With the increasing battle against "unsolicited commercial emails", many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc are enforcing strict "Spam filters" (as well as many other types of filters such as Cookie Blocking, Advertisement Blocking, Web Site Blocking and Content Filtering, etc) onto people's email accounts or Internet browsers, as part of their standard service.


As a result, legitimate emails are also being blocked or sent to spam or bulk folders, without your consent. This problem is not only affecting Rentalo and its subscribers, but the entire Internet community! As a result, we at Rentalo have been forced to better define service "boundaries" regarding the emails we send to our subscribers. To read more about such boundaries, please read our EMAIL SERVICE DEFINITION & DISCLAIMER ON "SPAM" FILTERS as part of our Legal Disclaimer.


However, it is Rentalo's best interest to assist its subscribers in resolving issues related to "receiving" our emails. Therefore, we at Rentalo are constantly updating this documentation to include as many tips and hints we can find that may help our clients resolve these problems. Please continue to read below to find some basic troubleshooting steps, and tips.


Troubleshooting 101:
Find out if Rentalo is sending you inquiries
If you signed to your account at Rentalo, click on inquiries, after selecting your destination you should see a list of inquiries that have matched your listing.  If you see a Receive our Best Value Accommodations Newsletter - Free Vacation Rental, Lodging and Accommodation Deals symbol under "Matched & Sent" column, this confirms that Rentalo is sending emails to your registered email address.

Troubleshooting 102: Send a test inquiry to yourself
To reconfirm that Rentalo is sending emails to you, go to your published listing (browse the directory) and click on "Email Owner" link to send a private inquiry. Wait about 5 minutes, and then go to "inquiries" to check if the Receive our Best Value Accommodations Newsletter - Free Vacation Rental, Lodging and Accommodation Deals symbol appears under "Matched & Sent" column, this reconfirms that Rentalo is sending emails to your registered email address.


After performing the troubleshooting steps 101 & 102 (above), and seeing the Receive our Best Value Accommodations Newsletter - Free Vacation Rental, Lodging and Accommodation Deals symbols appearing under the "Matched & Sent" column corresponding to the inquiries are are generating, and the test inquiry you sent to yourself, you have completed the necessary steps to verify that Rentalo is sending emails to your registred email address (in accordance with our service definition).  At this time you are not getting emails from Rentalo due to one of the following reason(s):
a) Rentalo emails are been rejected by your ISP's mail server, or
b) Rentalo emails are been trapped between your ISP's mail server and your inbox.

Below are some more tips on how to resolve these ISP and/or end-user related email issues.

ISP/End-User TIP 1: Contact your ISP or webmaster
Next, we recommend that you contact your ISP's technical support or webmaster to request their help on removing Rentalo emails from your "Spam" or "Bulk" folder permanently.

ISP/End-User TIP 2: Use another email address or email provider
If you contact your ISP and you are still unable to receive Rentalo emails, you should consider using an alternate email address to receive Rentalo emails.  Several of our customers have been able to start receving our emails again by simply switching ISP or email providers.  There are several email providers (such as yahoo, hotmail, etc) that are free and you can easily customize.

ISP/End-User TIP 3: Sign in regularly to your account at Rentalo to retrieve & reply to Rentalo inquiries
All the inquiries (accommodation requests) generated by Rentalo are also available online when you sign in at http://my.rentalo.com or going to www.rentalo.com, clicking on Owners > Sign in to My Rentalo > Then clicking on "Inquiries".


Special Note for AOL Users
:
The main issue with AOL is that the default spam filtering configuration set up by AOL is sending our messages to the spam inbox of most AOL users. We are currently working with AOL to find a permanent solution to this issue. Unfortunately, there is no say on how long it will take them to fix it. In the meantime, here are some recommendations you may want to follows:


If you need help finding Rentalo emails in your AOL account, we recommend that you contact AOL tech support at 888 212 5537 and request help to get Rentalo emails removed from your "spam folder". 2) We also recommend that you add the domain of rentalo.com or at least the email address of leads@rentalo.com to your AOL address book. By doing this you will reduce the chances for AOL to put our future emails in your spam folder.


Also, below is a copy of an email from a Rentalo customer who experienced a similar problem with AOL and was able to fix it by sending this email.


The following email was just sent to AOL : "Tell us"
EMAIL SAMPLE TEXT-----------------------------------------------
I have a CRITICAL PROBLEM!
My emails from rentalo.com have apparently been blocked by AOL.
I have contacted rental.com and they advised me to contact AOL Technical support at AOL. AOL tech support advised me to send this email to report the problem.
Rentalo.com is a vacation rental website where we have three city property listings. Guests search the web and find this website and then find our listing and submit an email request to us using Rentalo's standard outgoing email format. This source accounts for about 20% of our lead volume and therefore is critical to our business.
Please advise me as when you will stop this block.
EMAIL SAMPLE TEXT END -----------------------------------------


Special Note for Yahoo Users
:
We have detected that a percentage of the accommodation request emails that we send to our customers may be undelivered or sent to the "Bulk Email" folder instead of your Inbox. Please keep an eye on your bulk folder in Yahoo and anytime you see a Rentalo email delivered there, please open it, look for the "NOT Spam" button and click on it. The more you tell Yahoo! that our emails are not spam, the faster the issue will be solved.  We also recommend that you set up a filter in Yahoo! Mail to ensure they get your email messages in their Inbox. You may refer to the Help page below for some information and general guidelines that we have found to be crucial in maintaining good mailing lists: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/spam/spam-17.html