Lost e-mail question

[Dodi Schultz]

Here's a puzzler to which I hope some technical guru here might have an answer, or at least a guess. It's about e-mail between me and one other individual, whom I'll call Grace. Actually, that's her name.

Grace's main ISP is Verizon; she also has an AOL address. All mail I send to her AOL address gets there okay. But messages I send to her Verizon address vanish into thin air.

They do NOT bounce back to me. Nor do I get any kind of "undeliverable" notice.

Had Verizon suddenly decided to reject all messages from me, or from CompuServe? Nope. To check that out, I sent test messages to a bunch of other people on Verizon; all confirmed receipt.

Another Verizon user suggested that Grace should have a look at a location called dslstart.verizon.net, where e-mail messages sit when they've reached the server but haven't been sent to the user. She did so but found only brand-new messages--none of my missing missives.

How can messages simply vanish selectively without a trace or at least sending word on where they're being held for ransom? Anybody have a theory?

--DS

[sidney]

How can messages simply vanish selectively without a trace or at least sending word on where they're being held for ransom?

Verizon has a poor track record (http://techdirt.com/articles/20050511/2223240.shtml) on that, although that link is about a class action suit that they settled three years ago.

But here is evidence (http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=53455) that they are still messing up. That one doesn't exactly match what you are experiencing with Grace, in that it doesn't seem to be an example of Verizon blocking the domian you are using to all subscribers, but it does show that Verizon can't be trusted to deliver mail and their tech support people can't be relied on to help with such problems.

That said, there is something to try. Grace can fill out the form at
http://www2.verizon.net/micro/whitelist/request_form.asp?id=member
and request that your email address be whitelisted. She needs to fill out the form, because it is for Verizon Online members only. There's a space to fill in your email address and the outgoing mail server that you use. You'll have to tell her what to enter for the outgoing mail server address based on how your email program is configured. If you don't know what it is, I can tell from the headers if you send me an email the same way you send one to Grace.

-- sidney

[Dodi Schultz]

Thanks, Sidney! I'll follow through on your suggestions, although I'm not sure how "whitelisting" will help, since Verizon hasn't "blacklisted" me. It's only my messages to Grace that fail to arrive; my messages to other Verizon addresses arrive safe and sound.

--DS

[Dan in Saint Louis]

It's only my messages to Grace that fail to arrive; my messages to other Verizon addresses arrive safe and sound.
Just in case -- have you TRIPLE-checked that the address on your outgoing mail is absolutely perfect?

Don't trust the "Reply to:" line in the message headers -- that seems to be un-tested by most email servers.

[Dodi Schultz]

Yes, Dan, I HAVE checked and double-checked that I've been using the right address. (That was, of course, Grace's first thought when we discovered that this was happening.) It is, in fact, the same address I'd always used for Grace; and I don't usually do an automatic [R]eply but pick up the address from my TAPCIS userid ("address book") list.

In addition: If I HAD been using an incorrect address, I believe the messages would have been bounced back as undeliverable.

--DS