Emails not being sent and Non deliverable messages received

[moramutd]

Hi,

I stopped being a TalkTalk Broadband/Landline customer recently but pay £5pm to retain 4 TalkTalk email address under TalkTalk Mail plus. Whilst I still receive emails to these Accounts, I am now unable to send emails from either Outlook or Thunderbird on my PC or direct from my TalkTalk webmail Accounts. All of the Outlook etc. email settings e.g. passwords etc. are accurate with the webmail Account server settings. When I send an email, I either receive the error message “The server rejected one of the recipients addresses” or “too many recipients”. I have also had “Server Error “453 4.1.1 Dndxra6jB25FY Too Many Recipients (TT502)”. But I previously regularly sent emails to 20 plus addresses without a problem!

I suspect the problem is entirely due to an issue with my email Accounts and the TalkTalk mail server. I tried contacting TalkTalk via Chat but was left waiting to consult a “techy” for almost an hour so tried to speak with someone. When I eventually got through, I was simply told this is a problem affecting many users which should be resolved this evening. I know other TalkTalk customers who are not experiencing the same problem.

I urgently require to send emails to single and multiple addresses and need this problem to be fixed soonest.

Any ideas how this can be resolved would be welcomed

[Ady-TalkTalk]

It's nothing to do with my investigations. Please add the single address you were trying to send to in priviate notes on your community profile.

Ady

[moramutd]

Hi Ady,

Apologies for adding to the problem. I have NOT been sending emails from any of my TalkTalk addresses since Sunday in an attempt to completely clear the TT 501 and 502 errors but now I am not receiving emails to my TalkTalk email addresses either via Outlook or on Webmail.  Could this be down to something done by the Network team and or the Email supplier, Open Xchange as a consequence of you raising the "ticket"? 

This is all rather frustrating so anything that you can do to resolve this would be appreciated.

Regards,

moramutd

[moramutd]

Hi Ady,

Thanks,  All feedback much appreciated  including the "ticket" investigation for the sending error.

Cheers,

Moramutd

[Ady-TalkTalk]

Hi Moramutd, I'm waiting for feedback from the email team as to why you might be getting blocked with TT605. I'll let you know as soon as I hear back.

Ady

[moramutd]

Hi Ady,

Thanks for the information which is noted. As an aside, I also received a message which included the error code TT605 when attempting to send an email from Webmail. I believe this code relates to  sending to too many addresses but, at the time, I was only sending to one address. 

Will I get any feedback following you raised "ticket" investigation for the sending error?

Many thanks.

Moramutd

[Ady-TalkTalk]

The sending numbers are based on rolling figures so in 60 minutes if you send x it'll get blocked you'd then have to wait a full 60 minutes to ensure you're in a new hour and the same goes for the 24 hours block. It's not Sunday its a rolling 24 hours. Every CC or BCC counts as 1 mail.  I hope that helps.

Ady

[moramutd]

Hi Ady,

Thanks, Hope you are feeling better.

As I understand the situation the 501 and 502 errors are generated when a user exceeds the permitted number of emails (which I believe is a large number) being sent in an hour or 24 hour period. I certainly do not send hundreds of emails. Please raise the ticket so the sending error can be investigated. Thank you, Moramutd

[Ady-TalkTalk]

Just to be clear I can't raise a ticket for the volume of mail issues. I will be able to raise a ticket for the sending error. The 501 and 502 errors are automatic and legitimate. 

Ady

[moramutd]

Thanks again Gondola,

Your information, advice and assistance is much appreciated.

I will await further communication from Ady.

Regards.

moramutd

[Gondola]

Mail sending limits are very similar to Gmail's standard accounts under normal sending conditions but flexed to lower limits if triggered by the spam protection processes. So the issue is to find out what may be causing the lower limit(s).  I still think it's sending to an unavailable or a non-existent address in the group send.

If Ady thinks there's a fault or a condition needing investigating then rest assured a fault ticket will be raised and Ady will feed back any report(s) from the Network team or platform Email Admins.

It would definitely be worth holding off sending mail for at least 24 hours from the last send as this will ensure any rate limiting is cleared. Then you shouldn't see any issue with sending from TalkTalk to your own working Gmail account or vice-versa. 

[moramutd]

Hi Gondola,

Thanks again for prompt reply and information therein.

I had assumed that that the daily email sending limits was in the hundreds similar for example to iCloud or gmail. I may send a few daily and an occasional email to a group of about 35 recipients, but I certainly send no where near hundreds per day.

In terms of sending a test email, I did mean from my TalkTalk address to my rarely used personal gmail address. So as you said, that would be acceptable to prove whether the mail is sent or blocked. But those tests messages do get stopped but NOT necessarily every time. 

I will refrain from trying send any emails from my TalkTalk accounts for a couple of days to see if the problem is fully resolved but may I assume the "ticket" will still be raised tomorrow by Ady?

Thanks again for your help and feedback and sorry to be a pain.

[Gondola]

The limits are not defined simply because TalkTalk reserve the right to flex the limits if circumstances demand. Under normal circumstances the limits are very similar to any other residential email service i.e. several hundreds of recipient messages sent each day.

Suppose a mailbox was seen to be sending from an overseas location (including some overseas VPN host locations) where the spam sending risk was high, for example; the limits could go very low - as low as one email per hour or fewer than 10 emails per day.

Depends what you mean by Test mail. If you're talking about the email address suggested by TalkTalk as giving an automatic response i.e. test-mail@talktalk.net then be aware that the mailbox will respond no more than once per day to a request. It's not set to provide a continuous stream of responses to the same mailbox. No reason why you shouldn't send your own TalkTalk Mail messages to your own TalkTalk Mail mailbox and expect them all to be received in the Inbox and stay in the Inbox.

[moramutd]

Hi Gondola,

Thanks for your prompt reply. 

I understands the email sending limitations you explain but what are they? I cannot find anywhere where they are defined., but I'm confident  that I do not exceed them anyway. Also I understand that the error codes may arise due to sending to an incorrect mail address. But I'm confused as to why I cannot send a Test mail to the correct address of another of my own email addresses! I am also fairly confident that the group recipient email addresses that I send to are accurate as I have not had problems with them previously.

I hear what you say about the TT501 & TT502 limitations being lifted and full restoration after 24 hours but I would still like the "ticket" to be raised as Ady proposed and for the whole issue to be investigated fully by the Network team etc. I presume that I will be advised of the result of the investigation?

Thanks again.

[Gondola]

TT501 means exceeding the hourly sending rate and TT502 means exceeding the daily sending rate. Both are triggered by the spam protection processes and are temporary stops on sending for an hour and rate limiting for 24 hours respectively. Sending will be fully restored in 24 hours and partially restored in the run up to full restoration. So, yes if you try to resend to a group then that could still get tripped up by what the spam protection process has decided is reasonable in the circumstances so the group send could be stopped.

I've given the usual things that can trigger the spam protection process.

My instinct tells me that at least one email address that you're sending to is incorrect or is rejecting your messages. This in itself can cause the spam protection to set lower limits for hourly and or daily sending. So even though you're not sending to many recipients you're still being tripped up by the hourly and or daily sending at the temporarily imposed lower limits.

The first key step in troubleshooting is to identify and remove any 'wrong' recipient address. Then to wait 24 hours for the temporary limits to be cleared.

[moramutd]

Hi Gondola and Ady,

Thanks both for your feedback on my email sending problem. I look forward to the “ticket” being raised and hopefully the full resolution of the issue by the Network team etc.

Gondola, As well as TT502 I also receive the error message TT501 which I believe is also a mail limiting issue. But I’m not sure why such limitations have been imposed because do not send that many emails?

In response to your comments on the error messages, I am trying to send emails to UK recipients via Outlook and my TalkTalk email accounts and therefore via the TalkTalk server. Such messages have also failed when attempting to send via TalkTalk webmail. I therefore presume that the VPN is UK located. My IP is also UK registered. When attempting to send to a group of addresses the are all rejected.

Again, thanks both for your assistance. Hopefully this can be sorted soonest as it is causing some frustration!

[Gondola]

Yes, I too hope Ady is feeling much better. I can see he was online from home very early this Saturday morning. 

A "ticket" means reporting a fault by means of an internal fault ticket that goes to the Network team and or the Email supplier, Open Xchange.

Your mail sending has been subject to rate limiting which means imposing a temporary reduction in the number of mail messages that you can send and it's been triggered by the spam protection processes.

TT502 implies a temporary reduction in the amount of messages that can be sent each day. TT605 implies sending from an overseas network or via a VPN that's hosted overseas and not in the UK or using a public IP address that's registered as overseas rather than to a network in the UK.

You did also get a message about sending to an email address that's not accepting your emails. This could also trigger rate limiting via the spam protection processes.

If you wait 24 hours from the last successful send then your full sending allowance would normally be available. The key things then are:

• Don't send to addresses if the mail servers for those addresses reject your messages
• Don't send via any VPN that has an overseas host server as default
  UK hosted VPN's ought to be OK and you can normally select which host server is to be used
  If necessary switch off or bypass the VPN connection
• Check your public IP address is an UK registered IP address
  Some alternative networks have bought in non-UK registered addresses.

Let me know what you find in relation to VPN's and IP address.

[moramutd]

Hi Ady,

Thanks, Hope you are feeling better. What does "get a ticket raised" actually mean? 

I can confirm that the problem of not being able to send emails  from the talktalk addresses in Outlook continues so I would be grateful if this could be looked into further and resolved as a matter of urgency as the issue is becoming rather frustrating! Thank you. 

[Ady-TalkTalk]

I'll get a ticket raised for you on Monday when I'm back in the office. I had confirmed that your mailboxes were linked and your mailboxes all show working normally. A chronic headache left me unable to reply earlier. Please accept my apologies. 

Ady

[moramutd]

Hi Ady,

I provided the information that you requested and have just logged onto my TalkTalk Account and can see that all of the 4 emails must be linked to my Account as I can see them all listed. What can the problem be, I still think it must be something associated with the TalkTalk server is preventing me from sending emails from Outlook and TalkTalk webmail!

Sorry to be a pain!

[moramutd]

Hi Ady,

Details added on 1st page of provile. Thank you.

moramutd