AWS SES - Bounces Not Being Delivered To ReturnPath Address

Question

I just wrote my first application using the AWS SDK for .Net to send ~7500 emails via SES with the following code:

AmazonSimpleEmailServiceClient client = new AmazonSimpleEmailServiceClient("awsKey", "awsSecret");

SendEmailRequest req = new SendEmailRequest()
    .WithDestination(new Destination() { ToAddresses = { "[email protected]" } })
    .WithSource("[email protected]")
    .WithReturnPath("[email protected]")
    .WithMessage(
        new Amazon.SimpleEmail.Model.Message(new Content("mySubject"),
        new Body().WithHtml(new Content("myBody"))));

var resp = client.SendEmail(req);

My AWS Console is showing successful deliveries of ~7350 emails and ~150 bounces.

It has been over 3 hours since it finished and I still have not received any bounce back emails ("This email could not be sent because the address doesn't exist or something...") to [email protected].

How do I find out which of those ~150 emails bounced so I can update my database?

Answer 1

The bounces were being delivered to me, they were just being filtered as spam.

I wish there were a better way to handle this through SES...

Answer 2

There is a better way to handle it. In SES, you can configure bounces to go into an SQS queue, and then process them programatically from your application (or a different, dedicated bounce handling application) that reads from that Queue.