No problem, Russell, I thought it might be something like that.

If you could make it send the URL in the form that I got to work, I think that would be a start. That is, remove the part starting &return-to=.

On the other hand, the intent of that parameter is no doubt so that the user can get back to the comment after verifying, so removing it might be a problem. Keeping that parameter in, but presenting the verification option before acting on it would be the ideal, I suppose.