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Problem receiving mail from one particular address

rixie
Tuning in

I am having a problem receiving mails from one particular address. 

I've checked my account settings in the Virgin Media email webpage and have no filter rules or blacklisted email addresses, and spam is set to save to a spam folder. 

I use Mac Mail to view emails on my desktop, and have this set up to manage a couple of email accounts, this Virgin Media email and two Gmail accounts. I have tried asking the sender to use one of the Gmail addresses, and this works, so I know that the universal settings within my Mac Mail setup are not blocking anything. 

It's important that I get this working, as it's work related, and it's also been fine since 2018, but just suddenly stopped about 2 weeks ago. The sender has confirmed that there doesn't appear to be a problem at their end and nobody else is complaining of any issue. 

Does anyone have any suggestions?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Zoie_P
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Hi Rixie, 

I am so sorry to hear you have been having issues with your email, have you reached out to our team regarding this was an IT ticket raised?

 

Zoie

See where this Helpful Answer was posted

10 REPLIES 10

coenoby
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

@rixie wrote:

Does anyone have any suggestions?


One thing I would do if this happened to me would be to send an email to that sender's email address and ask them to to reply to it then see if their reply comes through.. (By "Reply" I specifically mean using the Reply function in their email software rather than creating a new email to send back.)

Are these missing emails sent as part of of a bulk send or they they individual emails sent specifically to you. Organisations often use third party tools such as Mailchimp to handle the management of transactional emails or regular newsletters, updates etc. That software can sometimes have issues that are often not obvious to the individual sender but which prevent the emails getting through to the intended recipient.

Also, if it is appropriate could you post the domain name the sender is using? Not their full address just the part after the @ symbol.That might give some clues.

Finally, if you want me to be completely honest, if these emails are work related and important then I would politely suggest that you keep Gmail as your contact address for this sender. The VM email service is a very basic service really intended for light personal use. Gmail is more reliable, much more secure and better supported than VM email.

Hope that helps.

Coenoby

I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media.

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Thanks @Coenoby

It's an 'alerts' notification that comes through, so it's automated and I can't send to it - I've tried, and get a message that my mail was sent to an address that isn't monitored. It would be a bulk send, and the other recipients aren't having any problems. However, I've also tried getting a password reset email, which should be just to me, and this also doesn't work using my VM email.

I can continue to use my gmail, but it's a little annoying, as in certain circumstances, I have to remember which email I'm using, and change the default address that was originally registered and is used for other purposes.

The emails are coming from @directly.com, and have been working fine for nearly 4 years, but just stopped dead around 2 weeks ago. There was a sudden increase of emails at the time, which may or may not be related, and I assumed that perhaps Mac Mail had suddenly identified these as spam for some reason, but, as I said before, Mac Mail is receiving the emails to the Google account, so the problem is definitely somewhere with Virgin Media, but I'm at a loss as to where to look. 

 

 

coenoby
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

@rixie wrote:

I'm at a loss as to where to look. 


Thanks for coming back with all that information.

"It's an 'alerts' notification that comes through, so it's automated and I can't send to it"

That means the senders are probably using third party software which can fail VM's checks on incoming email that are designed to check that the email is actually coming from the email address in the "Senders" field,

"The emails are coming from @directly.com"

Part of those VM checks include a check on the sender's  spf record. See here for VM's overview of that if you're interested Email/Virgin-Media-SPF-Authentication. It's a bit out of date but hopefully it gives you an idea of what's going on in the background.

In fact the spf record for directly.com does have a issue. A quick SPF Record Lookup here https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx does show their SPF Record has a problem.

Spf record lookup.png

The consequences of that are explained here

Too many lookups.png

That could well be sufficient reason for VM to block emails coming from them but I cannot say definitely that's the reason you are not receiving them. However, if that was the case I would have expected the sender to receive a bounce message back from VM.

I know you have said  "The sender has confirmed that there doesn't appear to be a problem at their end and nobody else is complaining of any issue.". However, experience suggests that is the default reply you always get from the first responders in any organisation. You get fobbed off basically. The problem is often getting to talk to someone in the organisation who has the knowledge to give you a proper answer.

With regard to your comment "Mac Mail is receiving the emails to the Google account, so the problem is definitely somewhere with Virgin Media",

It may well be that VM are blocking the email but if they are, they doing it for a reason. See the comment in the red box at the bottom of the second image.

Each Email Service Provider sets their own rules on how they identify and deal with potentially suspicious emails. My experience with my own Gmail account is that Google operate a more relaxed policy with the issues regarding spf records  while VM seem to stick to the letter of the rules when it comes to blocking emails. On the other hand Gmail has excellent spam filters that are very responsive to new threats.  VM's spam filters seem better than they were but still not great. In my view choosing your email provider is the same as choosing any other product - it depends  what your priorities and needs are. However (in my personal opinion) if you  don't want to risk incoming emails being blocked then Gmail is your best bet.

You also say everything has "been working fine for nearly 4 years, but just stopped dead around 2 weeks ago"   so possibly Directly might have updated their spf record around that time or possibly VM made a change to the way they apply the rules.

As to what steps you can take, well if there are any filter rules at all set up in your webmail or Mac Mail you could try disabling them for a while to see if that allows the emails through. The reason I suggest that is that filter rules do sometimes have unintended and unexpected consequences)

You could also try going back to the sender and seeing if you can actually get to speak to someone who understands their email system. (Good luck there, but you might be lucky.) If VM are blocking their emails they should be getting an indication of that in their outgoing email logs but the usual customer services staff will almost certainly be unaware of that, or possibly unaware of even what outgoing email logs are! They may even be unaware of any bounce back messages that come back since the sender's internal system may route those messages away from front line business staff.

In the meantime wait for one of the VM Forum Team (VM employees who support this forum) to pick up on your post. They will contact via this thread  and may well ask you for more specific details by private message.  They should be able to pass this on to the relevant VM IT security team to take a look at this.

By the way, the reason I have posted the links and images above is because I am not a VM employee and without some back up you might think I'm making all this up.

I hope this is useful background information even if it does not solve your problem.

Coenoby

I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media.

Have I helped? Click Mark as Helpful Answer or use Kudos to say thanks

@coenoby

Thanks for taking the time to come back with all of this information. I have messaged Directly to ask them if the SPF record has been recently changed and to ask whether there is any indication of this in outgoing logs and/or a bounce back message. 

I'm unlikely to get a response until late tomorrow at the earliest when the office reopens, (they are 8 hours behind me), but I will report back when i hear anything. 

I'll also wait to see if Virgin media reach out with anything further. 

Thanks again for your help, which has been enlightening and has served to reassure me that I am not going mad! 

So far, I've only had a confirmation that the matter is being investigated. If there are further updates, I'll report back. 

Zoie_P
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Hi Rixie, 

I am so sorry to hear you have been having issues with your email, have you reached out to our team regarding this was an IT ticket raised?

 

Zoie

Hi Zoie_P

No, I haven't raised any other tickets as of yet. I simply asked here, (as I though maybe I was doing something wrong). At this stage, I've reported the information given above to the company sending the mails, to see if they can resolve this from their end. They have acknowledged my enquiry and will get back to me after investigating this further. For now, I will continue to use my gmail, rather than Virgin Media email account, as it's a viable workaround. 

Thank you for confirming this @rixie
Does adding the company's email to your Virgin Media webmail address book, resolve this issue? If not, please keep us updated with what the company advises after they have investigated this there end.  

Here to help 🙂
Virgin Media Forums Agent
Carley

Thanks @Carley_S

I already tried adding the address and it didn't help. I'll keep you posted of any developments.