Incoming emails delayed by hours

[#1]

I'm having problems with some emails taking hours to arrive. We're selling/buying our house so there are important emails about, a couple of which (from different senders) got delayed  >:(.
I have my own domain name with Fasthosts and use them to forward mail to my Plusnet accounts. Looking at the email headers, the mail is stuck at Fasthosts and they say it's most likely because Plusnet hasn't responded when they first forwarded the mail, hence it goes into their "deferred" queue and is retried later (they didn't tell me the retry parameters; RFC5321 only says should be >30 mins for the first retry so not much help there).
I've raised a ticket here at Plusnet and it's being looked at now. I'm posting here in case anyone else has this problem, which might help in the resolution. If not, it would help me go back to Fasthosts and tell them to try harder....
Chris

[#2]

Welcome to the forum radman.  I'm not having any delays in my emails today.  Wonder if the problem is actually Fasthosts

[#3]

Thanks artmo, I've had a good look at the headers of quite a few recent incoming emails. Not all of my emails are delayed, and some are delayed in Fasthosts "deferred" server for a short time only (eg 24 seconds, 10 minutes, 32 minutes) so you may not notice. I suppose if I looked hard and long enough, I could reverse-engineer their retry algorithm, but I have better things to do ... 
At the moment, I have an open mind as to which end is causing the problem. Fasthosts have said "not us" but I'm inclined to take that with caution as they didn't look in their logs, just said the monitoring didn't show anything.

[#4]

Reply from the Plusnet team to the effect that the server that's holding the message for so long is "outside our network". They suggest I go back to Fasthosts and ask them for the logs . I've cut and pasted the words into a message to Fasthosts.

[#5]

Quote from: radman

Thanks artmo, I've had a good look at the headers of quite a few recent incoming emails. Not all of my emails are delayed, and some are delayed in Fasthosts "deferred" server for a short time only (eg 24 seconds, 10 minutes, 32 minutes) so you may not notice. I suppose if I looked hard and long enough, I could reverse-engineer their retry algorithm, but I have better things to do ...

Bachup severs normally will try to deliver straight away and then some will try to delivery every 10 minutes for a couple of hours then extending this to every 1 hour then every 4 hours, every 12 hours, and finally daily for a week or 2. Others will try 10 minutes, 20 minutes 40 minutes, hourly, and then daily. 

[#6]

Radman you are not alone! I have had exactly the same problem recently with emails delayed between Fasthosts & Plusnet for anything up to 23 (yes, twenty three) hours. At least 2 have disappeared without trace.
On the recommendation of a good chum with a high IT IQ (compared with my lowly score)  I opened a Gmail account some while ago and this is one of the email forwarders I have registered at Fasthosts. That's how I know 2 have disappeared.........
I took this up with Fasthosts yesterday and got this reply from one of Fasthost's IT Operations Engineers that may ease your concerns:
"We are aware of a intermittent communications issue with Plus Net which is causing email to be delayed. We are aware of the root cause and are in the process of resolving it, with hopes that it should be completely resolved within a few working days.
If you find that this issue is not resolved by the end of next week, please come back to us and we will investigate further for your particular domain."
Hope this helps

[#7]

@itsme - thanks that confirms what I am seeing; good to know they aren't likely to bin them straight away
@siltshifter - that's a great help indeed. Seems like you got a better response from Fasthosts than I did. I await their next reply to my reopened ticket with interest. I've detected only one go missing completely, and that was some weeks ago, but unlike you I wouldn't have known in many circumstances.

[#8]

Ok here's the latest update. Fasthosts say it's not their problem and Plusnet "are refusing our connection"
I've fed this back to the Plus.net team
Definite feeling of piggy-in-the-middle here

[#9]

This problem seems to have been sorted now. I've been checking mail headers over the last few days and there's no sign of mail getting stuck in Fasthost's "deferred" server.
Neither Fastshosts or Plusnet get very good marks from me for customer communication. Clearly, at the time I raised my initial tickets with both organisations, the problem was known about (see siltshifter's earlier post). Neither side would acknowledge that fact to me. Fasthosts effectively denied there was a problem, or if there was one, it was Plusnet's fault for refusing a connection request. Plusnet effectively asked me to ask Fasthosts for server logs.
Onwards and upwards....

[#10]

Sorry about the way this was handled. The headers you provided before I escalated your support ticket were IMO sufficient enough to have allowed us to check our own server logs. If the problem resurfaces then feel free to drop me a PM and I'll try to ensure things get sorted in a more timely fashion.

[#11]

Thanks to Bob for an honest reply,
Not had anything like that from Fasthosts...
I've just sent Bob an email header showing a 10-hour delay. First one I've noticed since my post above