How long does it take to receive a reply to my email?

First, every email we receive is responded to, and almost always within 24 hours (usually less). If you have not heard back from us, then it is likely that either we did not receive your question or you did not receive our response. We do our best to respond to your questions in a timely manner. You should receive a response to your email within one business day, and usually you'll receive a response the same day for emails received before mid-afternoon.

If it has been more than one business day and you have not received a response, there are several possible reasons:

We may have not received your email. If you sent an email from your own email system, check your sent folder to ensure that you sent it to a valid churchtrac.com address. If you used the support form on the ChurchTrac website to submit your question, we may not have received your question, so please submit it again. Be sure to press the submit button when you are finished.

Our reply may have been returned to us as undeliverable or blocked. This can happen for several reasons. 1.) You may have entered your return address incorrectly; 2.) Your email inbox is "full" or your email provider rejected the message or failed to deliver it; 3.) Your ISP or email provider blocked our response as suspected SPAM. See below for possible solutions to this issue.

A SPAM filter that you installed may have moved or deleted our reply before you saw it. If you have installed SPAM filtering software, or if your email provider uses a SPAM filtering method, you may need to check your settings, Deleted folder, Junk mail folder or SPAM folder for the reply. You may have set your email provider to permanently deleted all incoming mail that it thinks is SPAM. If so, you may need to modify this setting before you receive an email response.

You are using a Challenge/Response SPAM prevention method. This method requires us to respond to an inquiry from your email or internet service provider (like EarthLink) before your email will be delivered. Sometimes our original response to your question may be deleted before we can respond to the email provider's request.

Your original email looked like SPAM or an email that contained a virus. Whenever you send an email to us, be sure the subject line contains the word "ChurchTrac" or "WorshipTrac". Avoid sending emails with no subject line, or with a nondescript subject line. Your email to us may have been classified as SPAM or a virus, so make sure that you use a specific subject line to make it clear that your email is legitimate. Unless you are requested to do so, do not attach anything to the message.

Before concluding that we aren't responding, please check the causes above. If all else fails, please submit your request again using our online support request tool. You may find that we actually have responded, but you didn't receive our response.

Some ISPs Filter Your Email
Some internet service providers (ISPs) block incoming mail from sites they think may be sending spam. Most techniques for doing this are extremely overzealous. For example, one ISP was blocking email from all addresses hosted by a particular large provider because they once received some spam from one address at that provider. Another blocked all email from Web sites hosted with a certain large hosting company. These massive censorship techniques are easy for ISPs to implement but are disastrous for customers. ISPs are beginning to come under fire for blocking the free exchange of email, but use of these techniques is still increasing. If you don't receive a reply from us to an email you send, it may be because your ISP is blocking our replies. If your ISP is blocking us we have no way to get a message through. If you do not receive replies after repeated attempts to contact us, you should contact your ISP and complain. Also try reaching us from another email address, or inform us that you've tried several times and if nothing else we can provide you information to contact us via phone.