We also encountered the same problem with Cox blocking mail sent from MaxBulk Mailer about the same time frame as others experienced. We also forwarded our mail to the address Cox gave (
[email protected]), but we never heard back from them. Interestingly, we were able to successfully send a message from Thunderbird identical to the one Cox blocked from MaxBulk Mailer. However, we did have to BCC everyone, which was what we were trying to get away from by using MaxBulk Mailer. I eventually resolved the issue of sending from MaxBulk Mailer by using a different SMTP server than Cox's, using Cox only to connect to the Internet.
I would be fine with that, but Cox isn't just blocking outgoing mail from Max Bulk. I sent a message to one of our Cox accounts from a different computer with a dial-up connection, using the dial-up's SMTP server from MaxBulk Mailer. It never showed up in the in-box for that Cox account, nor was any message received from Cox saying that mail had been block as spam. It just disappeared as if it had never existed. That means for the few of our contacts who have a Cox email address, we're going to have to spend a lot of time sending individual messages from Thunderbird, or just forget about them, because it isn't worth our time.
Despite Cox's aggressive spam filtering, we still get four or more spams a day from an exceedingly annoying spam pest, who styles himself "Canadian Pharmacy". He escapes spam filtering by jumping from server to server and using sites on spaces.live.com, spaces.msn.com, etc. as an intermediary to his actual web commerce web site. When the cover for one of his intermediary sites gets blown, he just sets up a new one. I have reported his spam to Cox by sending it as attachments to "
[email protected]" with my cover letter, but I never get a reply from Cox, nor has there been any decrease in this particular spam.
While I'm annoyed at Cox's lack of responsiveness to our communication to them, I note that this problem would not exist were it not for the relentless bombardment by spam pests causing ISPs to act against it. That the spammer's mail succeeds in getting through spam filters, while legitimate mail is blocked raises the question, "Will spam filtering become so agressive that senders of legitimate commercial email have to resort to the tactics of spammers in order for it to get through?" Hopefully that day will never come.
I found the information at the following link invaluable for avoiding being labeled a spammer or annoying contacts in your distribution list. We have already implemented several of her recommendations.
http://www.doubleplus.com/email-marketing-mistakes.html
