Yup. Exactly.
Just want to clarify that by autoreply I mean what is essentially a read receipt. It doesn't mean generic responses to questions etc....I completely abhor that, as it is totally lazy and unprofessional. The only difference to a read receipt is that the autoreply is triggered when the email hits the casinos mailbox so they cannot deny receipt.....yes they could still not read it or ignore it, but it wouldn't look too good would it?
The iNetBet rep has often stated that ALL emails they receive are read and dealt with as neccessary, and that any that are not never reached them, or were never sent. This is quite a claim given what we know about email, and cannot be a true account of the facts. This HAS been proven on a few occasions where the rep has "discovered" the email that they first denied receiving when dealing with an issue that has escalated to the forum, or PM exchange.
From this, it cannot be denied that problems exist, and currently players have no feedback, and have to rely on the email "bounce" system to determine whether or not an email got through. No "bounce" in simple terms means the email made it out of the internet and onto iNetBet's own server network, so if the email didn't make it to CS, the fault lies with iNetBet systems, not those of the internet or email providers.
Rather than relying on a lack of a "bounce" to determine that an email has reached it's destination, a receipt message from the iNetBet server would mean that an absense of one would mean that the email was lost BEFORE it reached iNetBet, and that iNetBet are not to blame.
All complaints about iNetBet ignoring emails are based on the player having sent the email, received no return errors or bounces, and therefore concluding that the email reached iNetBet successfully, but has been ignored, and often this is interpreted as by deliberate intent, as the service standard is that "all emails are dealt with within 2 hours". This means that the complainant is already feeling that iNetBet have singled them out for poor treatment because of something they have done, so are not exactly neutral in how they outline the problem. This means that "iNetBet haven't replied to my emails" becomes "iNetBet have deliberately ignored my emails".
Most players are not experts on the technical workings of the internet and email, so take the simplistic view that an email that isn't replied to has been deliberately binned by a human staff member at the other end, rather than there being some technical explanation.
It is made worse by the intermittent and random nature of the problem, with some emails getting answered and other not, yet technically they are no different from each other, same addresses, same email clients, etc. The logical explanation is that this can only be down to human behaviour in selectively ignoring some emails, but dealing with others. Even when iNetBet say the ignored emails can't be found on the system, but the others can, it is not believed because no explanation of WHY is offered other than a generic blame shifting "it's your ISP".
Who here believes that their ISP has someone checking their outgoing emails, and selectively letting some through, yet other to the same destination are blocked. Computers are expected to give consistent results from the same inputs, so the expectation is that either all the emails get through, or none of them do, and that a logical explanation exists for the problem.
If someone with technical expertise looked into this, I am sure the problems could be identified, and fixes suggested. This may well involve players having to make changes to their kit in order to "game the system" that controls how email is processed, but doing this without knowing what needs doing can make things even worse.
After long standing email issues, Virgin Media have produced a guide to "gaming the system" that can resolve some of these issues of emails not working properly. This guide is specific to Virgin Media servers, but is an admission that this is a worsening problem throughout the internet, and that it is not always obvious where blame lies.
It proves once again that email is not a fit service to rely on 100%.
Some of the suggestions "bugger up" some aspects of internet security, and are not really meant to be used, but they DO work, and can be the only way forward when the proper working of the internet systems have let you down. They can be misused to force malware past filters, as well as to get genuine emails to work properly.
The simplest tip of all is to send iNetBet a "plain text" configured email, rather than HTML which has now become the default for email clients. As "plain text", it is never seen as a threat, so should not get blocked. Casinos are guilty of this, as they send out emails that pointlessly reference external images for no reason other than to "brand" them. Such emails can get blocked at the player's end without their knowledge if they have set their security to high on their email client, or email server. I also believe that the problem I had with Jackpot Factory was when I replied to one of their emails which they happen to have "branded" with an image, and that their servers rejected their own branding image as "possible malware", the height of stupidity when setting the filters up. It is possible that the same problem is the cause of problems where a player replies to an email iNetBet have sent them, such as one asking for documents or other information, and they are told it is their document that has caused the problem, when in fact it isn't.
The tip for this is to strip off all such "branding" when replying to an email, and just leave the message body, and if required, append your documents.
I reached this conclusion after a session on the phone to JF VIP support, where I sent emails configured differently, and asked whether they saw them come in. From this, I found that it was replies that almost never got through, yet emails I had initiated ALWAYS got through. The only obvious difference was that JF used an image as part of the signature when they sent or replied to an email, and this change seemed to prevent replies making it back.
It is impossible to run such a test with iNetBet CS, as you can't have them on the phone in order to get the results, and they can't tell you by email which ones don't get through, as they don't receive them.
