I am not sure how many of you have had this before, but this is one of the things that really grinds my gears. :(
So I have this pm convo with a confused customer who is looking for help (but I also had the very same trying to warn users, e.g. after deleting a post / topic)...
He would like me to help him, I also would like to help him, but because he set his profile to only receive PMs from people which he subscribed to, I cannot help him. :(
He now keeps sending me PMs which I cannot reply to. That does not really feel like being in control of my Community, unfortunately. :(
I now will have to send him an Email, hoping that he will read + understand it (which is not always given, trust me on this), so that he unticks that box in his profile.
In the past, I found this too cumbersome to do, so I would simply resign and not handle these things. This is far from ideal.
Quick and dirty fix: Let Mods / Admins change a customer profile setting.
Proper fix: By default, Mods / Admins strike all profile settings which are restricting communication in any way.
Cheers,
Julian