Troubleshooting email messages not being received

[rtech]

I manage the email service for my company. We have an enterprise level provider and have very few problems with them. Occasionally someone sends one of my users an email and it is not received. I understand that this sometimes just happens and if it's very random it would be very difficult to find a cause.

I have one person that seems to experience this more than any of the others, and it is getting more frequent. Someone will tell her they sent an email and she did not receive it. It is not marked as junk and there was no bounce-back message to the sender. Usually she gets all messages on her computer (using Outlook), her iPad and her iPhone. These missed messages are not received on any of the devices so I can't blame one device or program. She gets other emails from the same person so I can't blame the sender's provider. These missed messages come from different customers so, again, I can't blame the sender's provider. Our own service provider has tested her account and sees no problems.

Where do I go from here? Change providers? Can some providers guarantee all legitimate messages are received? Is this inherent with all providers? We are using POP accounts. Would IMAP be better?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[EQ Admin]

Hello,

With some troubleshooting it shouldn't be too hard to figure out the problem. You probably don't have access to the mail logs for your incoming mail servers and spam filtering service? Does the sender have access to their outgoing mail logs? How many MX records do you have? Can the sender try a manual telnet to port 25 to each of your MX servers and see if one or more of them are rejecting the email for reputation to RBL reasons. What are the IP addresses of the senders outgoing mail servers? Checking them against RBL's your provider might be using could help too. Has your mail provider be willing to look into the issue and check any of the above?

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