Why Am I Not Receiving Auction Emails?

1. Check your notification settings (start here)

Before troubleshooting deliverability, confirm that the notifications you expect to receive are actually enabled in your account.

Go to Account → Notifications and verify that the alerts you want are turned on — outbid notifications, auction-closing reminders, invoice delivery, and any others you've signed up for.

2. Search your spam, junk, and Promotions folders

The second most common cause is filtering. Search every folder in your email — including spam, junk, and trash — for any of:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• nmestateauctions.com
• "Mesilla Valley Estate Sales"

If you find our emails in a folder other than your main inbox, move one to your inbox manually. Most email clients will ask whether to do the same with future emails from the same sender — say yes.

3. Add our addresses to your contacts

Add both of the following to your email contacts:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]

For most email providers, adding an address to your contacts list tells the spam filter to trust mail from that sender. This is the single most effective preventive step.

4. Gmail-specific fix

Gmail often routes auction emails to the Promotions tab, where they're easy to miss.

1. In Gmail, click the Promotions tab.
2. Find any email from [email protected] or [email protected].
3. Drag the email from the Promotions tab to the Primary tab.
4. Gmail will ask: "Do this for future messages from [sender]?" — click Yes.

Repeat for any emails you find in Spam — click "Not Spam" on each.

5. Outlook, Hotmail & Microsoft 365

Outlook (including Hotmail, Live, MSN, and Microsoft 365 work addresses) uses several layers of spam filtering. To ensure delivery:

1. Open Outlook settings → Mail → Junk email.
2. Under Safe senders and domains, add both [email protected] and [email protected].
3. If you're on a Microsoft 365 work account, your IT administrator may need to whitelist the domain nmestateauctions.com at the organization level.

6. Apple iCloud Mail & Yahoo Mail

Apple iCloud (@icloud.com, @me.com, @mac.com): Open the Mail app, find one of our emails (check Junk if you can't find it in Inbox), tap the sender, and select Add to Contacts. iCloud generally trusts contacts.

Yahoo Mail: Open Yahoo Mail, click the gear icon → More Settings → Filters. Create a filter that sends mail from our addresses directly to Inbox.

7. Work or corporate email addresses

Corporate and ISP-provided email addresses often have aggressive spam filtering that you can't override from your account. Common offenders include:

• Corporate Microsoft 365 environments with strict filtering policies
• ISP-provided addresses (some Comcast/Xfinity, AT&T, Cox, regional providers)
• Custom domains hosted on smaller email services

Two paths forward:

1. Ask your IT administrator to whitelist the domain nmestateauctions.com.
2. Switch to a personal email address for your MVES account — Gmail or Apple iCloud typically work best. Update your email at Account Settings.

8. If you accidentally unsubscribed or marked our emails as spam

If you've ever clicked "unsubscribe" on one of our emails — or marked an email as spam in your inbox — our system will block all future notifications to your address. This happens automatically and applies to outbid alerts, invoices, and pickup notifications, not just marketing.

It can also happen if a friend forwards you one of our emails and they mark it as spam, since that flags the original send.

To restore delivery: email us from your registered MVES email address and ask us to re-enable notifications:

• Email: [email protected]
• Include your username or the email address on your account
• We'll typically restore delivery within one business day

9. If your address has been blocked from our list

Our email provider automatically removes addresses that consistently bounce. This is most common for:

• Addresses that were misspelled at registration
• Addresses on smaller, less-common domains
• Addresses with unusual character patterns (containing many numbers, the word "spam," etc.) that our provider flags as suspicious
• Mailboxes that were full or temporarily down when we tried to deliver

If you suspect your address has been blocked, email us from the address on your account and we'll investigate:

• Email: [email protected]
• If your address is permanently blocked, we'll help you update your account to a different email