Your communication preferences
An email I recieved from eBay today:
We have an important policy message for you. However, your communication preferences are set up to accept text-only emails, so we couldn’t send it to this email address.
So… a message saying I have a message.
It then attempts to bully me into updating my communication preferences, and tells me I’ll have to go hunting around My eBay for the actual message they’re trying to send me.
Sit up and listen: email is plain text. HTML email has never been turned into a proper standard, and the current hacky implemetations all suck. Plus security, masked links, tracking images etc. etc. Start with a plain text email - which renders perfectly in every client every time - and then add an HTML MIME part if needed. And don’t make users choose which type they want to recieve - including multiple MIME types in one email is a standard.
The inclusion of HTML entity “’” in an intentionally plain text email complaining about plain text emails is particularly funny though, I’ll give them that.