Missing emails (again) - blueyonder.co.uk address

[3_g]

I only post here when there are issues with the VM mail services - and there have been no issues for the past couple of years!

I have noticed the number of email I receive has decreased.  It was a daily digest email from Finextra that first brought this to my attention, this digest has not been received for about 10 days now.

I use my own domain which has forwarding onto my blueyonder.co.uk email address.

No changes had been made to the domain forwarding before I noticed emails were missing - not delivered to my VM inbox or to the spam folder.  My mail clients are not set up to filter spam mails.

I have logged into Virgin webmail and there is no auto forward set up on the BY address, and only one domain on the blacklist, which I added years ago.

I have now made a change to the domain forwarding, this has proven that about 50% of the emails are not being delivered to my blueyonder.co.uk address.

The sender is not getting a bounce back, so there is nothing obvious that can be changed at the VM end, and I have left sufficient time for redelivery if there was a TTL issue. It’s a bit random which emails are not delivered.  Yesterday 2 easyJet emails were sent to me to check in for 2 separate flights.  Both were delivered to the temporary forwarding location, but only one was delivered to my normal BY forward. I expect (but have not checked) that emails like this are using DMARC and therefore should not be treated as spam.

In the past the email issues have occurred due to more harsh spam rules being applied by VM, which were then resolved through feedback from me and other customers, and I suspect this is happening again.

I see little value in calling the help desk unless they can get me through to 3rd level support or the mail team.

Is anyone else experiencing similar issues with emails.  Can one of the VM mods please PM me and I can provide info to the mail team for them to look into this.

Thanks

[David_Bn]

Thanks for reaching out to us @3_g and welcome back to our Community Forums, can you please confirm if this only happens when dealing with the blueyonder E-Mail domain, or do you forward onto alternative domains from the 3rd party E-Mail address also?

Can you please also confirm that E-Mails forwarded from the 3rd party domain to the blueyonder account haven't been distributed into any alternative folders within the inbox - such as 'archive'?

Thanks

David_Bn

[3_g]

Thanks @David_Bn for picking this up.

I've been keeping a close eye on emails for the past few days to establish how much of an issue this is, and if there are any themes.

I estimate about 1/3 of emails are not being received at my blueyonder.co.uk address, compared to the temporary address they are also being forwarded to.

The domain that I am forwarding from is only used for personal email and only for me, i.e. no other users.  I already had in use some specific email addresses at my domain which would forward to 2 addresses, this for contingency purposes where I wanted to be sure that these were definitely received, and this has worked well for 10+ years.

The 3rd party email address does not have any further forwarding on it.

The emails from the 3rd party domain to my BY account do not have any rules or forwarding set on them, either within the VM mail settings (webmail) or on the mail clients used - so it is delivered and left exactly where the Blueyonder incoming mail server decides to put it i.e. inbox or junk.  These emails are not placed in an archive folder.

What I have found is sometimes emails from the same sender / same details are getting through and sometimes not.  For example after a gym session on Wednesday, a summary email was delivered to the 3rd party email, but not to BY.  The rule was to forward it from my 3rd party domain to both addresses.  The email the next evening (send around the same time, same sender, same subject, similar content) was delivered to BY this time (and to the 3rd party email address).  The initial email from a property manager was not delivered to me, but was received by my wife (also on a Blueyonder.co.uk address).  Subsequent emails (still to the domain name, forwarded to both my BY and temporary forwarding address) are all received ok!

Clearly if there was a bounce we could get the VM mail team to use the errors to investigate, however in the absence of a bounce and with intermittent delivery it makes it a lot more difficult, but with around a third of emails not being delivered, it is frustrating to get such a poor service from VM.

Please let me know what else to try.

Thanks

[John_GS]

Hi @3_g 

Thanks for coming back to us. 

So we can assist further, are these emails being delivered to your own domain email first (the non-VM email) but just not being auto-forwarded? 

Best wishes.

[3_g]

@John_GS the emails are sent to my domain name (held with a 3rd party, Internet.bs)

Email forwarding is set up on that domain name with Internet.bs

The domain catch all is configured to forward emails to my 20+ year old BY address.

Some of those emails are not being delivered, nor are they being bounced. Even the forum notification emails are not being delivered to BY.

I have temporarily amended the catch-all forwarding so it is sent to BY and another (non VM) address, this is how I know emails which should be delivered to BY are not!

Non-delivery on this scale is new, having happened for about 2 weeks now. I expect it is a VM server mail config / anti-spam setting that is the cause, and I can send details to one of the team so they can refine the server rules, as 30% of genuine emails not being delivered is not good service, unless my bill is also being reduced by 30%

[3_g]

June 2021 was the last time I was aware of significant mail non-delivery issues. This was resolved with my input.

Aug/Sep 2015, Aug 2016 and Jan 2020 had mail delivery/delay issues.

The issue this time is definitely VM server side!

[Martin_N]

Thank you for that information. If you have the emails go straight to the BY email and not through forwarding do you still have an issue with the receiving the emails?

^Martin

[3_g]

Thanks @Martin_N 

Sorry, I don't follow.

The emails are sent to my domain name.
Are you suggesting I change the email address on a few of the different places through to my BY address, so they get sent there directly?  How would I then know if they are sent but not delivered?  This would only work where there are regular emails i.e. the daily email digests Mon to Fri for Finextra. I don't use the direct Blueyonder address....

Today is a particularly bad day for emails on the old Blueyonder.....

The temporary forwarding goes to a Gmail address (a Google Workspace managed account that I have). So far today:

• my Gmail spam box has received 8 emails in it, of these 7 were also delivered to my Blueyonder address, and of those seven, 3 were delivered to spam (DMARC=quarantine or Precedence: junk)
• my Gmail inbox has received 16 emails in it, of these 5 were also delivered to my Blueyonder address.
• What that means is Virgin Media / Blueyonder has therefore not delivered 50% of the emails I was sent today.  Not great.

Given I have not changed anything, that Internet.bs are still forwarding mails (no changes there), the problem is pointing to a VM issue.

I learned something new today, that VM no longer offer mail accounts. The accounts they still offer should still be reliable, should they not?

[Tom_W1]

Hi @3_g thanks for your reply here.

Unfortunately, there are no issues identified regarding this scenario over email, so there is no reason that this should be happening for you.

Have you tried resetting your passwords on the accounts to see if this helps resolve things?

Many thanks

[3_g]

@Tom_W1 intrigued to understand why you think how that will help….?