RentMen's email system

[devonhunter]

The email system at RentMen has be buggy at best for years now. Does anyone have a sense of which, if any, cities/areas they dominate? If they are predominant in areas I don't frequent, I may just finally drop them. Their system may be costing me several appointments yet again.

[Kevin Slater]

Their email system is shoddy. I say as much in my ad and ask clients to email me directly, or call. Nevertheless I keep seeing emails sent through the site days after they were sent.

 

The guys who run the site and wonderful and responsive. (I have yet to bitch to them directly about the emails.) Many of the guys who use the site seem to confuse it with A4A or manhunt, looking more to chat socially than to hire an escort.

 

Last year, rentmen accounted for just over 1% of my revenue, with each booking being here in NYC. That still works out to being well worth the cost of the ad.

 

Kevin Slater

[devonhunter]

Irony of ironies: A client I met not long ago just gifted me a month's ad on RentMen, because he likes my ad there so much. *Sigh*

 

You're right: They are wonderful people, and I appreciate them. I just spent 20 minutes on the phone with one of the admins. The issue this time is that not only are emails not being delivered back and forth, but when I sent two messages to the admin via their own email form on their own site, both of those failed as well. My revenue from that ad is dwarfed by what is generated by M4RN, Rentboy, and my blog; however, even with all that in mind, it still generates far more than it costs.

 

The problem is that I now have clients who are aggravated with *me,* and accusing me of ignoring messages that I have replied to. I have found that the lag can be as little as an hour, or as long as a day. Lately the lag is 8-16 hours, and I think that issue has yet again lost me a multi-hour appointment. What is worse is that it makes me look like I am the one not replying to people. It's frustrating. If they weren't so nice I would cancel the ad. This has been happening for five years.

[+ deej]

Email is a fairly simple protocol. The sender submits to the server and the server passes the mail out to the internet. There is no pause, delay, or any other deterrent in the internal protocol.

 

Delays can happen, but they're not built in to the email protocol. Some outbound mail servers have throttles to protect against spammers; for example the outbound server may only be allowed to send 30 emails per minute. (Yeah, it's always just about that arbitrary.) Outbound emails wait in a queue until everything has gone out using the 30-per-minute rule. Add some volume to the quantity of email and 30-per-minute gets restrictive pretty quickly.

 

Some email servers, particularly high volume servers, manage to get themselves listed on RBL servers intended to ban spammers but they generally miss. (This one has plagued Daddy a time or two.)

 

There are MANY reasons for outbound emails being slow. But they all boil down to one thing: talk to the server operator and find out what the hell is going on.

 

This COULD actually be a simple matter of Rentmen needing to pay more for email service but they won't know they have a problem unless you nice gentlemen point it out to them. Just as we always say the most important thing between escorts and clients is communications, the most important thing between escorts and Rentmen is communications.

[rvwnsd]

...The problem is that I now have clients who are aggravated with *me,* and accusing me of ignoring messages that I have replied to. I have found that the lag can be as little as an hour, or as long as a day. Lately the lag is 8-16 hours, and I think that issue has yet again lost me a multi-hour appointment. What is worse is that it makes me look like I am the one not replying to people. It's frustrating. If they weren't so nice I would cancel the ad. This has been happening for five years.

 

Speaking from a client's perspective, I recognize escort sites' email systems are not exactly Microsoft Outlook (which is not without flaw) and don't expect an immediate reply. When I email through the Rentboy, Rentmen, and M4RN email systems, I give the escort my personal email and give them the option of emailing me directly or using the site. If a potential client gets peeved at you, an experienced and well-reviewed escort, because your reply was delayed thanks to Rentmen's email system you might have just avoided a problem client.

[devonhunter]

I agree. This is why I email them at least once a quarter, so that they know I am having problems... for five years... LOL

[devonhunter]

That's a good point... hopefully it can be resolved, so that I at least know one way or the other. It'd be a shame to have yet another person wandering around the planet who thinks I'm an asshole for ignoring him.

[+ deej]

It'd be a shame to have yet another person wandering around the planet who thinks I'm an asshole for ignoring him.

 

Oh, honey, that's just life.

[Steven_Draker]

I also noticed a dysfunction with the delivery of Rentmen mail. Moreover, my Yahoo consistently sends all mailing coming from Rentmen to the Spam box.

 

I know I have missed several appointments due to that fact. I don't check my Spam folder on a daily basis.

[down_to_business]

Speaking from a client's perspective, I recognize escort sites' email systems are not exactly Microsoft Outlook (which is not without flaw) and don't expect an immediate reply. When I email through the Rentboy, Rentmen, and M4RN email systems, I give the escort my personal email and give them the option of emailing me directly or using the site. If a potential client gets peeved at you, an experienced and well-reviewed escort, because your reply was delayed thanks to Rentmen's email system you might have just avoided a problem client.

 

Just a heads up. I used one of these systems (it was either Rentboy or Rentmen.. can't remember which) and it actually replaced my email address in the body of the email. I just wanted to mention that because the escort may not be getting your personal email address-- and the escort might wonder why you are sending them your "site specific" email address in the body of your email when they already have it!

[Kevin Slater]

Just a heads up. I used one of these systems (it was either Rentboy or Rentmen.. can't remember which) and it actually replaced my email address in the body of the email. I just wanted to mention that because the escort may not be getting your personal email address-- and the escort might wonder why you are sending them your "site specific" email address in the body of your email when they already have it!

 

Some sites do that (rentboy does not, not sure if rentmen does). In which case you have to type I can be reached at Kevin (at) LaterSlater (dot) com to beat their filters.

 

Kevin Slater

[Steven_Draker]

Both Rentmen and Rentboy allow clients to "hide" their email address and not make it visible to the escort they contact.

 

From personal experience those who choose to "hide" their email address when contacting me are more difficult to deal with.

 

For instance on Rentboy, you may use the following option:

 

• Send email masking my email address (e.g. 123456-78977@reply.rentboy.com)

 

On Rentboy even escorts can make their email address private and not visible to clients when they're first contacted thru the Rentboy email system.

[Irish69]

Email is a fairly simple protocol. The sender submits to the server and the server passes the mail out to the internet. There is no pause, delay, or any other deterrent in the internal protocol.

 

Delays can happen, but they're not built in to the email protocol. Some outbound mail servers have throttles to protect against spammers; for example the outbound server may only be allowed to send 30 emails per minute. (Yeah, it's always just about that arbitrary.) Outbound emails wait in a queue until everything has gone out using the 30-per-minute rule. Add some volume to the quantity of email and 30-per-minute gets restrictive pretty quickly.

 

Some email servers, particularly high volume servers, manage to get themselves listed on RBL servers intended to ban spammers but they generally miss. (This one has plagued Daddy a time or two.)

 

There are MANY reasons for outbound emails being slow. But they all boil down to one thing: talk to the server operator and find out what the hell is going on.

 

This COULD actually be a simple matter of Rentmen needing to pay more for email service but they won't know they have a problem unless you nice gentlemen point it out to them. Just as we always say the most important thing between escorts and clients is communications, the most important thing between escorts and Rentmen is communications.

 

Thank-You Deej, For Explaining the complexities of the email server protocols & the potential reason's for delays (No it's not a matter of how much we pay for our email services). More importantly, your statement about communicating between escorts & Rentmen is key to identifying Issues. Due to Devon's communication yesterday with us & the details he provided, along with the details provided by others in this thread, we have made this a priority to investigate & resolve this core issue that has been identified. As Deej said, without the commutation we wouldn't have known. Thanks Guys, you'll see results!

 

Irish69

Rentmen Rick :-)

[corndog]

Perhaps rentmen.com is using the same email server for their newsletter as they do for the individual emails. Although, as deej points out above, email is a simple protocol, sending bulk email is often quite taxing on a server and creates a backlog. In my experience, when my server is sending a large bulk mailing, which takes a few hours, it can't handle much else.

[devonhunter]

Oh, honey, that's just life.

 

The truth hurts. Best not to fight it. ;-)

[rvwnsd]

Just a heads up. I used one of these systems (it was either Rentboy or Rentmen.. can't remember which) and it actually replaced my email address in the body of the email. I just wanted to mention that because the escort may not be getting your personal email address-- and the escort might wonder why you are sending them your "site specific" email address in the body of your email when they already have it!

 

So far, only one message I sent via Rentmen went unanswered and that's because the escort never read it. Of course, he might not have received notice that he had a message waiting. However, in every other instance I received a reply to my personal email box. Rentboy is a little different. I've sent messages that went unanswered whether or not I specified my personal email address. I think Rentboy's response system is a little more buggy than Rentmen's.

[scottspearsxxx]

They do advertise in our weekly gay rag David Atlanta and so I guess it is worth it. I rarely get any appointments through using it. I much prefer m4rn.com or rentboy.com but they do cost a lot more per month...