Valid emails messages bounce when sent to groups

[FFurci]

I spent last weeks discussing with support, without any solution.

A customer adviced me some time ago that the emails he sent to my groups bounced back, with message:
"account <sender email> disabled".
Google "sees" this account as disabled, but this account do not belong to Google Workspace, but it is a Microsoft account.

But if a valid email address send an email from its server, and the sending server (outlook.com) is fully authorizated with SPF, DMARC and DKIM protocols, Google cannot have the right to bounce these emails!!!

The only suggestion I received to solve this problem is tell to this sender to reactivate its Google account, account that do not exist....

And no problem if this account send email directly to a single google account, the bounce happens only if destination is a group.

This for us is a big problem:
- My company relies on groups to communicate with customers and offer support to them, to avoid to have a single person dedicated to single customers
 - Google Wordpspace does not offer a method to find similar cases, so we can't know how many lost messages from "account disabled" like this we are losing.

Someone have some idea to -at least- work around this problem?
Someone have the same problem?
Have I to consider to change email service provider?

[Marcin_Milewski]

Hey @FFurci ,

This is only my guess, so I am not 100% sure, I reviewed the HC documentation for the 'account disabled' error it is possible that some time ago the customer had a Google account registered for their domain (maybe for the purpose of testing) and now it's suspended or account within is suspended. When the user is trying to send a message to the group, it sees that the account is inactive and then bouncing back.

Is this person a member of the Google Group, where they are trying to send these messages? or the group is opened externally?

Best,
Marcin 

[FFurci]

Thanks Marcin, probably you are right.

My group is onened externally, no problem to receive mails from almost everyone, moderation disabled.

This sender is not a member of the group, and its emails originate from an external and fully authorized  server.

In this case simply Google should not check if this account is "internally" disabled, because this account now is not owned by Google, no matter of what happend in the past...

The bounce should happen only if a disabled account tries to authenticate/authorise the sending via Google services.

In this case (but I see in the various threads in forums I'm not the only one...) is a obvious mistake the bounce.

If needed, I can send to you (in private way, outside this post) a message (with full headers) sent by this account to a Google account and CC to the group. The mail to account is received, but bounced with the same message id to the group.

[Marcin_Milewski]

@FFurci thank you for providing more details around this. In that case if that's the way, how the group is validating these messages, I think it will be best for you to work with the support team, explaining that the customer is no longer using Google accounts, and that email comes from the external service. 

Best,
Marcin

[FFurci]

Sigh!

I spent a month to try to explain to Google Support the problem, sent them several message id that well record the case, but the only answer I received is "tell to this user to reactivate its account"....
There are other methods to contact support differente from the form inside the Workspace administration dashboard?

[Marcin_Milewski]

@FFurci This article explains the ways, on how to reach out to the support team. You can either write on the chat, or create a ticket from there. 

Best,
Marcin

[FFurci]

Thanks Marcin, but this is exactly what I've already done, both writing on the chat than open a ticket via mail .

[Shaneg160]

Did you ever get a fix for this? I have the same issue with a client sending to two addresses that are hosted by google.

[FFurci]

Unfortunately not, the only solution by Google is reactivate the suspended (deleted or not in use!) account.
I'm wondering if there are grounds for reporting misconduct, given that Google would like to force users to restore abandoned and migrated away accounts...

[CandyTX]

Anything further on this? I'm having the same problem with a client, same exact issue as you, we use groups to communicate with customers.

[FFurci]

Unfortunately no.

I'm afraid that the only "solution" will be await that Google delete the inactive accounts, even if it is incredible this situation...

[4lves]

Hello Ffurci, how are you?
I'm having the same problem with a client, have you found a solution for this case or will you have to wait for the inactive accounts to be deleted?

[FFurci]

Since a few week I followed the suggestion of another user, jonahgreenthal, stop using groups and started using the "Email forwarding using recipient address map" feature.

I ended up working around this by stopping using groups at all for public-facing stuff, instead using lower-level routing rules. It loses most of the features of groups, but it is arguably easier to set up. To do this, from the admin home page, go to Apps > Google Workspace > Gmail on the left navigation, then Routing at the bottom, then use the "Email forwarding using recipient address map" section.

A bit more complex to setup than a group, but at the end this solved the problem.
Rif on:
Re: Message bounced due to SENDER is disabled - Google Cloud Community