Very occasionally an email fails to arrive in my talktalk inbox

[Roy_Harrison]

Very occasionally an email fails to arrive in my talktalk inbox. In the past I have had instances where people send to both my gmail and talktalk accounts to demonstrate that the talktalk inbox consistently fails to receive the email. This is a long-term issue and is extremely rare. About 8 months ago I did spend a long time on a chat with a talktalk technical help person who suggested that there was no way this should happen, but it does. I am suggesting that talktalk should look at their email architecture as there must be a flaw in there in this respect. I am sorry I can't be more specific but if no-one points this out, it certainly won't change. The latest email was to send me tickets to an event from the box office company Spektrix. In discussions with the manager of the venue for the event concerned, she stated: "Oh I have heard about this before with talktalk and Spektrix (our ticketing system).".  I don't regard talktalk email as totally reliable, but I have so many aspects of my online life associated with this email address that I am loath to try to change at the moment, but I do have to spend time chasing and checking when I shouldn't have to. I have a supsicion that some attachments can provoke the issue, but this is speculation.

I hope talktalk can do something about this one day!

[Roy_Harrison]

That's fantastic - I don't understand why so many emails were perceived as arriving from that domain, but I won't dwell on that! Thank you and your colleagues for sticking with this issue and finding a resolution.

Considering the general issue, it would be good for the future if the intended recipient could be informed that incoming emails had been rejected by talktalk, perhaps with the email sender stated and the reason for the rejection provided, or the emails were allowed into the spam folder. Just not receiving emails is a frustrating customer experience.

Best wishes,

Roy

[Ady-TalkTalk]

Ok so here's the very rapid reply from my colleagues who manage the filters. I've abbreviated it. 

The mail from the sending IP was coming thick and fast and looked like spam levels of mail. They reduced its level of acceptance to protect our domain. As we've had them look into it they've now modified the level and you should see the mails coming through now. 

Ady

[Roy_Harrison]

Thank you, that's great. Posting 12 above also has a very specific clue that may help in that it has a time of a rejected email and the reason for the rejection of the email:

"13th September at 21:44 and we got a failure message back with the following error:

5.2.0 pD8LsXLqGjyPXpD9psddQP Content rejected (TT992)"

So here an email was rejected with an apparent error code of TT992, but as far as we know there was nothing wrong with that email so perhaps this decision to reject it is too sensitive. If your team could look at this, it may help a lot.

Best wishes,

Roy

[Ady-TalkTalk]

Hi Roy, I've asked the team to check on the new mail domain and for mails containing attachments. Let's see what they get on this one. 

Ady

[Roy_Harrison]

@Gliwmaeden2Regarding the subject of this issue, when I opened it, it wasn't clear to me that the loss of emails was always due to an attachment (I had only two (now deleted) examples from many months ago prior to Stapleford Granary), so I didn't want to narrow to that without the evidence.

As for your other points, I disagree, but let's not waste more space here.

I hope that the very valuable information from Spektrix that I relayed in message 12 above will be helpful to talktalk.

Best wishes,

Roy

[Gliwmaeden2]

The trouble with focusing on that particular sender is that staff will have been chasing up the wrong issue for you, @Roy_Harrison.

There are instances where certain emails don't arrive from certain senders, eg Sainsbury's confirmation of orders etc. When it's consistently that company, they can get to the bottom of it. 

Staff will have followed up your case with that sort of issue in mind, but as you do regularly receive the emails from Stapleford Granary, they won't be able to track the "fault".

Better to have given them the specific subject heading of "not receiving some emails with important attachments ", and actually find more similar examples with other companies. 

That would help them on the right track.

[Roy_Harrison]

@Gliwmaeden2to be clearer, I am hoping that this specific example of the loss of Stapleford Granary tickets is illustrative of the wider problem of the occasional loss of emails from various sources. Hopefully if talktalk can understand why Stapleford Granary tickets are lost, the solution to that will fix the more general problem. That was behind my hope that a successful result here will benefit all talktalk customers, not just the handful that are trying to receive tickets from Stapleford Granary, or even Spektrix.

If you know that your emails always get lost from a particular source (eg Stapleford Granary) you can work around it (ie use gmail) but when the talktalk system can lose an email from anyone seemingly randomly, it's just not acceptable.

Best wishes,

Roy

[Gliwmaeden2]

Yes! It should be more reliable. I am just taking the path of least resistance. 

[Roy_Harrison]

Thank you, @Gliwmaeden2 that's bound to work (it's just the ticket emails themselves that I lose). However the point I am trying to make is that talktalk should not lose the emails, so I am now closer in this thread to trying to get talktalk to fix their broken system. That will benefit talktalk and all of their customers if this discussion has a successful result.

Best wishes,

Roy

[Gliwmaeden2]

@Roy_Harrison, I get emails from Stapleford Granary sent to my Gmail account. The last one was general info on 12th September. 

Did you receive that?

Or is it just the ticket details ones that go missing?

I get any tickets sent to the Gmail address.

Might be safer to change your email address for such sites?

[Roy_Harrison]

I have communicated with Spektrix today and they have come back with some very interesting information. Here is the key text from their reply:

In terms of your email, I can see as you have said that the confirmation emails did arrive in your inbox at the time specified. The E-ticket email was attempted to send on the 13th September at 21:44 and we got a failure message back with the following error:
 
5.2.0 pD8LsXLqGjyPXpD9psddQP Content rejected (TT992)
 
These error messages are different for each email domain, so I don't know exactly what this means, but it sounds like it is being blocked by TalkTalk, perhaps because there is a PDF attachment in the email (that is the primary difference between that email, and the confirmation email that is being sent successfully). I did a bit of unscientific Googling and that also seems to correspond to the attachment being an issue at the TalkTalk end. Looking at their online forums, it seems to be a fairly common issue for them.
 
The emails are being sent from the domain ace@boxoffice.staplefordgranary.org.uk - this may be why TalkTalk are saying they can't see anything from Spektrix as we technically aren't sending the email, we're just providing the infrastructure & service for Stapleford Granary to do this themselves. Hopefully if you relay this information back to TalkTalk along with the error message above, they can advise further on why this is being blocked on their side and hopefully resolve it for you.
 

I hope this helps you get a bit closer to the issue - the ball is back in talktalk's court.

Best wishes,

Roy

[Roy_Harrison]

Thank you. Given that, on this occasion it may be the other end that is to blame, ie Spektrix. Perhaps it's something as simple as Spektrix regarding "name.net" email address formats as invalid. I will try to find time to contact Spektrix and see what happens.

Best wishes,

Roy

[Ady-TalkTalk]

Once its received at our servers its logged and would show. Even if its rejected or deferred. 

Ady

[Roy_Harrison]

Thank you. So we know that Spektrix should have tried to send two emails to me, if no-one else, and they weren't logged as received in your system. So, somewhere between Spektrix intending to send the emails and your system's logging point, the emails failed. So, I guess the final question for your side of this communication link is to ask if there is any way an inbound email could be lost by the software before it was logged?

Best wishes,

Roy

[Ady-TalkTalk]

I've had a colleague check this too and they've come back to tell me that we've received nothing from Spektrix in the last 30 days. 

Ady

[Roy_Harrison]

Oops - I'm sorry but I forgot that the Spectrix failure repeated on the 18th September after 23:00 or perhaps into the 19th, depending on the delay between the confirmation email about the purchase (email not from Spectrix) and the sending of the tickets themselves from Spectrix.

[Roy_Harrison]

Oh by the way, the login page for this system doesn't work in the Firefox browser 😞 .

[Roy_Harrison]

Hello Ady, thank you for looking at this. I don't know what your scan has been looking for, but my suspicion is that when this problem occurs, it is perhaps a bug in the software and the email is just dropped with no further trace. However, I have no idea how the software behind the email system is structured. But, if I am correct, there may be no trace in any logs. The Spectrix issue for me would have happened late on the 13th September or the following day, which is beyond your 7 day scan, I suspect. That is the latest I can offer. As far as I know, I haven't lost an email in this way since early this year. It is very rare, but obviously very annoying when it happens.

I would be keen for those who know about these things to examine the software behind the email system and look for any ways emails could be lost without trace.

[Ady-TalkTalk]

Hi georgep3, please start a new topic and include the most recent domain that failed. 

Ady

[Ady-TalkTalk]

Hi Roy_Harrison, do you have any more recent examples. I've just checked on a 7 day scan for Spektrix and nothing is showing as rejected or deferred. 

Ady