Might not be seeing the option, but how do I force customers to verify email?

[Gdesign]

We get a few bounced emails and customers that complain they never hear anything off us, it's because they type the email address wrong - is there a way to validate these? IE, force them to type it out twice so that the system checks to make sure it matches?

Not a huge problem but would be nice to minimise this

[ThomasMurray]

We get a few bounced emails and customers that complain they never hear anything off us, it's because they type the email address wrong - is there a way to validate these? IE, force them to type it out twice so that the system checks to make sure it matches?

Not a huge problem but would be nice to minimise this

There's quite a bit of debate about whether asking customers to type addresses twice should be done, personally I think it could be a potential update to let merchants decide whether the customer has to type it once or twice.

At the moment it isn't possible though.

[Ashley]

The system does check to see if the email is valid. Try typing in a non valid email address and see what happens.

[SATHST]

I've had emails get through that aren't valid - typos. Emails I've sent automatically then bounce. So I'm not sure email validity is checked.

[Gdesign]

The system does check to see if the email is valid. Try typing in a non valid email address and see what happens.

It only checks the format - such as name@somewhere.something, they don't get that wrong they just mis-type or mis-spell there emails without noticing.

We often get email such as homail.com and sometimes they will enter double letters or even completely miss lettters etc. There isn't an 'automatic' system that can tell them they've spelt there own name wrong, but if they have to type it twice and it doesn't match the first attempt the system could warn them - which will cause them to re-read what they've typed and correct it...

[Ashley]

It only checks the format - such as name@somewhere.something, they don't get that wrong they just mis-type or mis-spell there emails without noticing.

We often get email such as homail.com and sometimes they will enter double letters or even completely miss lettters etc. There isn't an 'automatic' system that can tell them they've spelt there own name wrong, but if they have to type it twice and it doesn't match the first attempt the system could warn them - which will cause them to re-read what they've typed and correct it...

Bluepark checks that it's a working email address not just that it's a valid format. Try misspelling your email address and you'll see what I mean.

[Gdesign]

I see what you mean but it must still be possible to get it wrong otherwise why do we get so many incorrect email addresses? As I say it's not a big problem just an annoying niggle, would have been nice to have this option that's all.

[SATHST]

I've had customers mis-spell their email address and it get through. I don't know how some folk believe BP checks it is a working address because how would they get through then?

I'm referring to new customers not current ones who've already got email addresses saved.

[Ashley]

I've had customers mis-spell their email address and it get through. I don't know how some folk believe BP checks it is a working address because how would they get through then?

I'm referring to new customers not current ones who've already got email addresses saved.

It checks the address and if it's not a working email address it shows a warning asking the customer to check it. The customer can bypass this if required.

[Rich]

To be very clear, our system checks that the email address is a valid one. It does so by going through the first part of the sending process and testing the reaction of the remote mail server. This is the one and only way to validate email addresses, all other companies offering this feature use the same method.

A small number of mail servers don't respond conclusively to this kind of test, so there is no 100% reliable method to validate whether an email address is correct without sending one. Our validation system is as good as it gets.

Because our system can't be 100% accurate, and no system can be, we simply inform the customer that their email address might be incorrect. You can test this yourself, easily. I think it works very well.

It is then up to the customer to decide what to do with that information.

If we prevented orders being placed without the customer passing the email address test, it would lose business for our merchants - I wouldn't dream of doing this. You would rather have an order with an incorrect email address than no order.

[Gdesign]

It is a very impressive system and I do appreciate you taking the time to explain. After playing with it again for a while it amazes me how so many people still manage to proceed with a wrong email address - we have to go in and correct emails fairly often for customers which is why I assumed it must be a verification problem.

I also apologise for not testing this properly before posting, I just looked for double email address box and because it wasn't there I incorrectly assumed no verification was in place.

Thanks again.