Problems sending PN email to Gmail addresses

[#1]

OK - got the DNS thing sorted as advised and initially all was well. Gmail addresses reached their recipients no problem.

But.............much later that day my email broke! Could send but couldn't download at all either via webmail or mail client. Plusnet had to do a complete refresh for me and advised me to remove the additional DNS which I did. This appeared to fix things and my email has been working today.

I have no idea whether the two things were linked or whether the email broke of its own accord but it has never done it before so I am reluctant to add the DNS again. 

[#2]

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@pjmarsh wrote:

The Zen help pages show addresses such as john@example.myzen.co.uk: https://www.zen.co.uk/help-support/getting-consumer-email-details.

@jab1 is also a Zen customer, so I suspect that's where his knowledge on it is coming from.

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Exactly - I have my Zen email account set up, but currently don't use it - I have too many contacts to switch while ever my PN  email works.

[#3]

Getting back to Gmail and their antics, this morning I sent a simple email with a Amazon link from my PN account to a 'free'  Gmail user - it vanished into the ether - they didn't receive it and I got no NDR. Suggests to me Gmail are failing miserably to follow industry protocols.

[#4]

I'm sending two or or three est messages a day to (free) Gmail addresses. Most disappear for ever with no NDRs. Occasionally one is delivered  very late.

Can we please have an update from the business on what, if anything, is  happening. Are there discussions with Google? Or work on Plusnet procedures? Or are just waiting and hoping the problem will go away?

If the truth is that Plusnet has  no viable options we might as well know. There's really no excuse for complete silence.

And what is the status of the migration to  Greenby? I raised this issue some time ago and there's been no word at all.

[#5]

Starting some months back I became aware that weblinks/urls in e-mails addressed to a hotmail account were being altered (even 'innocent' urls from major retailers' websites) before the e-mail landed in the recipient's inbox. I'm assuming that this is in response some phishy stuff. I had to talk the recipient very carefully as to how to forward what they received back to me (using their webmail as opposed to their e-mail 'client' on their smart phone).

This was from a e-mail account not hosted by plusnet.

YMMV.

[#6]

All,

In the circumstances of Gmail deferring acceptance of an email delivery attempt there will be no immediate NDR returned.  NDRs are only returned when an attempt to deliver is rejected outright or the outbound server abandons delivery attempts due to persistent deferment by the recipient.

An outbound server will typically not abandon attempts until 5 days have passed.

EDIT: I have a full soup to nuts case of an email senit via webmail last Monday, receiving a NDR on Friday, now lodged with support

[#7]

@Townman Thanks. I will check whether mine has got to the recipient on Sunday, or if I  get an NDR.

[#8]

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@Townman wrote:

...In the circumstances of Gmail deferring acceptance of an email delivery attempt there will be no immediate NDR returned.  NDRs are only returned when an attempt to deliver is rejected outright or the outbound server abandons delivery attempts due to persistent deferment by the recipient...

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I've sent messages to @gmail accounts in recent days and they just disappeared.  Never delivered to the recipient, and even after five days, no NDR received by me.

The same recipient does get messages from a mutual contact, who doesn't use PN, so that's how I've been finding out what's not being delivered to the gmail account.  Since other email providers can send to gmail accounts, it seems to me that the problem with Google grey listing messages from a PN account must have something to do with the way PN are sending those messages.

This failure of messages from my PN address to gmail accounts coupled with the ongoing problem of not being able to send from my PN address to more than oner MS address at once (last time I looked the topic about that problem had over 300 posts on it) is trying my patience with PN to the limit.

Can you @Townman persuade anyone at PN to say what PN are doing about this gmail problem.  As has been made clear in many posts in the topic about failures sending to MS mail servers, saying nothing just irritates users and trashes PN's reputation.  Or do PN no longer care what their users think?

[#9]

They certainly do care ... the SUs are in daily contact with the guys doing the work, though the detail of in-flight activity is not available.

Everyone is at the mercy of the nonsensical interpretation of "BULK SENDER" by Microsoft and Gmail.  To some extent, Plusnet has become a victim of the historical 'richness' of its email offer.  For most email providers an email address / account is a SINGLE mailbox at the provider's domain.

With Plusnet, each account is a distinct sub-domain within the ISP's top-level domain name, within which the account holder can have as many mailboxes as they choose.  Unfortunately all such sub-domains are now being treated as a single sender.

For other providers the mitigations are simple - there is a single domain to 'fix'.  With the flexibility of the Plusnet solution we all utilise, the solutions are somewhat more complex, for some of them need to happen at the sub-domain level (of which there are 100,000s).

The deep challenge here is that Gmail will not disclose why they are behaving in the manner we see, the testing undertaken by the SUs and diagnostic logs recovered are under investigation.

[#10]

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@jab1 wrote:

@Townman Thanks. I will check whether mine has got to the recipient on Sunday, or if I  get an NDR.

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The email never reached the recipient, and as of now I still don't have an NDR.

I inadvertently sent another one the following day, no sight of that or an NDR - again!

[#11]

I have a theory that for a sender to a specific Gmail address, only one NDR will ever be returned (after 5 days).  Unfortunately I have no way of proving such, beyond the first A to B message generates a NDR … but not subsequent ones.

[#12]

I send very few emails to this person, in fact I think this was the first this year, but certainly the first which has not been received, and I am not aware of any which I have sent prior generating an NDR - or not arriving, come to that.

[#13]

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@Townman wrote:

I have a theory that for a sender to a specific Gmail address, only one NDR will ever be returned (after 5 days).

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My experience does not fit with that theory.  At the moment when I send to @gmail the message goes into a black hole and no NDR is sent, ever.

To add to the confusion.  I got a message from a gmail contact and I replied, the gmail contact got that message and replied back to me.  When I replied again, that message disappeared.  So far, so inconsistent - except for the fact the messages that are not delivered are lost without trace.

[#14]

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@stuck wrote:

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To add to the confusion.  I got a message from a gmail contact and I replied, the gmail contact got that message and replied back to me.  When I replied again, that message disappeared.  So far, so inconsistent - except for the fact the messages that are not delivered are lost without trace.

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Gmail is, as well as being, it seems, totally unwilling to address the problems their 'policies' are causing.

[#15]

My experience doesn't fit with your NDR theory either, Townman - and neither can I see any sort of pattern suggesting five days is a significant period of time. SInce this problem arose, I've sent a handful of emails most days to a variety of Gmail addresses. I've only ever had one NDR. The large majority of my emails simply disappear for ever. The rest - perhaps 20% at a guess - are delivered late at varying intervals. As far as I can tell, behaviours are just random.