Amazon SES Under Review for Direct Complaints: Why Your Dashboard Looks Fine

If Amazon SES put your account under review for direct complaints, the problem won't show up in your complaint rate. AWS's complaint rate metric only counts complaints that arrive through mailbox provider feedback loops. Complaints recipients send to AWS directly, and reports a provider sends outside a feedback loop, are handled separately. AWS won't tell you who complained. It expects you to fix how the list was built, describe the fix in the Support Center case, and do it within about three weeks.

A thread in r/Emailmarketing describes this situation: the account went under review for direct complaints, the sender had already changed their process and replied to AWS, and the review stayed open for weeks. Below is what AWS's own sending review FAQ says about it (read 2 November 2026).

Three kinds of complaint, and which one you can see

Complaint source	How it reaches SES	In Reputation.ComplaintRate?	Do you get notifications?
Feedback loop	The recipient clicks "Report spam" and the provider forwards it to SES	Yes	Yes, by email or Amazon SNS
Direct from recipients	"Multiple recipients directly contacted SES about your mail"	No	No
Email provider report	A provider tells SES "a significant number of its customers marked your emails as spam" outside a feedback loop	No	No

AWS on direct complaints: "The complaint rate on the reputation metrics page and in the Reputation.ComplaintRate metric only includes complaints that SES receives through feedback loops." So a 0.05% complaint rate and a review notice can both be true.

For context, the feedback-loop thresholds are published: review at 0.1% and a possible pause at 0.5%. The bounce thresholds are 5% and 10%, covered in our post on SES reviews for bounces.

What AWS asks you to do

AWS's instruction for direct complaints is short: "Immediately change your sending processes so that you're only sending messages recipients who have specifically signed up to receive them." Then reply to the case it opened in Support Center with the steps you've taken and how they stop it happening again. It adds: "If you don't request a review within three weeks, and we continue to receive direct recipient complaints, we might pause your account's ability to send email."

In practice:

1. Pause the riskiest segment, not everything. AWS's manual-investigation section says a situation is usually correctable when "only one type is problematic" and you can stop that one. If you send receipts, newsletters and promotions, find which one changed recently.
2. Audit acquisition. List every source that feeds the list: signup forms, checkout opt-ins, imports, partner lists, event scans. Anything without a clear opt-in record comes out. AWS: "remove any customers from your lists that didn't explicitly ask to receive email from you."
3. Check what people signed up for. AWS calls mail "unsolicited" when "a recipient signs up for a certain type of mail (for example, notifications), and instead is sent a different type of mail (for example, advertisements)".
4. Remove dead and dormant addresses. Clean the list on the verify page so the review isn't joined by a bounce problem, then apply a sunset policy to people who haven't engaged in months.
5. Make unsubscribing obvious. A visible link in the body and a working one-click header. The CAN-SPAM footer checker checks the footer basics.
6. Write the reply AWS asks for. Root cause, changes already made (AWS says to include only steps you've already done, not plans), and why they prevent a repeat.

What won't work

• Removing only the complainers. You can't: AWS won't name them. Its feedback-loop guidance also notes that "for every person who complains, there are potentially dozens who didn't appreciate your mail who didn't (or weren't able to) complain."
• Waiting it out. The three-week line in the FAQ is about requesting a review, not about the review expiring in your favour.
• Moving the same list to another provider. The recipients who complained to AWS will complain to the next provider too, and feedback loops will show it in your complaint rate this time. Our post on recovering after sending to a purchased list covers that case.

Track what SES can show you

Set up SNS notifications for bounces and complaints, and a CloudWatch alarm on the reputation metrics. They won't catch direct complaints, but they catch the feedback-loop ones before they become a second review. The spam complaint rate calculator shows where a campaign's numbers sit against the 0.1% and 0.3% lines.

Where SimpleVerifier fits

Verification removes addresses that don't exist, are disposable or point at dead domains, which is the bounce half of an SES review. It can't tell you who wanted your mail. The first 100 checks are free with a Google sign-in on the verify page. Pro is $39 a month with the first 100,000 checks a month at full speed, then slower, never cut off, and one-time packs of 10,000 checks for $15 never expire. See pricing.