Check your junk mail

[shotlighter]

I haven't received anything either, in inbox or junk mail. I do get the BCA newsletters though so they must have the right email address! Odd.

Sent from my XT1039 using Tapatalk

Hi Cat,

If you are the Cat I think you are. This is a complex one.

The BCA-Online database does hold your address which was supplied in a prior year. However the BPC didn't forward your email this year on the membership renewal spreadsheet. In effect that spreadsheet was used rather than the BCA-Online database and therefore we didn't have an email address for you. Sorry.

I'll endeavor to stop that happening in the future but more than likely this time around you'll receive a snail mail ballot paper.

Hmm I wonder if this is a similar black hole that my email fell into. CCPC would have sent in a spread sheet with my EE hosted email address & it sounds like only this source of addresses is used for the ballot (?).
Of course EE and it's previous entities email servers were shut down in May. So any CIM who had a EE hosted account is not going to get a ballot paper, as if I read you correctly, only the "start of year spread sheet" addresses will be used.
It sounds as though updating contact info on the BCA site (as suggested previously, in advance of the ballot) was a waste of time.
Wonder if you would clarify this Cookie?

 

[braveduck]

I do get the Newsletters OK. But not this latest communication.

 

[Pegasus]

I haven't received an e-mail from BCA, in spam or anywhere 

Hi Jane,

The BCA does not hold your email address. The renewal system can't cope with the second email address for joint members.  Sorry. We know about it and it will be fixed eventually.

Thanks for the info, Cookie.  I do hope the issue is sorted sooner rather than later as joint members of BCA should both receive e-mails - I never receive the BCA newsletter either 

Will I receive a ballot by post?  Though I could copy Tim's ballot and use that...

Either way, I'm definitely going to VOTE 

 

[Cookie]

I haven't received an e-mail from BCA, in spam or anywhere 

Hi Jane,

The BCA does not hold your email address. The renewal system can't cope with the second email address for joint members.  Sorry. We know about it and it will be fixed eventually.

Thanks for the info, Cookie.  I do hope the issue is sorted sooner rather than later as joint members of BCA should both receive e-mails - I never receive the BCA newsletter either 

Will I receive a ballot by post?  Though I could copy Tim's ballot and use that...

Either way, I'm definitely going to VOTE 

I agree the tracking both emails for couples should be sorted. I'm hopeful it will be done in time for this year's round of membership renewals.

This is the same reason you do not get the Newsletter although if you register at BCA-Online you will start getting the Newsletter irrespective.  Request your login at Request Login Detail. It'll fail because your email is not in the system but it will give you a set of steps to follow to get yourself added - it's fairly straightforward.

You will receive a ballot by post.

You could try to copy Tim's ballot but it wouldn't work because of the security procedures we have put in place 

 

[Cookie]

I do get the Newsletters OK. But not this latest communication.

Hi Braveduck,

Almost certainly for the same reason as CatM

 

[JasonC]

I received my email, no problem

Same here, it's not a complete disaster....

 

[chunky]

Found mine in spam folder.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

[Cookie]

I haven't received anything either, in inbox or junk mail. I do get the BCA newsletters though so they must have the right email address! Odd.

Sent from my XT1039 using Tapatalk

Hi Cat,

If you are the Cat I think you are. This is a complex one.

The BCA-Online database does hold your address which was supplied in a prior year. However the BPC didn't forward your email this year on the membership renewal spreadsheet. In effect that spreadsheet was used rather than the BCA-Online database and therefore we didn't have an email address for you. Sorry.

I'll endeavor to stop that happening in the future but more than likely this time around you'll receive a snail mail ballot paper.

Hmm I wonder if this is a similar black hole that my email fell into. CCPC would have sent in a spread sheet with my EE hosted email address & it sounds like only this source of addresses is used for the ballot (?).
Of course EE and it's previous entities email servers were shut down in May. So any CIM who had a EE hosted account is not going to get a ballot paper, as if I read you correctly, only the "start of year spread sheet" addresses will be used.
It sounds as though updating contact info on the BCA site (as suggested previously, in advance of the ballot) was a waste of time.
Wonder if you would clarify this Cookie?

The BCA-Online data and the master membership data are very closely aligned but they are not identical. For most people, an email update at BCA-Online would be copied into the master data. But in the relatively rare case where someone is registered at BCA-online but the club has stopped supplying an email address it won't.

I supplied the BCA-Online data expecting it to be the data that was used but for reasons beyond my control it wasn't.

To be honest, this is a twist that I hadn't thought of. If I had realised I would have tried to do more to re-instate the BCA-Online data.

This is the first time BCA have run a ballot using email. There are bound to be things that we can do better next time.

I apologise that it might seem like a wasted effort but thank you for trying to do the right thing.

 

[Ian Ball]

Keep at it Cookie, Bob,  appreciate your efforts 

 

[Pipster]

Thanks for the heads up - mine went to "spam" too.

 

[Mike Hopley]

Just FYI, mine went to spam as well.

 

[Jenny P]

Yup, mine went into spam too.  I do check my spam folder irregularly and spotted this one 2 days late. 

I do receive the BCA N/L via my usual email address but my system didn't recognise the "sender" this time so sent it to the spam folder.

I assume that mail going into the spam folder, as opposed to bouncing, will not register on BCA's system as a "failed" email address and hence won't trigger a snail mail ballot paper.

Might be worth all clubs emailing their members to check that they have received the preliminary note sent out on 13th. and to inform the BCA Secretary if they didn't receive it.

Appreciate your efforts Cookie and hope the snags can be ironed out in time.

 

[Bob Mehew]

Might be worth all clubs emailing their members to check that they have received the preliminary note sent out on 13th. and to inform the BCA Secretary if they didn't receive it.

In hand. 

The irony of this is I was not at all happy with the idea of doing a trial email run, but how glad I am now!  :-[

 

[Jenny P]

Might be worth all clubs emailing their members to check that they have received the preliminary note sent out on 13th. and to inform the BCA Secretary if they didn't receive it.

In hand. 

The irony of this is I was not at all happy with the idea of doing a trial email run, but how glad I am now!  :-[

Thanks to Bob and Cookie for all the efforts to get this up and running.  Much appreciated.

 

[Alkapton]

My Club Secretary was as unaware as I was of the ballott.    He found email in his spam.  He now has sent an email to Members telling them there is one vote per Club not Member.  I have obviously replyed to all in Club....

Anyway, there is a huge problem.  Not all BCA Members belong to a Club.    Not all BCA Members visit ukcaving forums.

If my experience is anythig to go by you could have a situation where an entire Club's Membership is unaware of the ballott, because none of the clubs members check their spam/junk folder.

If it turns out a significant number of members are not aware of the ballott it will be an invalid waste of time and money.

The safest solution I think would be if the BCA email all members again, but this time ask for a reply.  Then send postal ballott to ALL who do not reply.    This is the only way I think you can avoid very serious problems in the vey near future.

 

[RobinGriffiths]

Granny and eggs etc.

However, if you aren't doing so already, it might be worth routing your email via an email marketing provider. They do things to stop your emails from appearing to be spam such as trickling emails to specific domains so that the smtp server on that domain doesn't go 'aye, aye, lots of stuff coming into various addresses in this domain - might well be spam'. They do other stuff as well to persuade recipients that you are of good intent and not spamming.

My place of work uses socketlabs for routing marketing email, but there must be loads of other such services.

Apologies if you are already doing that type of thing.

Cheers,

Robin

 

[shotlighter]

Quote from Cookie
The BCA-Online data and the master membership data are very closely aligned but they are not identical. For most people, an email update at BCA-Online would be copied into the master data. But in the relatively rare case where someone is registered at BCA-online but the club has stopped supplying an email address it won't.

I supplied the BCA-Online data expecting it to be the data that was used but for reasons beyond my control it wasn't.

To be honest, this is a twist that I hadn't thought of. If I had realised I would have tried to do more to re-instate the BCA-Online data.

This is the first time BCA have run a ballot using email. There are bound to be things that we can do better next time.

I apologise that it might seem like a wasted effort but thank you for trying to do the right thing.
[/quote]


Thanks for the clarification.
I just hope everyone in similar circumstance are not denied a vote, with the email form going to a discontinued address & no postal form sent.
I'm sure the May EE server closure affected many more cavers than just me!

 

[Cookie]

The safest solution I think would be if the BCA email all members again, but this time ask for a reply.  Then send postal ballott to ALL who do not reply.    This is the only way I think you can avoid very serious problems in the vey near future.

Hi Alkapton, asking for a reply is impracticable when you consider there are over 4000 emails to deal with.

Most BCA members are club members. BCA has always relied on the club secretaries to pass along BCA information and announcements. This'll be no different. BCA will rely on them to get the message out that there is a ballot.

We'll endeavor to contact the non-club members by another route. This is more manageable since there aren't so many of them.

There is over a month before ballot papers have to be returned. There is time to get the message out. There is time to re-issue ballot papers if necessary.

 

[Cookie]

However, if you aren't doing so already, it might be worth routing your email via an email marketing provider. They do things to stop your emails from appearing to be spam such as trickling emails to specific domains so that the smtp server on that domain doesn't go 'aye, aye, lots of stuff coming into various addresses in this domain - might well be spam'. They do other stuff as well to persuade recipients that you are of good intent and not spamming.

My place of work uses socketlabs for routing marketing email, but there must be loads of other such services.

Hi Robin, my first choice was to use a commercial sender but we ran into issues with that. Those issues will have to be addressed so maybe next time we will use a commercial provider. I'll take a look at socketlabs.

The software I used does rate limit by domain. It was busy for several hours.

 

[Cookie]

Thanks for the clarification.
I just hope everyone in similar circumstance are not denied a vote, with the email form going to a discontinued address & no postal form sent.
I'm sure the May EE server closure affected many more cavers than just me!

Hi Shotlighter,
I don't think you are going to be denied a vote. If the EE server is closed then we would have received a bounce email. Anyone with a bounced email will have been swapped to a postal vote.

I don't know who you are. If you PM me I'll check all is OK for you.