Shaw Small Business Customer - All emails to "@shaw.ca" are being blocked

[Kimberlys]

We are a small retail business customer of shaw located in Calgary. We are re-opening our business after the shutdown and trying to send out emails to our clients to let them know that we have re-opened.

Everyone on our client list signs up willingly themselves, usually in person, and they can contact us to remove them at any time. Normally we do a sale email once every two to three months, but because of the shutdown we have not emailed anyone since January. We do our advertisement emails through our business gmail account. We have close to 1500 contacts on our email list, so we send out multiple emails throughout the week to stagger. Each advert email has a jpeg poster of the information. Each email is sent to under a 100 contacts at a time, all BCC.

I just today sent out the first email with under 100 people and we received 25 (all the shaw emails in this first sending) auto emails back from the Mail delivery subsystem stating that the *******@shaw.ca email was blocked.

Attached please find the exact wording for the auto email.

Message blocked Your message to **************@shaw.ca has been blocked. See technical details below for more information.

The response from the remote server was: 550 5.1.0 <*****************@gmail.com> sender rejected

I have confirmed with some customers of the other domains and they have all received the emails, but the shaw domain customers have not.

Since it is quite the difficult times, I would appreciate some help. Losing minimum a 1/4 of our contacts would be detrimental to our small family business.

Thank you.

[mdk]

> We are a small retail business customer of Shaw located in Calgary.

Could you try sending E-mail through Shaw's SMTP-servers to your customers with Shaw E-mail IDs? You can configure Windows 10 Mail, or Microsoft Outlook to send those messages, up to about 130 recipients per batch, including the setting of the ID in the "FROM:" field to cite your GMail ID, rather than your Shaw E-mail ID.

By the way, this is a "user-to-user" discussion forum, not an official method to contact Shaw Support. I recommend that you contact Shaw Business (online-chat or telephone) for assistance.

[BeenOnHoldForev]

Unfortunately, Shaw changed their email provider last week and you can no longer send as (using the FROM: field) another account even if authenticated without getting the error AUP#BL.  Shaw Support agents refuse to assist with these sorts of issues, and will tell you to use GMail's servers.

[mdk]

@BeenOnHoldForev -- you can no longer send as (using the FROM: field) another account even if authenticated without getting the error AUP#BL. 

I disagree.

I am using Microsoft Outlook, and have it configured to check several Shaw (and non-Shaw) E-mail IDs, and I use the "identities" feature of Outlook to choose the value that goes into the "FROM:" field for each identity, and to send to the SMTP-server that is appropriate for each E-mail ID.

AUP ==> Appropriate Usage Policy

BL ==> "black-list" or "block-list" -- usually tagged because "too much spam" is being sent from a specific ID. Contact Shaw to remove an entry from that "BL".

[BeenOnHoldForev]

What exactly do you disagree with?  I can post my logs if you need more information.  Believe me, I have called and talked to multiple agents and they all say that they cannot help with AUP#BL error messages.  My issue is in regards to sending as a Telus user, and the Shaw agents tell me to get my customer's Telus account password and use Telus' SMTP servers.  As a small business owner, I think that this may put me out of business.

[mdk]

@BeenOnHoldForev -- My issue is in regards to sending as a Telus user, and the Shaw agents tell me to get my customer's Telus account password and use Telus' SMTP servers. 

If your computer is connected to a TELUS "modem" in your home, and to the TELUS network, you do not need any password to connect to TCP port #25 on the TELUS mail-server at "smtp.telus.net". Configure your computer to those two settings.

Then, send a "test" E-mail to a Shaw E-mail ID, and to a "non-Shaw" E-mail ID, such as Yahoo Mail or GMail, and confirm that each message gets delivered. If Shaw is blocking your E-mail ID with the "AUP#BL" code, then you need to contact Shaw.

> As a small business owner, I think that this may put me out of business.

Really?

On your E-mail program, configure it so make the value in the outgoing "FROM:" field to be different, and try to send to a Shaw ID. Does it get delivered? Same error-message?

P.S. If some "hacker" has obtained the password for your TELUS E-mail ID, it is important to change the password. They may be connecting to the TELUS WebMail server, and authenticating with your ID/password, and sending so much "spam" to Shaw customers that Shaw has put your ID onto that "BL" (Black/Block List).

[BeenOnHoldForev]

mdk, maybe you have not contacted Shaw Support in a while, but every agent that I spoke with told me that they will not support AUP#BL errors.  I have talked to at least a dozen agents in the last week.  "hackers", "Telus modem"???  We are talking about spoofing and I am trying to say that Shaw no longer allows it.  If you believe otherwise then maybe you should call in and ask them and they can tell you what they told me over and over again.

[mdk]

@BeenOnHoldForev --  As a small business owner, I think that this may put me out of business.

Can you create a GMail ID for your business usage, and then send to your customers with "@shaw.ca" IDs from GMail? Does that allow your messages to reach your customers?

> I have called and talked to multiple agents and they all say that they cannot help with AUP#BL error messages. 

That is unfortunate, in two ways, because those Shaw Agents are:

1. not taking responsibility for Shaw's own "back-end" E-mail systems;
2. not being trained to "escalate" any problem that they cannot solve to senior-level staff.

Can you scroll-down to the bottom of this web-page, and click the "Your Voice" hyperlink, to report your issue to Shaw? Include log-files to support your report.

[mdk]

@BeenOnHoldForev -- Shaw changed their email provider last week and you can no longer send as (using the FROM: field) another account even if authenticated without getting the error AUP#BL.  

That statement is not correct.

If your "From:" field contains a non-active Shaw E-mail ID, e.g., "this-will-put-me-out-of-business@shaw.ca", you will get an "AUP/POL" response, because Shaw has checked that ID against their list of valid Shaw E-mail IDs, and did not find it, and will reject the attempt to send the message.

However, if your "From:" field contains an E-mail ID not ending with "@shaw.ca", e.g., "this-will-put-me-out-of-business@cbc.ca", then Shaw does not check the validity of that ID -- because they can't check with "cbc.ca" to determine the validity of the ID -- then the E-mail will be accepted by Shaw's mail-server, and will be processed for delivery to the intended recipient.

[BeenOnHoldForev]

Hackers, Telus modem, non-active Shaw Email ID???  Actually, my statement is correct.  Attempting to relay to shawmail.cg.shawcable.net or mail.shaw.ca using something like example@telus.net is disallowed with AUP#BL, and I have logs and can show them to you.  My customer is the largest company in Calgary in his industry, and Shaw is unwilling to remove his email address from the blacklist.  Using "this-will-put-me-out-of-business@shaw.ca" as an example does not really make me feel like you are taking me seriously.  I am a senior-level administrator and I can back up everything that I have said.