SASSIE SHOPPER EMAIL FAQ page
We have compiled this list of FAQs to help assist shoppers whose shop offer emails have been shut off.
We're very sympathetic to how frustrating this situation can be for some of you and we're doing everything we can to work with email providers to allow our email to get through to you.
We hope that the information below can be of assistance to you - we'll keep updating it as we get more information.
- I received a "Your emails have been disabled" warning email - Iist legitimate?
- How do I restart my emails?
- I keep getting shut off over and over again? How do I restart emails permanently?
- I don't click on email links. Is there another way to get my emails restarted?
- Why are you doing this?
- Why causes my email to get shut off?
- I'm on AOL (or netscape,net, aim.com, cs.com)
- You say you can't send email to me ... but I get your warning email!
Q. I received an email titled "Your Mystery Shopping emails have been disabled (SASSIE, JobSlinger, etc) ". Is this email legitimate?
A. Yes, we are sending out emails with that title.
Q. I would like to have my mystery shop postings emails RESTARTED - how can I do that? Is that "RESTART" link safe to click?
A. If the link begins with "sassieshop.com" or "surfmerchants.com", that link is SAFE to click. If the link begins with ANYTHING else, it could be a fake.
Q. I keep getting the warning email over and over again - how do I PERMANENTLY keep my email coming?
A. you can register for FREE on our "Protected List" on JobSlinger. Once you do so, we will try to keep sending email to your address regardless of how many bounces we get.
Q. I don't like clicking on links from emails, Is there another way to get my emails restarted? Can you do it for me?
A. By federal law, we cannot restart your emails for you. However,, you can now log into ANY SASSIE account and click the RESTART link posted in your shopper log.
Q. Will clicking on that link restart emails for all my SASSIE Accounts?
A. Yes.
Note: For your convenience, if you have turned off emails in any specific SASSIE Account, those accounts will stay shut off.
Q. This is such a pain! Why are you doing this?
A. Recently a major spam blocking service started blocking all email from SASSIE (regardless of whether the shoppers wanted the SASSIE emails or not). One condition of them removing the block was that we institute a stricter "bounce detection" in our emails, which is why you're seeing those emails.
Now, we HATE to turn anyone's email off but it's something we have to do to comply with federal regulations and to stay in the good graces of the spam blocking services that dominate much of the email traffic on the internet.
It's a real shame that spammers make it hard for legitimate parties like SASSIE and mystery shoppers to do proper business with each other.
Q. What causes my email to get shut off? When do you send me this email? How am I getting this email when you've said you've been unable to send me email?
A. Two things can cause your email to get shut off:
1: Too Many bounce-backs : if your mailbox rejects SASSIE emails TOO MANY TIMES IN A ROW ACROSS TOO MANY DAYS, we stop sending email to your address
2: Your email provider (especially AOL - see next item) sends us a demand to stop sending YOU email.
When these situations happen, we let some time pass pass (in many cases your email problems are temporary ) and send this "Your Emails Have Been Disabled" email so you can easily turn your emails back on with just one click (we allow you to do this five times - after that our tech support needs to get involved).
Q. I have an AOL (or netscape.net, AIM, cs.com) account. I keep getting shut off. What should I do?
A. AOL email (and related email domains like Netscape) has extremely strict rules regarding bulk email being sent to their addresses.
It is VERY common for AOL to send us a message demanding us to immediately stop sending email to your address - unfortunately, this often happens without you even knowing or requesting it. Sometimes, AOL successfully delivers you our emails at the same time that they're telling us to stop sending you emails - it's crazy!
In order to be allowed to keep sending to AOL, we have agreed to immediately turn off your email after AOL sends us ONE of these demands (we're also required to do this by federal law), so unfortunately some AOL users will repeatedly get turned off.
We have the following recommendations for AOL users:
1) Switch to Gmail - the best (albeit the most labor intensive) solution is to switch to a free Gmail account. Gmail has a much more consistent and realistic approach to spam filtering so we experience almost no problems with Gmail account.
You can opt to switch to Gmail entirely OR use Gmail to receive your SASSIE emails and forward them to your AOL email address.
2) Get on our Protected List - you can register for FREE on our "Protected List" on JobSlinger. Once you do so, we will try to keep sending email to your address regardless of how many bounces we get.
Q. You say that you shut me off because "After multiple attempts, we have been unable to reach you at this email address". But I received your email saying that you're shutting me off. How is that possible?
This happens in three situations:
i) You're on AOL: AOL has this crazy habit of sending us a demand to stop sending you email even when they're letting our email be delivered to you!
ii) Your email problems were temporary: We let some time pass before sending you the "shutoff email", so if your email box was full or if your email provider was momentarily down it's definitely possible that our shop offer emails got bounced back to us but the "shutoff email" got through.
iii) Different email types: Since many SASSIE shop email offers follow a similar pattern, your email provider may have analyzed the shop offer emails, recognized a certain pattern and automatically bounced it back as spam. However, our "shutoff emails" could get through because they don't follow any specific pattern.