Member says they're not getting emails or texts

This is one of the most common support complaints, and it almost always has a specific, checkable cause. Don't guess: go look at the message log first.

• For a specific household: open Households → [household] → Activity. Every send to that household appears as email <status>: <subject> or sms <status>: <subject>, newest first.

• For a campaign (newsletter, club-wide send): open Campaigns → [campaign]. The recipient list shows a Status badge and a Detail column with the actual reason per recipient. Check there instead if the complaint is about a newsletter or announcement, not a household's own account.

Find the row matching what the member says they didn't get, and read its status.

Status is blocked. The message was never sent — the platform stopped it on purpose. The household Activity tab won't tell you why; check the campaign's Detail column, or escalate if it's a non-campaign (transactional) send, since there's no per-message reason shown outside campaigns today. Common reasons:

• Unsubscribed: the member (or someone in their household) clicked "unsubscribe" on a past marketing email. This only blocks marketing sends (newsletters, campaigns). If the missing message was a dues receipt, renewal reminder, camp confirmation, or any other transactional email, this is not the cause; move to hard bounce/complaint below.

• Hard bounce or spam complaint on file. This blocks everything to that address, transactional included. Something about the address itself (typo, full mailbox, previously marked as spam) is the problem, not a member preference.

• SMS opt-in is off. Texts only go out if the member's own SMS opt-in flag is on. No opt-in, no text, regardless of message type.

• Club not yet live. Quiet mode holds member messages until an admin launches the club.

• Platform-wide outbound pause. If the delivery log reports this, contact Swim Ops support. Changing the household’s communication preferences will not lift a service-level pause.

Status is sent (or delivered/opened). The platform did send it — the provider even confirmed delivery in the delivered/opened/clicked cases. If the member insists they never got it:

• Confirm the email address or phone number on file is actually current and correctly spelled (household People tab).

• Ask them to check spam/junk/promotions folders, and for email, to search their inbox for the subject line rather than scrolling.

• A sent status with no later delivered/opened just means the provider hasn't reported back yet (or never will, for older or less common providers). It does not by itself mean anything went wrong.

Status is failed. The send attempt hit an actual error at the provider or transport level. Escalate — this isn't something to explain away as a member's spam filter.

No row at all for the expected time. The trigger that should have caused the send may not have fired. See Known issues below for the current gap around waitlist offer-expiry emails specifically.

Household members can ask to be copied when the primary contact is emailed or texted. A real cc: on the email, or a separate text for SMS. These preferences live per person on the Household page (each family member's contact details + "copy on email / copy on text"). If a copy isn't arriving:

• Check the preference is set on that person on the Household page, and that their email/phone is correct there.

• Copies are suppression-aware, per message kind. A cc'd adult who unsubscribed from marketing is dropped from marketing copies but still copied on transactional mail (receipts, invoices). The same rule as the primary recipient. A hard bounce/complaint on the cc address drops it from everything.

• The default is on for household-addressed transactional mail (receipts, invoices, ticket replies). So a second adult normally gets copied on those without doing anything. Newsletters/announcements follow the segment audience, not the cc preference.

• Auth and magic-link emails are never copied. A member won't see a sign-in link cc'd to their spouse. That's intentional.

• An SMS copy is a separate text, and it counts against the club's daily SMS cap like any other text; it also needs that person's own SMS opt-in to be on.

• To confirm who was actually copied on a given email, open the message in the member's Activity feed. The email drill-in lists the Cc line.

If unsubscribed and it was a newsletter: "Looks like this address is unsubscribed from our newsletter/announcement emails — that's a one-click opt-out from a past email. There isn't a way for us (or you, by re-signing up on our site) to turn that back on right now — I'll flag it to the team as something we need to fix."

If hard bounce/complaint: "Our email system flagged [address] as undeliverable, so nothing — including receipts and reminders — has been going through. Can you confirm that email is correct, or give us an alternate address?"

If address/phone was simply wrong: "We had [old value] on file — I've updated it to [new value] and you should get future messages there."

If genuinely sent and delivered: "Our records show this went out and was delivered/opened on [date] — would you mind checking spam/promotions, or searching your inbox for '[subject]'?"

• Can: correct a wrong email address or phone number on the household's People tab; add a manual block if a member asks to stop hearing from the club entirely (/admin/suppressions). If a hard bounce or complaint was caused by something now fixed. A typo'd address corrected on the household's People tab, say. An admin (that role specifically) can Lift that row in /admin/suppressions with a written reason, which resumes sends to the address.

• Cannot: manually resubscribe a member who unsubscribed themselves. An unsubscribe can never be removed from the admin Suppressions console by staff at any role; only the member's own opt-in reverses it, and there's currently no working path for that. Re-adding the address on the newsletter signup form or in the admin subscribers list does not fix an unsubscribe (or a hard bounce/complaint) either. That only re-marks the address as an audience member, it doesn't touch the underlying block. Don't promise a member an unsubscribe will be "flipped back," or that re-signing up will fix anything. Neither is true.

• A valid-looking address with repeated hard bounces (suggests a mailbox problem on their end, or a deliverability issue worth investigating).

• More than one household reporting the same kind of miss around the same time. Could point to a wider deliverability problem, not an individual account issue.

• Any failed status: that's a real send-time error, not a preference or bounce.

• There is currently no way, for staff or the member themselves, to reverse an email unsubscribe. Re-adding the address via the newsletter signup form (or the admin subscribers screen) only re-marks it as an audience member; it does not remove the block that stops marketing sends. Don't tell a member that resubscribing will work. Flag it internally instead.

• Waitlist offer-expiry emails were broken until 2026-08-19 (since fixed). A household whose membership-waitlist offer lapsed before then was never told; expirations after the fix email the household automatically. See Membership waitlist and bond for the rest of that flow.

• Immediate automation messages arrive within moments (since 2026-08-19); scheduled/delayed steps land on the hour. If a delayed reminder seems late rather than missing, allow up to an hour past its due moment before treating it as a delivery problem (#278 will tighten this to ~5 minutes); an immediate message that never arrived within the hour is worth investigating.