Can’t verify my email address with Avanti

[rrapynot]

I have created an account on Avanti’s website and I am able to purchase tickets.

I am unable to get them to send any emails to me though. When I login they tell me that I need to verify my email address by clicking on the link in an email that they’ve sent to me. I never receive the email no matter how many time I do it.

I have checked that my email is entered correctly and that there are no hidden spaces or something in front or at the end or in the middle.

I have checked my spam, junk, trash folders etc. nothing.

Would be nice to get my tickets emailed to me. Yes, I can login and save tickets to my device but one of these days I’ll forget and won’t have a signal when I have to show a ticket.

Any suggestions?

 

[Hadders]

Is there a reason why you're using Avanti's awful online booking system?

Other retailers are available...

 

[Jimini]

Is there a reason why you're using Avanti's awful online booking system?

Other retailers are available...

100% agree, but if you book with them you get into the realms of their loyalty scheme, which does lead to free SP and FC tickets..

 

[rrapynot]

So I can get automatic delay repay when they are inevitably delayed or cancelled.

 

[PeterC]

The problem is at least partly down to your email provider. Most use a two stage filtering process to weed out harmful content before it is even let into their system. Emails with "please click on this link" content are prime candidates for rejection.

Big companies don't check bounce messages and email providers won't know about the problem unless somebody complains.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

FWIW I’ve found Microsoft’s spam filtering has got much more aggressive in the past couple of weeks - a couple of sites I run are now getting their confirmation messages routinely bounced back by Hotmail/Outlook/etc. addresses.

 

[Buzby]

Depending on the TOC site, if the message doesn’t arrive following a requested resend, I use an alternative domain which has always done the trick!

 

[trainophile]

Depending on the TOC site, if the message doesn’t arrive following a requested resend, I use an alternative domain which has always done the trick!

I've just Googled that and I'm none the wiser! Could you explain what you mean for us non-techie types?

 

[Buzby]

I've just Googled that and I'm none the wiser! Could you explain what you mean for us non-techie types

The domain is the bit after the @ in an email address…. Some TOC systems place a block on problematic ‘free email’ domains, whether hotmail.com, mail.com, yahoo.com, outlook.com or whatever. My longtime favourite mail.com soon became problematic when spammers used these addresses so firms quickly blocked them, and it was quicker to block the entire domain than individual names.

i must have about 4 different free email accounts, so switching to another that uses a different domain will usually fix the problem!

 

[PeterC]

FWIW I’ve found Microsoft’s spam filtering has got much more aggressive in the past couple of weeks - a couple of sites I run are now getting their confirmation messages routinely bounced back by Hotmail/Outlook/etc. addresses.

That's bad I keep an old Hotmail account active for signing in to a couple of sites when the confirmations didn't reach my main email

From the other side running a mailing list in house gives a lot of insight about the under the covers issues. I ran a couple of lists until 2020 and it was always a fight

 

[Adam Williams]

Big companies don't check bounce messages and email providers won't know about the problem unless somebody complains

There's really no reason for a large company not to be able to automatically store delivery notifications, though. You should be able to contact them and they should have a record of every email sent, when it was delivered to the SMTP server and what, if any, delivery notification was received in response (bounce, complaint) to be able to explain to you. This would give you a good understanding of why the email wasn't delivered.

Most transactional email providers like Amazon SES and Sendgrid/Mandrill do support this.

 

[trainophile]

The domain is the bit after the @ in an email address…. Some TOC systems place a block on problematic ‘free email’ domains, whether hotmail.com, mail.com, yahoo.com, outlook.com or whatever. My longtime favourite mail.com soon became problematic when spammers used these addresses so firms quickly blocked them, and it was quicker to block the entire domain than individual names.

i must have about 4 different free email accounts, so switching to another that uses a different domain will usually fix the problem!

Thank you. Excellently explained. You live and learn!

 

[rrapynot]

The problem is at least partly down to your email provider. Most use a two stage filtering process to weed out harmful content before it is even let into their system. Emails with "please click on this link" content are prime candidates for rejection.

Big companies don't check bounce messages and email providers won't know about the problem unless somebody complains.

I use Gmail which is a very common email provider. Gmail do not reject any messages outright, they automatically filter some to the Spam folder. I’m not seeing these in my spam folder.

 

[takno]

I use Gmail which is a very common email provider. Gmail do not reject any messages outright, they automatically filter some to the Spam folder. I’m not seeing these in my spam folder.

gmail do reject messages outright. Not on the same scale as some other providers, but they certainly do do it. I don't think it's especially likely in Avanti's case, but it can happen to pretty large companies where different parts aren't talking to each other. Basically somebody sets up the authentication emails on the cheap without getting it properly configured, and it works until the domain drops below a quality threshold, or until somebody decides to add DMARC to the domain, and effectively signals to everybody that the poorly-configured emails are rejected.

It's possible (though not especially likely) that Avanti are using a bounce-prevention service to protect their reputation. In this case your email may have been flagged as a spam trap. You can check your email for this at something like https://www.zerobounce.net/free-email-verifier/

 

[cvs]

So I can get automatic delay repay when they are inevitably delayed or cancelled.

You can still get delay repay through Avanti, even if ticket is purchased elsewhere. The delay repay registration is different from ticket purchase. It is as fast as automatic

 

[Doctor Fegg]

I use Gmail which is a very common email provider. Gmail do not reject any messages outright, they automatically filter some to the Spam folder. I’m not seeing these in my spam folder.

Oh yes they do. They're not as bad as Hotmail/Outlook/MS Exchange, but they're still pretty fussy about what messages they accept.