I’ve adapted pretty well to the limitations of BES-less BlackBerry service over the last 11 months, but there are a few things about it that still irk me.
The most bothersome by far is the way the BlackBerry handles read-receipt requests. Whenever an email is received on my BlackBerry that includes a read-receipt request, the BlackBerry replies with an e-mail saying:
Your message has been delivered to the recipient.
This is particularly frustrating because it’s not accurate. The message may have been delivered to my BlackBerry, but that doesn’t mean it’s been delivered to me – and certainly doesn’t mean that I’ve read it. This is supposed to be a read receipt, not a delivery receipt.
I believe that at times this gives people sending me e-mail an incorrect view of my response to them. Scenario:
- Someone sends me an e-mail at ~8pm.
- They receive a response around 8:05pm with the
confirmation 
- Sometime the next morning, maybe 8-10am – maybe later, I have time to read and reply to the message.
The same thing can happen during the day as well if I’m in a meeting, etc. While I may be responding within an hour or two of seeing their e-mail, the darn BlackBerry auto-response can make them think I’m responding many hours later than that.
As far as I can tell, there is no way to turn this off. I can’t find a setting for it on the BlackBerry, nor in my account on blackberry.com, and the BlackBerry tech support reps I’ve spoken to don’t know how to disable it either.
It bugs me every time too because I BCC myself on e-mails sent from my BlackBerry with a rule to auto-file them properly in my IMAP account. I’m effectively SPAMming myself with these things.
If anyone has any tips on fixing this, please share them.
So I may be off on this because I do have BES, but on my non-BES mail accounts, I see an option. You may not have it on BIS, though.
1. In email, go to Options > Email Settings.
2. Click the dropdown “Message Services” and choose the account in question.
3. Change “Send Read Receipts” to No.
Hope it works for you on BIS.
With my BlackBerry Curve I can set this option in my Email, Options and then
Confirm Delivery -> No
Confirm Read -> No
Send Read Receipts -> No
Thomas– I don’t have those settings in my BIS config screens.
Jure– They are all set to No already. Since the BlackBerry seems to ignore those settings I called and spent about 2 hours on the phone w/ BlackBerry techs regarding this issue. I really wish the settings worked, but they don’t (at least for me).
Sorry that I wasn’t of any help, Alex. I know what you mean about this type of thing being annoying.
If you have more than one email account, are all of them set to Send Read Receipts to No? There is a discussion I saw that may be of interest on the AT&T forums.
Yes, they are both set with “No”s down the list.
Okay, and doing the steps listed in the linked post didn’t help? (battery pull and resending service books)
Hey guys, I was super annoyed by this notification isse as well. What worked for me on my 8320;
When you are in your email inbox be sure a message in your message list is highlighted then hit your menu button, scroll to options, email options and check to see all it opted NO.
I had this same problem and spend 30 minutes on the phone with my provider this morning. They wanted me to uninstall the daylight savings patch (thats about when this problem started happening) and reinstall another file they sent me today. I am a skeptic of anything that rhymes with “uninstall”. Instead, I followed Diggy’s instructions, and he was spot on! That was the problem! Its fixed! Thank you!
I tried this – they are all set to No for me already.
Well Alex,
If you are positive you followed the steps given and made sure you were ‘inside’ the email message area (a message in your inbox was highlighted) when you ran through the menu/options/email settings AND you were scrolled to the ‘date’ menu bar (no message highlighted) and did the same steps, you must have a different kind of issue. Maybe try sending your service books again if you’ve completed all steps.
I’m glad it worked for you Jennifer!
Perhaps I don’t understand the steps. When I have a message selected, or not, or however I get into the E-mail options area, it always shows all of the options set to No. I assure you, I have tried this numerous times over the last 5-6 months.
It seems as though you do understand the steps, especially if you’ve been working at it for months now, must be super annoying! I hope you get it situated. The steps I took required to do both, with an email message highlighted and without, in both of my email address inboxes. If you tried that and sent your service books as well, sounds like you may have a little more complicated issue on your hands.. Which BB model do you have?
I actually have this problem too BUT it only happens when I am sending an email to another blackberry user on the same network (ATT in my case). A normal email to joe blow email account doesn’t have this only when I am sending to someone else using a blackberry. When it is received by them, the checkmark has a little “d” for delivered and I get the bounce email confirmation.
I have the same problem with “Read Receipts” and have listened carefully and tried all the suggestions in this thread. I would add that one factor may be that email to which the undesired Read receipts are sent are all received through a BIS email account that connects to OWA (Outloot Web Access). I have apersonal BB but receive work email via this OWA connection. The OWA server in question is connected to Exchange 5.5. All email received via this link receive a Read receipt upon delivery to my BB. VERY ANNOYING – I am considering cancelling the work email link just to prevent co-workers from thinking that I have read their email…
The problem is a privacy issue. The read receipt reveals your blackberry carrier email address in the attached details.txt file:
Original-Message-ID:4291231532
Final-Recipient:username@tmo.blackberry.net
Action:Delivered
So if you’re using an email alias that forwards to your blackberry email, your blackberry carrier email is exposed, which most probably you don’t want to happen.
I also haven’t found a solution. This happens on Tmobile with a Pearl and a Curve.
Arthur…..
Can you explain why that message is a privacy concern? I’m not challenging you – I want to understand it.
I have an TMo 8320 BES… same problem.. equally annoyed!!!
Sounds like everyone is experiencing the same issue with the Tmo 8320. Yep, it certainly is irritating.
This discussion thread might help with the problem that people are trying to describe.
http://forums.crackb[...]kberry-1463/
I have a BB Pearl and I have the receipts problem as well. I will try a new service book, but all of my option settings are definitely set to “no”.
Question: Does everyone with this problem have a Gmail account linked to their BB? This problem seemed to have come up about the time I linked in my Gmail and Google calendar. The Google Sync program seems to override several other functions.
Help and good luck!
I had this issue as well and it drove me inane what i did was i researched each forum and too their advice i went to messages > options > email settings and put all those on no and save and then i went to all my email accounts and turned off all email confirmation and it seems to have stopped so if i’snt your blackberry it maybe a setting you have set by accident on Gmail or any other client
I know this may seem silly for some if not, most people, but some visitors of this post may be making the same mistake I was making.
If you are attempting to change the “Email Settings” of an email accounts on your blackberry by going to the specific icon on the main screen for your email address and then going to the “Options” item in the menu and then to the “Email Settings” item – you are not necessarily changing the options for that email
account.
All of the accounts go to the same place –
At the top of the “Email Settings” screen, be sure that the correct email address is selected in the first field and then set the options.
This is definitely not intuitive – one would think that if he enters the “Email Settings” screen from a certain email address, that he would be changing the settings for that account… but this is not necessarily the case if you have multiple email addresses to the one phone!
I hope this helps some people and sorry to the other people who have a genuine technical issue with the provider!
[…] https://alexking.org/blog/2008/03/11/blackberry-e-mail-delivery-confirmations […]
Had this problem with our CEO’s blackberry and a harassing customer. No matter how we tried setting his phone, it still sent delivery receipts.
To fix it, we had our server filter any incoming message with a “Return-Receipt-To:” header, and strip the header before delivering it to the inbox. Stripping the header would not stop our server from sending a delivery receipt, but without the header the Blackberry did not know to send one, so it wouldn’t. We disabled delivery receipts on our server, so now it’s all good.
Unfortunately, unless you have access to your mail server, this won’t help you at all. And it doesn’t change the fact that anyone who has already received a delivery receipt from you now has your Blackberry’s direct address (if they know enough to look at the headers).
What a pain.
HEY EVERYBODY, PAY ATTENTION TO Bryan Welfel!
I kept checking my setting through options>email settings… and they all were set to “no”. The device has 2 accounts and even though I was in “account B” I was only looking at the settings for “account A”. Be sure to highlight the email address and “change option” to your other accounts and to check their settings.
Thanks Bryan. Hope that makes sense.
A big thank you to Bryan Welfe for reminding some of us that there are multiple accounts in email settings. 🙂
I just upgraded the software on my bb bold to 4.6.0.304 and the problem is resolved.
I have the same problem.
It did take me awhile to figure out that I was just seeing the options for email A when I thought I was seeing them for email B and C but eventually I figured that out. So Bryan is right about that being an issue for some cases but it doesn’t take care of all of them.
I use a BB Curve 8330 and have it connected to a couple GMail accounts.
I had a privacy issue beyond revealing my BB’s direct address (I didn’t even realize that was a problem until reading it here!). Prior to my BB I had a couple special purpose and infrequently used GMail accounts that I don’t check frequently so I had them forwarded to my primary GMail account so I didn’t miss an email. One account is for a side business, one is for a professional organization, and one uses an “anonymous” nickname that does not include any part of my name. When I received an email from another BB/GMail user to the anonymous account, it was the primary account that sent the delivery receipt. So my primary email address, i.e., my full name was also revealed. I have since stopped forwarding the anonymous account to my primary account so that part is no longer an issue but the delivery receipts keep going out.
Diggy, it worked for me.
Thx.
BB8520