The answer to the question

The question being: why do so many people get the hell out of tech? This is why.

User: Mail from (IP) is being blocked.

Us: What is the reject message?

User: It says at this link that (IP) is listed at (some obscure spam list).

Us: What is the reject message? The (IP) is not the mail server IP address, and is not what the outside world sees when mail is sent out. There is no indication in the mail logs of any rejects from (obscure spam list).

In between: we look through the logs on the server, and check out 54 different spam listings for the actual, server IP – the one the outside world sees – and find nothing at all. No one else on the same server reports any rejected mail anywhere.

User: It says at this other link that (IP) is listed at (some obscure spam list).

US: Once again, we need the actual reject message for the mail. The IP (IP) has nothing to do with mail delivery. Only the server IP is seen by the outside world when handing off mail. Places that are rejecting mail will do so with a reject message. That is what we need.

User: (Copying us on a whine to his webmaster): Interesting “customer support”. Find me another host, I’m not spending another dime with these rude people, and I don’t care if the server is blocked or not.

Us: Asking for specific information is rude? We’re trying to investigate an issue you claim exists when we can’t find any indication there is one. We asked for the reject message, and got another listing that has no bearing on this issue. Clearly, further explanation was required about what we needed, and that’s what we did. Since you haven’t provided a reject message and we can’t find any evidence mail is being rejected to anywhere from that server, we’re considering the issue closed.

User: Close this ticket. Your customer support is amazing.

Brilliant riposte. You really got us with that one. Thanks for wasting our time chasing down a nonissue. Guess mail from that server really isn’t being rejected anywhere after all.

And that is why people eventually leave the tech field. The insistence of problems where there are none and the refusal to follow the simplest of instructions combine over time to form a thousand little stabs into the soul of the tech that has to deal with your asshattery.

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