Not receiving emails from one address only

[#1]

Does anyone have any idea why we are unable to receive emails sent by one particular person, please? The details are as follows:

My husband's email address (@domain name.co.uk) is forwarded on to his Plusnet email (@medart.plus.com) and he has had no problem receiving other emails being sent to him. One client has tried to send him emails repeatedly over the last week and they never arrive, and apparently do not bounce back either. We have double-checked he is sending to our correct address and he has also tried replying to an email my husband has sent, but his reply doesn't arrive. I have turned off the spam filtering on my husband's account, and there is no spam filtering on our domain provider's end either. As I say, other emails are getting through without any problem.

The client has just sent the same email to my address (@different domain name.com) which is forwarded on to my Plusnet account (@zoobotanica.plus.com) and it arrived instantly.

We are using Apple Mail on separately configured iMacs (so not checking on phones and deleting from server or anything).

Does anyone have any idea what is going on?

Thanks for your help - 

Debbie.

[#2]

Hi Debbie,

Are you still experiencing difficulty here?

There can be dire problems with redirecting emails depending on the level of checking which the various email services involved, check the authenticity of the sender.  The problem described has a number of different parties involved, which makes identifying the place of the failure difficult...

1. The client's email service (domain)
2. Your husband's @domainname.co.uk
3. Your @different_domain.com
4. Your husband's @plus.com account
5. Your @plus.com account

Your analysis suggests that

• anyone-else > 2 > 4 is OK
• 1 > 3 > 5 is OK
• but 1 > 2 > 4 fails but gives no error

Have you tried 1 > 4 ?

I would suspect that the issue is somewhere between 1 & 2

• Who hosts 2 ?
• I would also go check the black list stats of 1 on something like http://mxtoolbox.com/

There is some possibility that 1 is (or was) SPAM black listed

Equally there is some possibility that 2 has out of date blacklisting data

There is a lot going on in the world of email to mitigate the propagation of SPAM.  Some email providers are more advanced than others in implementing and support such technologies.  The absence of implementation or support can cause significant issues in both accepting emails and forwarding them.  Two key technologies involved here are SPF and SRS - the first is about verifying that a sending email server is permitted to send on behalf of the sending email address - the second is about a forwarding service providing the right information to support onward SPF checking, as the email now appears to be coming from a different (unapproved) email service.

It is complicated and a screw-up in its implementation (too aggressive) can cause major failures - as Virgin Media found out a year or two back!

[#3]

Hi Townman, thanks very much for your reply and suggestions. We never did solve this problem and have resorted to using an alternative email address for this one client. We haven't tried 1 > 4 partly as we don't want to bother the client with our email woes. 2 is hosted by easily.co.uk and I did check to see if there was spam filtering there but it is switched off. I didn't check about the blacklisting, though - I will contact them to see if this might be an issue. 2 > 4 is OK as all other emails are coming through with no problems. (that we know of!) I just tried the blacklisting checker you gave and the client's domain is OK on all sites. It's a puzzler and I can only assume it's due to a spam or blacklisting issue such as you describe, somewhere along the line, or user error at the client's end, though they seem competent enough.

Thanks very much for taking the trouble to reply and for the information - I'll follow up with Easily and report back if I have any joy!

Kind regards

Debbie.