Expiring Mails Do NOT "Return To Sender"

Sharktoes · November 30

As title states.

In preparation for the Pan-Tamriel event, I had amassed and sent about 30 mails worth of valuable maps - mostly from High Isle, Galen, and Gold Road - to my alt account to hold until the event finally rolled around. Generally what I will do is bounce them back when it hits the 3 day mark and everything is all red. But it was a lot of mails, I haven't been happy with the game so I've been playing less, and the system previously has bounced them back on our behalf.

It turns out "expire" means "delete" now. The mails did NOT bounce back to my main account, and are just gone. As I send the maps over, I made the mail header "maps from shark" so I'd know which account they came from, so I wouldn't risk what has now happened.

So apparently you can return the mails until the final bit, but after that they just go straight in the bin. So lets say you accidentally mail something important to someone that sees the mail and doesn't bounce it? After the 30 day mark those items apparently do not bounce, they delete.

Pretty crappy.

PeacefulAnarchy · November 30

I have had mails bounce back after expiring as recently as last month, so this could be a new bug or maybe you need to wait or there's something you're missing. would love to hear if this is happening to others.

Sharktoes · November 30

Samesies, I would love more input. I don't imagine too many of us just let it expire, heck, normally *I* wouldn't!

It just feels pretty disheartening to have it happen to some items that I've been holding on to for SO long, especially when the RNG on some of those leads is utter garbage.

Thoriorz · November 30

Hi, I have 50 mails "saved" this way, 6 maps each, and in about 10 days it will be 30 days from sending. I'm currently relying on the fact that they should automatically revert to my acc 1 and what you write totally caught me off guard. In that case I better go manually send them back to acc 1 and not risk lost it.

code65536 · November 30

I do the mail-bounce thing for handling treasure maps (which wouldn't be necessary if they would just stack! grumble), and I have sometimes forgotten to bounce them, in which case they expire.

But expired mails have always returned to the original sender (as long as the expired mail is the original sent mail, and not itself a return; an expired return is gone), but there's a delay.

I'm not sure what determines how long that delay is, but it's usually been around a month. But it can be considerably shorter. Or considerably longer. There was one batch of mails that expired and weren't returned a month after expiration. Nothing after two, three months, and at that point I thought that they were gone forever. And then eight months after those mails expired and disappeared, they just all reappeared one day as returned mails in the original sender's mailbox.

Again, I have no idea why this delay before the auto-return can be as short as a couple of days or as much as over half a year. But I'm pretty sure that your mails are not actually gone. And that you'll see them again in about a month. Or two. Or more.

Sharktoes · December 1

code65536 wrote: »

Again, I have no idea why this delay before the auto-return can be as short as a couple of days or as much as over half a year. But I'm pretty sure that your mails are not actually gone. And that you'll see them again in about a month. Or two. Or more.

Thank you for at least a glimmer of hope!

Sadly this is another tick in the "cons" column of ESO, though.

Hotdog_23 · December 1

PS5/NA, I have lost 24 West Weald maps the same way. They have never bounced back and no longer shows on the account I mailed them too. Figured they are lost forever. Pretty salty about but figured lesson learned. Really hope they come back as code said.

Stay safe 🙂

Bammlschwamml · December 1

All of Tamriel's logistics and postal service providers have been sold to one huge international corporation. With no need to fear competition anymore, and the obligation to maximize profits, there is a lot of restructuring happening at the moment. Many offices have been closed, many employees have been fired and there might have been a strike or two. So please try to be a little more understanding and patient with the system. I am sure all the problems will solve themselves, as they usually do.

Thoriorz · December 1

code65536 wrote: »

I do the mail-bounce thing for handling treasure maps (which wouldn't be necessary if they would just stack! grumble), and I have sometimes forgotten to bounce them, in which case they expire.

But expired mails have always returned to the original sender (as long as the expired mail is the original sent mail, and not itself a return; an expired return is gone), but there's a delay.

I'm not sure what determines how long that delay is, but it's usually been around a month. But it can be considerably shorter. Or considerably longer. There was one batch of mails that expired and weren't returned a month after expiration. Nothing after two, three months, and at that point I thought that they were gone forever. And then eight months after those mails expired and disappeared, they just all reappeared one day as returned mails in the original sender's mailbox.

Again, I have no idea why this delay before the auto-return can be as short as a couple of days or as much as over half a year. But I'm pretty sure that your mails are not actually gone. And that you'll see them again in about a month. Or two. Or more.

Since I have a lot of maps saved this way for event I'm definitely not going to wait xy months for them to come back from acc 2. So I'd rather do everything manually. But thanks for the info on this. Interesting even strange that it can take so long for mails to return..

PeacefulAnarchy · December 8

So I've been keeping an eye on this and I have not gotten auto returned mails, moreover, manually returned mails don't keep their expiry date. So if a mail has two days to expire and is returned, its timer is still two days. I'm not 100% sure, but I thought in the past it reset, it certainly did for auto returned mails which had a 30 day expiry upon return.

Concerning change if so. Inconvenient enough for those of us sending things to alts for storage, but I'd hate to send something to someone who doesn't log in often and have it just disappear into the ether. I also wonder what happens with COD mails. If someone keeps a COD mail for 30 days will the item return or just vanish.

BetweenMidgets · December 12

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

So I've been keeping an eye on this and I have not gotten auto returned mails, moreover, manually returned mails don't keep their expiry date. So if a mail has two days to expire and is returned, its timer is still two days. I'm not 100% sure, but I thought in the past it reset, it certainly did for auto returned mails which had a 30 day expiry upon return.

Concerning change if so. Inconvenient enough for those of us sending things to alts for storage, but I'd hate to send something to someone who doesn't log in often and have it just disappear into the ether. I also wonder what happens with COD mails. If someone keeps a COD mail for 30 days will the item return or just vanish.

You're right, it did previously reset the timer. I wonder if that is what happened to OPs maps. They expired on one account, bounced back to the main account but the timer was up so they were deleted.

Doesn't take into account @code65536 's experience, though, of having them show up over half a year later.

code65536 · December 12

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

manually returned mails don't keep their expiry date. So if a mail has two days to expire and is returned, its timer is still two days. I'm not 100% sure, but I thought in the past it reset

Manually-returned mails have always behaved differently from mails that were forcibly returned via expiration. Manually-returned mails do not reset the expiration timer, and they do not refund the postage cost. In contrast, mails that are returned because they expired in the recipient's mailbox will have fresh expiration timers, and they will include a refund of the original postage cost.