US Chess has recently received inquiries about people not being able to receive automated emails from US Chess, particularly regarding password resets for the member site. Most of these inquiries have come from Hotmail.com users. Here is what we have found, as well as suggestions for what you can do.
The summary of the issue is that outbound emails (bulk email, password resets, and others) indicate being successfully sent and received by Hotmail.com, but these emails are not actually being delivered to the user’s inbox, spam folder, or any other place for the recipient.
This is a widely known and reported issue that affects many mail senders, including industry leaders such as MailChimp and SendGrid. The issue has persisted for many years and there is no single conclusive resolution. The affected service domains are all owned by Microsoft and while Hotmail.com is the most prevalent one experiencing this issue, it could also affect microsoft.com, outlook.com and possibly others. This issue does not appear to affect Office 365 domains or services provided by Office 365.
Our development partner, Skvare, is diligently working to find a long-term working solution. Our website already utilizes all industry standards to ensure email deliverability, which include SPF, DKIM, DMARC, DNSWL, and others. However, as noted in the first paragraph, this issue pre-dates our recent development efforts.
Users with Microsoft-owned service domains should whitelist the @uschess.org domain and the common sending email addresses, such as info@uschess.org and membership@uschess.org, in their email provider. While many email delivery services report issues with Microsoft-hosted domains, we have found that whitelisting leads to emails being delivered within 24 hours after doing so.
More information can be found at:
Other reports: