

DarthKermit:
old3eyes:
mattwnz: Did you really need to ask. Obviously a scam. I got one for my Xtra email account, and it is identical.

Based on your enlighten[d] response next time I'll tell them it's a scam even if Orcon on[e] day does send out an email asking people to login and validate their accounts that are not tied to a current Internet account. I'm sure they must have thousands of dead "email for life accounts" taking up lots of space on their servers.

I'd expect they'd have a policy to remove inactive accounts after a set time, eg six months or a year. Hotmail removes them after 3 months I think.

But if someone is still automatically paying for an ISP connection, there's no need to remove his/her account.

That would be an inaccurate expectation. Orcon email is lifetime, we archive inactive mailbox contents to save space but dont remove the email account or stop it working at any stage. New mail can always be received and any archived content can be pulled back to active at any time.

Lifetime=lifetime

However we still wont send emails soliciting login details, we already have them. We also know how active those accounts are.

Regards FireEngine

DarthKermit

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#823719 22-May-2013 19:12

FireEngine: That would be an inaccurate expectation. Orcon email is lifetime, we archive inactive mailbox contents to save space but dont remove the email account or stop it working at any stage. New mail can always be received and any archived content can be pulled back to active at any time.

Lifetime=lifetime

However we still wont send emails soliciting login details, we already have them. We also know how active those accounts are.

Ok, that's cool. Different companies have different policies regarding email accounts.

Whatifthespacekeyhadneverbeeninvented?

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