missing emails

[Anonymous]

Proberbly should be asking this question on another forum but I saw a thread the other day about a printer and some of you guys seamed to know quite a bit about pc's etc so I'll give it a go. The tech's on the computing sites would go over my head as well #-o

My problem is missing emails. I am getting phone calls from customers saying I havn't replied to their emails when I have. There will always be a few missing may be miss typed email address's or picked up as junk at the other end but I have seen quite a few this week. I'm guessing I've sent about 100 emails this week and had about 20 phone calls. 20%ish missing, where to I start. Is it a case of speaking to my ISP or is there anything else I should be looking at first? It could be costing me money if quotes are not getting to customers.

Cheers

Andy

 

[spg]

Start off looking within the "Sent" and "Outbox" folders within your email system because that will prove whether the email was sent or not. Wording may be slightly different depending on the software used.

"Sent" means that it has gone whilst those in the "Outbox" will be waiting to leave your computer.

If they have been sent and you have a good relationship with one of the people who failed to receive the email then resend it. You should be able to flag the email so that it confirms delivery of the email and hopefully provide some more info on the problem

HTH

 

[Anonymous]

yeh looking at my outlook everything has gone. This morning I have sent everything out with a read reciept so hopefully I can see whats happening. :?

When sending I see them go to the out box just for a few seconds before moving to sent, just as they always have done.

 

[Steve Maskery]

I've had similar problems, not receiving emails that have definitely been sent to me.
As well as the body of the text, there is alot more info i the email. If you switch on Headers, you will see the path the email has taken, IP by IP. You can then tellwhere it got fired.
This is only any good fi you can get a copy of a returned email, of course!
MY ISP swears that it is Google servers causing the trouble, deciding that it is spam and ditching it. I don't know enough about it to challenge the idea.
S

 

[CHJ]

What is your e-mail account that you use for your customers, if it's one that the big boys have listed as undesirable or not listed as acceptable then they have a habit of just dumping it.

If you are sending to BT mail addresses for instance (in effect a Yahoo account) they may just get dumped instead of delivered, they don't have the curtesy to bounce them back or tell you they consider you as spam. If you are fortunate they may end up in the recipients Web Server Spam box, but if the recipient never accesses their mail via the web interface they never become aware that they are there.

Our private family mail accounts, despite having a high (spam free) rating and a dedicated security certification are not acceptable to BT customers despite the fact that BT use them to contact us and we have Yahoo accounts that also use them.

We have to use an alternate mainstream ISP account to talk to BT account friends and companies.

The annoying thing is they have a habit of sharing their 'acceptable' listings and then you find other networks also do likewise, although some have the decency to tell you so you can get back to them to get things corrected.

 

[Anonymous]

:? :? :?

This is what I was afraid of, I'm now lost already #-o

My ISP is orange and so it the email address [email protected] which is linked to outlook, I don't log straight into orange online.

I'm not getting anything back to say measage failed, just the customers tell me so.

 

[CHJ]

Is there a pattern to the customers address details that are failing.

I.E. are they all BT(Yahoo), or Virgin for instance.

If you can determine a pattern then contacting Orange to have them try to remedy things with your account ratings may be a way forward.

 

[Dibs-h]

:? :? :?

This is what I was afraid of, I'm now lost already #-o

My ISP is orange and so it the email address [email protected] which is linked to outlook, I don't log straight into orange online.

I'm not getting anything back to say measage failed, just the customers tell me so.

In which case you are sending via Orange's SMTP servers (Orange probably block port 25 like most ISP's) - whose IP addresses shouldn't be on any blacklist. But because you are on a domestic connection - and DHCP (recycling the IP address of your router) odds are your IP address is on a blacklist and hence getting dropped.

Recently had it for a client who was on BT Business Broadband - BT the twits share their IP pool between domestic & commercial. Even tho they were sending thru BT's own mailservers, thei client's own IP address was blacklisted! The only way to get a clean IP address from BT, is to get a static one and obviously there's a monthly charge for that! :roll:

Orange probably won't be of any help - as you are using it for business, unless you are on a business connection. Orange may give you a static IP - worth asking, but I'd make something up like you need to VPN to work frequently and your techies need you to have a static IP - don't tell the truth!

Don't worry if it's technobabble - Orange's techies should understand exactly what it means and you can't be the first person wanting a static IP. But even that might not solve the problem as the IP they give could still be on a blacklist and only the IP Assignee (i.e. Orange) can request that it is removed from a Blacklist by contacting the List owner\manager, and there's a few lists!

You've got a web site\domain - perhaps time to use proper email with it, which is highly unlikely to get blocked. Drop me a PM and I'll give you a ring as it's easier to explain over the phone than typing! :wink:

Dibs

 

[CHJ]

Do you not have an e-mail account facility incorporated with your web domain hosting, if you have the facility it could be an advantage to start using that instead of orange for your mails.

I see there is no record of e-mails to date from your domain

Edit: Ah I see Dibs got in first.

 

[wobblycogs]

I would say that if you aren't getting a "bounce" (a bounce is a message from a mail server telling you why it couldn't deliver your email) then there is a good chance your messages are being caught by a spam trap and never being delivered. Email is surprisingly reliable apart from the spam filtering step which can occasionally throw a wobbly.

If you include a lot of numbers or pictures in your email it's more likely to get marked as spam. Broken HTML or lots of HTML (e.g. formatting of text) is another good way of getting a message marked as spam. Try sending an email as just plain text to see if that gets through.

IMVHO, I would change my email address to a Google Mail (gmail) address. There are a couple of benefits to this... no one will ever blacklist the whole of Gmail (it's unlikely that Orange has been blacklisted but stranger things have happened). By using Gmail you separate your email address from your ISP so you can switch to a better / cheaper ISP without having to tell everyone a new email address.

EDIT: didn't notice you have a domain. In that case I'd recommend signing up for Google Apps. It's free and you can have email addresses like: [email protected]

 

[Anonymous]

i do have email with my site. The incoming mail from this comes to my outlook but out going mail is via orange. So what you are saying is log in the website email and send the measages straight from there? That's mail@ domain name

 

[wobblycogs]

Dibs is probably spot on what the cause of the problem but as he says it might be a pig to get a clean IP address.

One other thing though, are getting outlook to spoof the from header on your outgoing mail (intentionality or perhaps by accident) to make it appear to your clients that email is coming from your domain?. When you send email the "from" field can technically be any address you like but most spam filters now check that email originates from where it's supposed to and take a dim view of spoofing.

 

[Dibs-h]

i do have email with my site. The incoming mail from this comes to my outlook but out going mail is via orange. So what you are saying is log in the website email and send the measages straight from there? That's mail@ domain name

Your provider provides incoming via POP (110) but doesn't provide any Outgoing via SMTP (25, or alternative). They suggest you use Orange's outgoing SMTP - which frankly for business use, I don't think is all that clever.

You have a few choices -

1. Use their webmail and send from there.
2. leave the web hosting where it is and move the mail some place else. This is likely to have a small cost (nominal), but means you can access it anywhere via Outlook, IPhone and webmail and unlikely to get caught by any Blacklists. It's reasonably common to separate mail from web. Most of my clients have web hosted as per normal and mail dealt with elsewhere.
3. Move the complete hosting - but that's only going to be an option if you can "pull\download" the site and your provider allows that.

HIH

Dibs

 

[defsdoor]

Orange transparently hijack outgoing connections to port 25 (SMTP) so the only way to avoid Orange's mail system (if you are on Orange broadband) is to deliver to another server over SSL (encrypted to they can't hijack it).

I've got my own mailserver on dedicated hosting and host about 30 domains - mostly friends etc.. but some other businesses too - if you want to I will gladly host your domain on my system. Then you can ask me why something didn't get somewhere and I can tell you from the logs. I run IMAP primarily for mail boxes so you get instant delivery (IMAP IDLE is effectively push email) and webmail thrown in.

 

[Dibs-h]

Most ISP's block outbound port 25 traffic which is why most hosting providers provide alternative ports such as 587.

Blocking port 25 is to prevent spamming.

 

[defsdoor]

Most ISP intercept port 25 so that they can be in control of all email leaving their networks. Port 587 is just a way to circumvent this and is often intercepted as well. I run some vague ports (2225) for SMTP and even that has been stolen by some ISPs. They do deep packet inspection and determine the traffic from the content and not simply the ports used.

Technically you should use the SMTP servers of the connection you are currently on but a lot of mail servers will block emails for a domain that they host that has not originated from that machine or it's secondaries, and mail servers that verify SPF details will block incoming emails from a domain that didn't list all the authorized sources too. So the difficulty is getting you PC to connect to your mail server without any one getting in the way. The only reliable way to do this is to use SSL - the traffic is encrypted from the off so there is no way your ISP can be a man in them middle and interpret your traffic (not without you being warned enough times about invalid security certificates etc.. at least).

An SSL connection is also the only foolproof method we have found to work in hotels etc.. when traveling as more and more have intelligent systems now.