Why filters are so suspicious of these emails
Put yourself in the filter's position. The message contains:
- The words gift card, code, claim and redeem.
- A short alphanumeric string that looks like a credential.
- An urgency cue, because most such emails genuinely are time-sensitive.
- Often a first-time sender, because you have not corresponded with this shop before.
That is a near-perfect description of the scam category the filter exists to stop. The filter is not being stupid; it is being asked to distinguish two things that look identical from the outside.
What actually gets a message through
Three things, in order of weight:
- You have written to the sender before. Almost nothing beats a prior reply from your address.
- The address is in your contacts. A strong, explicit signal.
- You have marked previous mail from them as not spam. Persistent, and it generalises to the whole domain.
Notice all three are things you do, not things the sender does. Sender-side authentication matters too, but it has diminishing returns — a properly authenticated first-contact email still lands in spam regularly.
The three-minute fix
Do this before the code is due, not after:
- Add the sender's address to your contacts. In Gmail, hover the address and choose Add to contacts. In Outlook, right-click and choose Add to Outlook contacts. In Apple Mail, tap the name and Create New Contact.
- Reply once to the confirmation email. Even one word. This is the single strongest signal available, and it also proves your address works.
- Check spam once, and mark it. If anything from the sender is already in there, use Not spam rather than dragging it out, because dragging does not always teach the filter.
Where to look when a code has not arrived
In this order:
- The spam or junk folder. Obvious, still the answer most of the time.
- Promotions or Updates tabs in Gmail. Not spam, but not the inbox either.
- Search the whole mailbox for the order number, not the word "gift". Search covers folders you would not think to open.
- Check for a typo in the address you gave. One transposed character and the mail went to a stranger or nowhere.
If it genuinely did not arrive
Reply to the confirmation email and quote the order number. A seller who keeps records can see what was issued and resend it. A seller who cannot is telling you something useful about how they operate.
We say this on the confirmation itself: reply once, add the address to your contacts. It costs nothing and it prevents the most common delivery failure there is. Details of what we send and when are on the request form page.