On Sat, 30 Apr 1994 10:19:55 -0500 Natalie Maynor said:
>> If you're deleting a person for a bounce(s), why would you then turn
>> around and want to send them another piece of mail that's probably
>> just going to bounce, too?  (For that matter, wouldn't you QUIET DELETE
 
 My personal experience is that even when a system claims emphatically
 that an e-mail address isn't valid, mail sent to it will get through
 about 50% of the time.  So, I routinely send the following mail message
 to anyone I "quiet delete" from a mailinglist.  In many cases they
 resubscribe right away, and often say they had no idea there was any
 disruption in their mail service (other than the note I sent).  I also
 include a copy of the mail delivery notice in case the user wants to
 contact their systems support staff and find out what went wrong.
 
 -jj
 
 PS - This form letter is used *only* in those cases where the mail
 delivery error claims the address is invalid.  So, I'm not talking
 about people being over disk quota, systems being unreachable for
 XX days, or 'unknown mailer error -923123' mystery messages.  I have
 different form letters for those cases. :)  What I'm getting at is
 that mail will often get through even then the receiving host flatly
 denies that the address is valid.  I have no idea what kinds of
 problems cause such computerpsychosis, but I have found it useful
 to try to reach people no matter how definitive the deliver error is.
 
 --- form letter follows:
 
 I received the following "there is no such person" message from your
 local/regional mail gateway.  I'm going to believe what it tells me
 and remove your address from the list.  I'm sending this note just
 in case it's lying.  You can re-subscribe by sending the appropriate
 command to [log in to unmask] via e-mail.  If you have any
 questions/problems feel free to mail me at jimj@jhuvm (Bitnet) or
 [log in to unmask] (Internet).
 
 -jj