I have over the last few months had an incredible amount of trouble with spam traps. Today, again, a client that contacted me initially through the wedding site telephoned to say that they had not received a response to their inquiry. These calls blow me away, because not only do I respond to every message, but I usually do it within a few hours! But without any record of my email address in their account, the recipient will never see my response because my address and message is deemed unsolicited by some brain dead spam trap. The thing is, inquiries through the form are great because it provides me with the info I need to instantly help the client.

Although this case is an exception, it seems that this most often happens with Hotmail accounts (or MSN, or Live, or whatever it’s called this week). Basically, this practice requires that the user wade into their trash pile to look for real messages. I think many Hotmail users are largely unaware of this problem too. It’s easy to just assume that a message (any message) that was sent via a web site form, for example, was simply ignored by someone on the other end. And I’ve heard countless times that Hotmail is unreliable, that the advertisements take too long to load, or it’s just too slow. So why use it?

So this is all very annoying, not only to the account owner, but also to those trying to communicate with them.

I’ve been using another, similar service – Gmail, or Google Mail – for about a year. First I was using a regular Gmail account, but for the last several months we’ve been testing a modification on that – a service they offer to web site owners called Google Apps for Your Domain (I use @kimgoodyear.com, but everything is actually handled by the Google servers with a Gmail interface). Gmail (both versions) has message threading, is fast, has a great spell checker and text-only ads. It also works great with Firefox. But best of all, the spam trap actually works – after months of use, it has only mis-labeled a message an spam once (I’ve watched the trap like a hawk), and I can count the number of real spam messages that have slipped through on two hands.

BUT… because Gmail is still in pre-release, they don’t accept new signups without an invite from an existing account holder. If you’re a Hotmail user that’s reading this and you’re ready for something better, let me know. I’ve got a few invites left, and I’d be happy to send one along.

Just don’t forget to check your spam folder for my response…. _SIGH_

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