With all the success behind the Road Runner FBL they are finally getting a face lift for their sender reporting tools. Yeah! not that they haven’t done a great job of this already but improvements are always something to be excited about.

Here are the important dates and the key deliverables that Road Runner is planning, see more info at their postmaster site.

August 28 –

Just as it’s hard to change tires on a moving car, making significant changes to a system that’s not standing still presents challenges. We think the best approach for us, in order to devote maximum resources to building a new and better Feedback Loop, is to freeze enrollment in the existing one, and August 28 is the best day to do it.

This freeze in enrollments will not mean that the existing FBL will go away on that day; the spam complaints that we’re sending to enrolled senders will continue to be sent as they’d been prior to that date. Moreover, Road Runner Mail Operations team members will still be available through normal channels to assist with delivery issues that senders may have, regardless of whether or not the senders were enrolled in our Feedback Loop prior to August 28.

November 17 –

This is the tentative go-live date for our new Feedback Loop program; it won’t go live before this date, but may go later, and we’ll update the schedule as the date gets closer. What’s most important to remember about the go-live date is that anyone wishing to participate in our Feedback Loop will have to (re-)enroll in the new Feedback Loop once it goes live; because there will be a defined formal Terms of Service as part of the new program, we will not and cannot migrate anyone from the old program to the new one.

December 31 –

This is the tentative date on which the old Feedback Loop will expire. In the interests of making the transition smooth for everyone, we’re going to provide a period of several weeks after the new program is online when pre-existing registrations will still be honored, and the old spam complaint reports will still be sent. This means that we won’t have to worry about a crush of registrations on the first day, and that everyone interested in the new FBL will have ample time to migrate themselves to it before the old one goes away for good. Given the anticipated increase in quality of the data available in our new FBL as compared to our existing one, it will be in every senders’ interest to migrate to the new one as soon as possible, but the grace period will ensure that everyone has time to do it properly.

I will also be monitoring this as it moves forward and will continue to post updates as they are available.