We couldn't be more harmless and serious, but SES keeps denying production access

I understand your frustration with the SES production access denials. While I don't have specific information about your case, here are some key considerations that may help:

Common reasons for denial:

• AWS evaluates requests based on your sending practices, compliance history, and how well you've demonstrated you can maintain good sender reputation
• Even legitimate organizations can be denied if the use case description doesn't clearly demonstrate proper email practices or if there are concerns about list quality

Steps to improve your request:

1. Be extremely specific in your use case description: Clearly explain that this is transactional communication with existing supporters who have explicitly opted in. Emphasize the low volume (2,000/month) and your established relationship with recipients.

2. Demonstrate technical readiness: You mentioned bounce handling and SNS webhooks - make sure your request explicitly details your complaint handling process, how you'll process bounces and complaints in real-time, and your suppression list management.

3. Provide evidence of legitimacy: Include your charity registration number, website URL, and examples of the types of emails you'll send. Make it clear these are relationship emails to existing supporters, not marketing to purchased lists.

4. Request feedback: When reopening, specifically ask what concerns led to the denial and what additional information you can provide.

5. Consider starting smaller: Request a modest sending limit initially (even just above sandbox) to build reputation before requesting higher limits.

If cases keep closing without response, you may want to escalate through AWS Support (if you have a support plan) or try reaching out through your AWS account team if you have one assigned to your organization.

Though the above answer looks correct, you mentioned it's not helping your situation. Unfortunately, only AWS Support can help allow SES production access. From my experience, I only put 2 details when I applied for SES production access.

• we are {company_type} company that needs to send emails for {purpose}
• we will be sending approximately {# of emails} a day

I didn't go into details into our current process and how we plan to migrate, etc.

and that's basically it, got access in a couple of days.

We are facing the same problem. I have complained to multiple places about the Trust and Safety team. They refuse to approve legitimate users, yet they automatically grant access to accounts that go on to send spam. I have documented everything and escalated the issue to Amazon executives. Until this two-faced Trust and Safety group is removed from Amazon, nobody will be able to operate properly. On top of that, Amazon is paying these people very high salaries.