Virgin Media
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@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 It's a bit out of date but hopefully it gives you an idea of what's going on in the background.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.
The consequences of that are explained here
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
