Forum Discussion

davey1956's avatar
davey1956
Joining in
6 days ago

Precenence: Junk

I'm having a real big problem receiving temporary pass codes from Virgin Money. They have a timeout of 5 minutes however they are taking 6-10 minutes to appear in my email. 

When they do eventually arrive, despite having a rule set up to put the messages into my in-box, and having the source email address in my address book, they always go into the spam.

When I look at the source, the code looks like this:

Return-Path: <no-reply@mail.uk.investmentsandpensions.virginmoney.com>
Delivered-To: ################@ntlworld.com
Received: from dcdir8-prd-nl1-vmo.nl1.unified.services ([100.107.82.48])
by dcbe36-prd-nl1-vmo.nl1.unified.services with LMTP
id qwsQJd8uvWjV1AsAJrZugA:T3749:P1
(envelope-from <no-reply@mail.uk.investmentsandpensions.virginmoney.com>)
for <################@ntlworld.com>; Sun, 07 Sep 2025 18:08:54 +0200
Received: from smtpclienthelo ([100.107.82.48])
by dcdir8-prd-nl1-vmo.nl1.unified.services with LMTP
id qwsQJd8uvWjV1AsAJrZugA:T3749
(envelope-from <no-reply@mail.uk.investmentsandpensions.virginmoney.com>)
for <############@ntlworld.com>; Sun, 07 Sep 2025 18:08:54 +0200
Authentication-Results: edge.unified.services;
 spf=pass (185.65.128.197;mail.uk.investmentsandpensions.virginmoney.com);
 dkim=pass header.d=mail.uk.investmentsandpensions.virginmoney.com;
 dmarc=pass header.from=mail.uk.investmentsandpensions.virginmoney.com (p=none sp=none dis=pass)
Precedence: junk

 

The last line "precedence: junk" is clearly spurious and I believe this may play a part in the delays in the messages coming through to me. Can anyone tell me why this is happening and more importantly, how can this be fixed?? 

 

14 Replies

    • coenoby's avatar
      coenoby
      Very Insightful Person
      20 hours ago

      davey1956​ 

      I only use VM email for notifications from this forum. Out of interest I have just taken a look at the headers for an email from the forum this morning. The delay is much the same as you are seeing with the Virgin Money emails.

       

       

       

      So based on that example it does seem that VM is not really taking any longer to deal with the Virgin Money emails than it does with any other incoming emails. 

      Personally I think setting a time limit of 5 minutes is a bit too restrictive for email verifications. For one thing, if you are using an email client or app to manage your emails there will inevitable be an additional delay as a result of the app's IMAP protocol picking up your email from your VM account.

      I think 10 minutes is a more realistic limit.

      Coenoby

      • Graham_A's avatar
        Graham_A
        Very Insightful Person
        20 hours ago

        coenoby​ For comparison here is an extract from the headers of an email sent from an individual's bt email address to my VM email address earlier today.  No delays showing at all.

         

  • coenoby's avatar
    coenoby
    Very Insightful Person
    2 days ago

    davey1956​ "The mystery remains why there is a significant lag in the ntlworld email system"

    In fact you can normally see exactly where the delay is from looking at the first few lines of the email headers/source.

    However the details you posted do not appear to show any delay. For future reference, this Tool is handy to decipher an email header/source. https://mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders.aspx

    Just copy and paste the full header into the box and click "Analyse Header".

    The results start with "Relay Information" which shows where the message has been delayed as it is passed from server to server. Here's one I did earlier just to show you what information is normally displayed. (When I run yours through the tool the relay section comes up with no information.)

     

     

     

     

    It might be worth you running the full unredacted version of those headers through the tool in case something got lost when you redacted your full email address to post it on the forum.

    " the emails still go to the spam folder, even with all filtering turned off"

    I have never heard of cases where VM still put emails into the spam folder even when the spam filter is turned off. That certainly does suggest that VM have found something fundamental they think is suspicious with those Virgin Money emails. The headers show that the SPF, DKIM and DMARC all check out ok so it's strange.

    "the Gmail account I've subsequently used has no lag"

    I'm sorry to say but the answer is to stick with Gmail and look to move over to using that instead of VM email.   VM stopped issuing new email accounts over 3 years ago and they are now actively closing down VM email accounts that are no longer linked to a live VM broadband account. 

    That means the number of active VM email accounts is on a steady downward path and the future of the VM email service is unclear.

    Coenoby

    • davey1956's avatar
      davey1956
      Joining in
      2 days ago

      This shows a 5 minute delay at Hop 3.

      Also, I found this. 

       

      • coenoby's avatar
        coenoby
        Very Insightful Person
        2 days ago

        davey1956​ 

        Thanks for coming back with that. I'm sorry I cannot read the relay information, I'm guessing the delay is with VM?

        Your second image does confirm that VM are flagging this email as spam as I suspected and I assume the text against X-Spam-Reason reads "SMCH-ACTION=reject."

        The "CNFS-analysis" refers to the providers of VM's spam filter platform.  The codes in the right hand side of the box are probably the information needed for VM's (or the spam filter's ) techical staff to identify the exact reason that the email has been flagged as spam.

        These spam / not spam  issues arise at various time with pretty much every email provider. At the moment there are threads on this forum where VM customers with old Blueyonder.co.uk email addresses are complaining that Gmail is blocking all emails from Blueyonder addresses. There is no explanation why Gmail is blocking these emails and to make matters worse Gmail are not even sending out non delivery messages. 

        At least VM are simply flagging Virgin Money emails as spam rather than blocking them completely.

        By the way, I am sure that you are aware Virgin Money is completely unconnected with Virgin Media. Virgin Money is now owned by Nationwide and Virgin Media 02 is part of  Liberty Global the US based international communications giant.

        Coenoby

  • coenoby's avatar
    coenoby
    Very Insightful Person
    3 days ago

    davey1956​ "

    The last line "precedence: junk" is clearly spurious and I believe this may play a part in the delays in the messages coming through to me.

    Reading and interpreting email headers is a bit of a minefield.

    In fact the "Precedence:" email header is a header field that that is completed by the sending email service, so "investmentsandpensions.virginmoney.com" rather than one that is added by Virgin Media as the receiving service. 

     It does not indicate that VM think those emails are spam. If VM decide an email is spam they usually put a header entry of  "X-Spam: yes" in their headers.

     The most common use of the "Precedence" header  was "Precedence: Bulk" or "Precedence: List"  as a way that the sending email service could flag an email as being part of a bulk mailing list. It was intended to tell the receiving system that there was no need to send out auto-responses such as Out of office replies.  However I don't think it's used much now.

    I'm not sure why Virgin Money would put "Precedence: Junk" in their outgoing email headers but VM are obviously taking them at their word!

    Here's a bit of background about all this  https://www.sendforensics.com/knowledgebase/kba/?id=299 

    "I have switched off all spam filtering because it was so unpredictable"

    Turning off the VM spam filter in your VM webmail account will ensure that new emails which previously would have gone in to your VM  spam folder will now go into your inbox but it will not speed up the delivery of the emails from Virgin Money.  So I'm afraid it will not solve the problem you are seeing with these email being delayed.

    Coeonby

    • davey1956's avatar
      davey1956
      Joining in
      3 days ago

      Thanks. This is very interesting. I'll pass it on to Virgin Money. The mystery remains why there is a significant lag in the ntlworld email system (and why the emails still go to the spam folder, even with all filtering turned off) while the Gmail account I've subsequently used has no lag and the messages go to inbox, not the spam folder. 

  • 45RPM's avatar
    45RPM
    On our wavelength
    3 days ago

    I have a number of emails with VM; I have switched off all spam filtering because it was so unpredictable

  • Vikki_M's avatar
    Vikki_M
    Icon for Forum Team rankForum Team
    5 days ago

    Hi davey1956,

    We're very sorry, however this forum is for Virgin Media services only.

    We're unable to assist with any Virgin Money concerns.

    You would have to reach out to Virgin Money directly please.

    We're sorry we can't be of more help. 

    • davey1956's avatar
      davey1956
      Joining in
      5 days ago

      Thank you. I am not asking for help with the Virgin Money side of things. Rather, I am trying to understand why your email system labels the emails as junk and takes an over-long time to deliver them. By creating a Gmail account and requesting the Virgin Money codes be sent to that address, I have found the problem does indeed lie with the ntlworld account. Codes arrive within 60 seconds to the Gmail account compared to sometimes 10 minutes to the ntlworld account. 

      • Matthew_ML's avatar
        Matthew_ML
        Icon for Forum Team rankForum Team
        3 days ago

        If you click the email from this sender and click not junk any future emails won't be marked as junk. 

        It could be the way they are worded and our server is thinking this is spam that's all.