Important emails not getting to me sender gets Your message hasn't been delivered yet

[KelandDave]

At present we are waiting on regular emails from someone who has previously been emailing us with no problems or delays where sometimes they send an email with a PDF and sometimes it is just an email.

Recently though their emails are being delivered around 12hours later than when they send them.  I know that the delay is not their end as I use Outlook 365 loaded to my PC and have also checked TalkTalk webmail and the emails are not coming into our email address on either.

Yet when they eventually do arrive I can see the time that they sent them is around 12 hours earlier than when they were received.

The sender gets a message into their Minecast Services saying
Your message hasn't been delivered yet.
The message you sent to .......@tiscali.co.uk hsn't been delivered due to:
Recipients server unavailable or busy.


We'll let you know if we can't deliver it successfully
Further information
4.2.1 Connection deferred - OXSEU001_133 -
https://postmaster-oxseu.vadesecure.com/inbound_error_codes/#_133

I have added the sender to our safe senders list and also added them to our contacts and yet we are still not getting their emails and the one we are waiting on today is extremely urgent.

We as a family have also suffered a bereavement of a close family member today so expect to need to be sending and receiving email promptly for some weeks to come so need this resolved as quickly as possible.

I tried to use online chat but the chat icon is not showing anywhere on any of the pages that I go into even on your help and support page.  Neither does it come up when I go into my account or even when I go into any of the sections under https://help-centre.talktalk.co.uk/  I have tried going to https://support.talktalk.co.uk/email-service-status and no chat comes up from that page either.

To make matters even worse because of the delays in emails being received emails sent in the daytime are coming through to us in the early hours of the morning and wake us up.  Due to family situations we can't turn of the sound in case we are genuinely needed during the night.

We need you to fix why emails are being delayed in being sent to us, it seemed to mainly be emails coming into just one of our email address so I gave the sender 2 other @Tiscali.co.uk email addresses that we have and that hasn't helped the emails from this person arrive late into those 2 email boxes as well. 

From the message in Minecast it seems that your tiscali servers are delaying sending messages from this sender to us and there is no reason we can see for this they are a genuine business providing very important help to people.  I have checked with them and they don't have issues with other clients that they are emailing the same type of email and document to, but they didn't recall having to send to anyone else with an @tisclai.co.uk email address

Can someone help urgently as we really need the documents that they were sending today.

Update I have just tried from from your Problems with TalkTalk Mail > what if I am unable to receive messages? section doing a test mail and I get the below back.  What is going on this is a genuine email address that we have been using for a number of years.

Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender

This is the mail system at host mx-out.tt.xion.oxcs.net.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the attached returned message.

                   The mail system

<test-mail@talktalk.net>: host mx002.tt.xion.oxcs.net[51.89.43.215] said: 550

    5.5.1 Recipient rejected - OXSEU012_403 -

    https://postmaster-oxseu.vadesecure.com/inbound_error_codes/#_403 (in reply

    to RCPT TO command)

[fr8ys]

@KelandDave thank you. I only suggested checking webmail as a number of people using third party programs often miss this step in checking whether emails are being received there.

Good luck with your complaint and hope TalkTalk are able to resolve for you.

[KelandDave]

@fr8ys   Thank you for your reply but the problem does not seem to be with either my Outlook or with my Webmail as the mail does get received eventually just around 8 to 21 hours late and only mail from this one sender is the issue.

I have downloaded the headers from that persons emails and feed them into https://mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders.aspx and then pasted the results into ChatGPT and asked it to double check me and confirm where the delay is.  Like I had seen it confirmed 

His setup (which is already good)

From your headers:

• SPF = PASS ✔
• DKIM = PASS ✔
• DMARC = PASS ✔
• Mimecast sending system ✔

It confirm that the hold up was at your filtering before even getting to any of our inboxes that we have asked the person to send to which are all tiscali.co.uk inboxes.  They confirm that it is your VadeSecure that is delaying the messages coming through once the emails get through VadeSecure they move on swiftly again as they do from the point the sender send to message until it reaches VadeSecure.  The only delay shown from the whole header is when the emails from this sender are with VadeSecure.

So it appears that the sender has been greylisted and needs to be whitelisted.

So I have emailed a complaint about this to your HereToHelp and I am awaiting a response.

[Gliwmaeden2]

@KelandDave, there is sometimes a delay when you first open the "contact us" link before the Chat button shows up, but it is there:

 

For opening hours for phone support you need to scroll much further down the page - they are not the same as for Chat.

Phone support opens 9am, rather than 8am and closes at 7pm on weekdays, 6pm on Saturdays. It's not available for most purposes on Sundays. 

[fr8ys]

There does seem to be an incompatibility between Outlook and TalkTalk email accounts, and Outlook themselves are aware of this.

Sometimes deleting the account from Outlook closing the application then re-adding it works.

Have you tried logging onto Webmail to see if the emails are arriving quicker there. Given the sender's rejection email it may be not but worth looking.

Try this link. https://apps.talktalk.co.uk/myaccount/#/login

As @ferguson has said, there are no support staff on the forum any longer, so you will need to persist with chat or phoning.

[ferguson]

Chat is available, it may be your browser or ad blockers that are preventing the Chat now button from showing. Alternatively, try logging into My Account and see if it is available from there.

[KelandDave]

Hi Ferguson

I already tried using that https://help-centre.talktalk.co.uk/Billing_and_Payments/Something_else/How_to_contact_TalkTalk_Broad... link and it takes you to the How to contact TalkTalk Broadband page and once on that page I went to the Via Live Chat section where it has the live chat opening times but no link to chat online.  I spent about an hour going around all your different support webpages trying to bring up the Live Chat pop-up that used to come up so you could type a message to an agent and nowhere did that Live Chat come up.

Eventually I called the 0345 172 0088 number in desperation to get this resolved as we are waiting on emails into my husbands email address from this particular person a medical person that only since 13/04/26 are taking up to 12hours to arrive.  I can see that is genuine as I can see the time they sent the email and the time it arrived in my husbands inbox with the way I have my Outlook screen split up with a messages pane and a preview pane so I can see the date and time in the messages pane list and also in the actual email in the preview.  I spent a long time with the person on the support call who kept questioning me on if the person had sent the email and I told them over and over again that the person is sending the emails when they tell me that they are that I can see this when the email actually arrives but they are just being delaying in being passed through your tiscali server by up to 12 hours.  I confirmed over and over that there was no problem with receiving emails from them until 13/04/26 so something must have happened between then and how as all emails from them are now delayed., but it seems only from them.  I explained that I have given that person a medical person so someone I can trust 2 of my other tiscali emails address to include and still the emails are delayed in being sent to any of our email addresses so it must be a delay in the tiscali servers letting their emails through.  I confirmed that by reading out to the support person the email the person sending the email gets back from Minecast when they send us an email which says "Recipient server unavailable or busy" so it is telling them that the tiscali server is unavailable or busy no that there is an issue with our email address.  

Yet your support person insisted that I go into our email address and add an auto forward to forward emails from our email address to our same email address.  I kept stressing that I felt sure that the hold up was at the tiscali server and not with our email address as I had now given them 3 tiscali email addresses to include when they sent any emails which they have been doing and the email eventually comes through to all 3 tiscali email addresses, but severely delayed up to 12 hours. I said that having double checked they come through to those 3 email address but at different times, so its not like the same email is even being delivered at the same time to all 3 email addresses.

The support person then asked me to look for an email from them which came through wanting me to check my wifi connection I explained I also work in IT and have been on VPN all day with no drop in connection so knew I had no issue with my broadband.  They still wanted me to check and I explained that I am not on WIFI and I am hardwired on the PC that I am using to check both on webmail and on Outlook which they took offense to rather than seeing that as helpful information.  What is the point of me checking WIFI when I am not using it to check my inbox.  The only thing we have WIFI connected for is our mobile phones are connected and they have been fine all day too.  I explained that I can't see why we are checking connections when he sent test emails I sent test emails and I have had other emails from other people and companies with no issues it is only this person that you seem to be blocking from sending immediate emails you seem to have a delay on letting them through.  I have asked that person a medical person sending reports to lots of people if they have any delays with any of their other clients and they don't just us and I let your support person know that.

So your support person said that they had then taken off all firewalls on that account, which isn't my main account it is an email address under that main account.  Again I stressed shouldn't they be checking that the persons email address that I gave them is an allowed email on your tiscali servers and they said maybe I had something but that I had to wait and see if taking the firewall of worked which they then told me takes 12 hours to go through.  I said that is the same length of time that the delay is anyway to which just sighed and said they were trying to help and I would have to wait and see if taking the firewall of worked.  I did send and receive a number of times and told them that the email still wasn't coming through that had been sent this afternoon and told nothing more could be done.

I asked to be escalated to someone higher and was told I had to wait nobody was there now as it was 7.02pm and that everyone went at 7.00pm but on that link you sent it said that weekdays support are there until 9.00pm.

I appreciate that you cannot help now through the community, but since you don't have chat live now either only this support number that can't seem to help me get the email address that I gave them whitelisted can you please escalate this to your support that can deal with whitelisting and email address.  If they can then contact me directly via either email or a phone call then I can give them the email address to whitelist.  I have done a number of checks and everything indicates that you have greylisted this persons email address recently I believe around 13/04/26 as everything was fine before that date.

[ferguson]

I am so sorry to hear of your loss. Unfortunately, TalkTalk staff no longer offer support on the community, you will need to contact them directly, details in the link at the end of my post.

In the meantime, could you maybe set up an alternative service with the likes of Gmail to which you can redirect your current addresses?