Issues getting an account on Kijiji

Contents

Email sent to Kijiji help line (no response)

Why is Kijiji unable to send registration emails to either of these addresses?

• kijiji-mail@groupbcl.ca
• kijiji-yiywiznj-mail@shaw.ca

I want someone at KIJIJI to look at this issue, not someone at salesforce.com. So far the only thing the responders at salesforce have had to say are:

• “Neither of those accounts are registered”. Of course they’re not–I’m not getting the registration emails.
• “Open an account at GMail, Yahoo, or Hotmail” Sorry, but these are not acceptable. GMail is run by Google, which long ago gave up on their “Don’t be evil” motto. Yahoo has had massive security breaches. Hotmail is owned by Microsoft, which has a history of anticompetitive behaviour. Why should I be forced to business with those guys just because you can’t get your act together?

Guys, this is email. It’s been around for 35 years. I’ve used my groupbcl.ca account to sign up for eBay, Amazon, LinkedIn, and dozens of other sites. Why can’t you handle it?

Show me the logs. Show me exactly what happens when your email server tries to connect to the mail servers of the addresses above. I’ve looked after email servers for fifteen years; I know how to read log files. I’ve even solved a third party’s email issue when they couldn’t deliver mail to a company I used to work for (they had screwed up their SPF records.)

Chat with Kijiji help line

Brent A: Welcome to Kijiji’s Live Chat! I would be delighted to help, please allow me a quick moment to review your request before we get started.

Me: Not receiving registration emails–site claims email has been sent but I don’t receive them.

Brent A: Hi Brian, one moment please

Brent A: Have you checked your and junk folders Brian?

Me: First, are you in the direct employ of Kijiji (that is, do they pay your wages?) Or are you a third party company hired by Kijiji for the purposes of assisting their users?

Brent A: Hi Brian i am certainly a direct employee of Kijiji

Me: If that’s the case, then why is it that email correspondence to the help desk comes from salesforce.com?

Brent A: This is the IT program which is used Brian

Me: Are you sitting comfortably? Major text dump coming up!

Me: Several times now I’ve tried to sign up for Kijiji using the following two email addresses:

• kijiji-mail@groupbcl.ca
• kijiji-yiywiznj-mail@shaw.ca

Me: I have never received the email you claim to have sent verifying my registration.

Me: I’ve had more than one interaction with Kijiji’s help line on this. To date the only substantive responses I’ve had are:

Me: 1. “Our investigation shows neither of these accounts are registered.” That’s hardly profound: they’re not registered because I’m not receiving the registration emails!

Me: 2. “Try registering using a free email account from Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo.”

Me: These are NOT acceptable options.

Me: - Gmail is owned by Google, which first and foremost is an advertising company. I loathe most advertising on the web and hate the cesspool that advertising and advertisers have turned the modern web into.

Me: - Hotmail is owned by Microsoft, which has a long and sordid history of anticompetitive behaviour. Their Windows 10 product is crap and I hate the fact that Microsoft, one of the richest companies in the modern computer business, is using its operating system–which is supposed to be a utility product to provide an interface between the hardware and the user–for advertising. Basically, it’s taken what’s supposed to be a neutral platform and is using it to harvest user data and selling it for its own profit.

Me: - Yahoo has had serious data breaches, at one point leaking the personal information of over a billion users! I wouldn’t trust them to secure a ten ton concrete block chained to the seabed.

Me: Further, when using any of the above three services, you’re not a USER, you’re their PRODUCT. Their real users are–here’s that word again–ADVERTISERS. If anything goes wrong with your experience at any of these companies, good luck getting any sort of help. Their only interest in you is mining your data–and in Gmail’s case at least, that means reading your mail–to sell to advertisers. Their price is zero, but the cost (loss of privacy) is far too high.

Me: Ergo, I completely and absolutely refuse to do business with any of these companies.

Me: Next points:

• I have used my @groupbcl.ca email address to sign up for eBay, Amazon, LinkedIn, and dozens of other accounts. Why is it that only Kijiji is having trouble with it?
• shaw.ca is a MAJOR Canadian web service provider and ISP. There is no excuse for Kijiji not being able to send email to them.

Me: Final point: this is EMAIL. The standards date back 35 YEARS. Note that word, “standards.” There are well documented ways for email to work. If Kijiji as a company is unable to deliver a simple email message using standard protocols, that tells me the people handling your mail servers are incompetent and should be replaced with people who know what they’re doing.

Me: So here’s my question for today: are you able to complete the registration for kijiji-mail@groupbcl.ca, bypassing the need for me to reply to an email that I’m not receiving?

Me: (End of text dump.)

Brent A: Shooo....one moment please. So if I understand correctly you do not want to use any of the above mentioned domains for personal reasons. Sadly I am unable to bypass this as the registration links are all system driven. If the emails did not come through and they are also not in the junk folder, then you may need to add Kijiji domains to your email contact list. I recommend you first add donot-reply@kijiji.ca, post@kijiji.ca, and the domain @rts.kijiji.ca to your contact list in your email account, to ensure that any Kijiji emails are routed to your email inbox.

Me: My @groupbcl.ca account is UNFILTERED. Futher, correspondence I’ve had with valuehost.ca, which is the provider hosting groupbcl.ca, shows NO ATTEMPTS BY KJIJI to connect to their email servers. The only connections have come from salesforce.com, in response to tickets I’ve entered trying to address this issue.

Brent A: Have you contacted @groupbcl.ca directly?

Me: Yes–that’s the valuehost.ca I just mentioned.

Brent A: The only option is to escalate the matter to understand why it is not connecting at this time. Sadly I cannot change this directly. Please allow us some time to investigate the issue.

Me: I can certainly do that. Please note, as I’ve mentioned earlier, that the email address I’ve set up a shaw.ca works (I’ve sent test emails to it.) shaw.ca is a major ISP in Western Canada.

Brent A: I will certainly take your point across to our technical team, thanks so much for understanding and alerting us, anything else we can assist with at this time?

Me: Please pass on to your technical team the fact I’ve looked after email servers myself for 15 years: qmail, postfix, exim and even sendmail.

Brent A: I am on it immediately and will pass this on

Me: I know how to read email log files.

Me: If your technical team says “we can’t talk to those servers,” I’d really like to see the logs for your servers showing exactly what happened when the Kijiji server tried to contact mail.groupbcl.ca (hosted by valuehost.ca) or the Shaw email servers. It would really help to pinpoint why I’ve not getting the emails. Either something’s happening that’s preventing the email from getting delivered to the server, or it’s getting delivered and the groupbcl.ca and/or Shaw server is failing to get the message into my inbox.

Brent A: I am on this immediately, i am very interested myself to see why this is happening, have a good day.

The agent has ended the chat.