I feel like I'm losing my mind.

A client of the MSP I work at recently contracted an external ~~marketing~~ AI Driven personalized email sales generation firm. They send bulk template emails to a list of potential customers and try to convince them to buy something. But they're not marketing, and will correct you every time you so much as insinuate they are.

Whatever. Not the issue I have with them. Because rather than send mail from their own infrastructure or a dedicated bulk sending service, they apparently require a standard licensed user mailbox to ~~send spam~~ generate personalized sales leads.

We warn them that this won't fly, that account is going to get blocked within 24 hours, and that the client runs the risk of having their entire domain blacklisted. Marketing company says it's fine, they've done this with hundreds of clients, including on the Fortune 500. Client says do it, boss says the inevitable stupid tax will be a good source of revenue, us techs are just paid to push buttons so we create them their account.

Twenty four hours pass. Security alert hits the queue, marketing.bozos@clientdomain.com has been restricted from sending out of 365 due to suspect outbound messages. Checking into it...the account was sending out standard boilerplate spam. We have a moment of 'I told you so,' get affected parties together, reiterate that this won't fly and recommend that they do what we told them to in the first place.

No, says the marketing company. This happens all the time. 365 just needs some time to adjust to their sending patterns. They "mimic human behavior" after all. But, we should create them a second marketing account so they can split their sends between them. This will totally fix it, promise. Argument ensues, but at the end of it the second account is created.

Twenty four hours pass. Two security alerts hit the queue. marketing.bozos@clientdomain.com and marketing.bozos2@clientdomain.com have been restricted from sending out of 365 due to suspect outbound messages. Both accounts were sending out standard spam. The 'I told you so' is said with a sigh today. We again recommend they do what they're supposed to.

No, says the marketing company. This has been happing increasingly often. What we really need is a third marketing account so they can be super absolutely sure this doesn't happen again, super duper pinkie promise. The ensuing argument has more tension this time around. A third account is created at the client's insistence.

Twenty four hours pass. Three security alerts hit the queue. marketing.bozos@clientdomain.com, marketing.bozos2@clientdomain.com, and marketing.bozos3@clientdomain.com have been restricted from sending out of 365 due to suspect outbound messages. All three accounts are sending out standard spam. The 'I told you so' is said through gritted teeth. Boss finally puts his foot down, says that we are not going to be creating an infinite series of licensed marketing user accounts. You are going to need to find both a new IT provider and a new domain at the current rate. Argument ensues, further ~~spam~~ sales generation sends are paused until a resolution can be reached. A meeting is scheduled.

The meeting happens, between myself, one of our senior techs/technical executive, stakeholders at the client, and the non-technical account manager from the marketing company. Account manager insists on giving us the sales pitch for their company. "We send bulk template emails to a list of potential customers and try to convince them to buy something" says the account manager in her native tongue of corporate buzzword slop. Great. Amazing. Tell us what shitty bulk sending platform you use and the spf record you want to us add and we can be done with this.

No no no, says the account manager. It's not our business process to use those. We prefer a personalized approach. You see, we mimic realistic human behavior. Our weird proprietary tool that we've grafted to this poor mailbox sends a message once exactly every 120 seconds - just like a human! We personalize our messages by using the same subject line every single time! These are not standard marketing messages, they're an AI driven, personalized sales generation platform. Transcendent. Enrapturing. You're sending spam. You're going to get the client blacklisted. I refuse to believe that we are the first people to have pointed this out to you.

Well, the account manager admits, we have been noticing these issues recently. Since last month, apparently. But we're totally 100% certain that if we just keep at it, 365 will give up eventually! We tell the client this is untenable, unsupportable, and poses a serious risk to their business operations. Marketing company refuses to budge. It is eventually 'agreed' to buy a clientdomainmarketing.com, use it to create a seperate 365 environment, and let marketing company go wild without risk of contaminating the primary domain's reputation.

Am I crazy? Does this sound like anything remotely reasonable? I feel like I'm going insane.