Emails Taking An Age To Arrive!

[+Haggis Hunter]

For about the last two weeks I have found that a lot of GC.com emails are taking ages to arrive.

Some are arriving straight away, but others are taking sometimes well over 24 hours to arrive. It doesn't appear to make a difference whether they are Log, PQ's, FTF or someone contacting you, they are just taking ages. As at this moment I know that I am waiting for about 6 emails to arrive, some from yesterday.

 

Anyone else noticed this problem?

 

[+wizard1974uk]

For about the last two weeks I have found that a lot of GC.com emails are taking ages to arrive.

Some are arriving straight away, but others are taking sometimes well over 24 hours to arrive. It doesn't appear to make a difference whether they are Log, PQ's, FTF or someone contacting you, they are just taking ages. As at this moment I know that I am waiting for about 6 emails to arrive, some from yesterday.

 

Anyone else noticed this problem?

 

 

Could be a problem with your ISPs mail servers. Have quite a few problems with NTLs mail servers that's why I bypass their servers and just use my gmail account.

[+Haggis Hunter]

Could be a problem with your ISPs mail servers. Have quite a few problems with NTLs mail servers that's why I bypass their servers and just use my gmail account.

 

I've been using the same mail server since I started over 2 years ago, would a problem start now, but still allow other mail to come through as normal?

[+wizard1974uk]

Could be a problem with your ISPs mail servers. Have quite a few problems with NTLs mail servers that's why I bypass their servers and just use my gmail account.

 

I've been using the same mail server since I started over 2 years ago, would a problem start now, but still allow other mail to come through as normal?

 

Might be a temporary glitch or a routing problem that is beyond GCs control.

[+Haggis Hunter]

As you would expect AOL (please no discussions on how NAFF they are!) have said that there is no server problem. Due to the fact no one else has said they have got this problem, and I have had it for over a fortnight, can anyone else come up with any solutions?

[adrianjohn]

As you would expect AOL (please no discussions on how NAFF they are!) have said that there is no server problem. Due to the fact no one else has said they have got this problem, and I have had it for over a fortnight, can anyone else come up with any solutions?

 

Many ISPs are at last begining to take notice of customer complaints about spam. If they are seeing a lot of traffic from one server they might be considering it spam mail and killing it. If you question them they will no doubt deny it. I understand quite a number of NTL users have suffered as such and got no satisfactory answer when contacting their ISP.

 

Edit for speeling!

Edited February 26, 2006 by adrianjohn

[+Morton]

I can probably work out where the delay is... or at least I ought to be able to. Up until about a month ago I ran customer support for an email server product (or, most of the time, )

 

I'll need to see the "headers" aka "Internet headers" or "full headers" for a delayed message though. You'll probably be able to find these if you dig about in the Properties or Options for a delayed message. In Outlook Express, for example, it's on the Details tab of the Properties dialog. You're looking for a load of gubbins like this:

 

Received: from smtp-in4.blueyonder.co.uk ([172.23.146.15]) by cluster5 with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713);

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 19:05:33 +0000

Received: from eback04.blueyonder.co.uk ([195.188.53.215]) by smtp-in4.blueyonder.co.uk with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713);

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 19:05:33 +0000

 

Note that the full set of these will contain a load of vaguely personal data (your email address certainly), so it's probably better to mail it to me rather than post here.

 

In fact this whole conversation probably belongs in email, but given that the point is that you're not getting your email, I hope the forum will indulge us.

[+allieballie]

HH, I'm AOL too and I know from browsing gc.com tonight that quite a few of my caches were found today but I haven't received any emails at all about them as yet.

[Deego]

I have seen somewhere (a while ago) that AOL keep throttling emails from Groundspeak because of the amount they send but thought this was cleared up. Cant find it on the search (cant search for less than 4 characters )

[Deego]

Found the post now here

 

Might be worth adding to this post as well.

 

Good luck

Edited February 27, 2006 by Deego

[+Haggis Hunter]

Note that the full set of these will contain a load of vaguely personal data (your email address certainly), so it's probably better to mail it to me rather than post here.

 

In fact this whole conversation probably belongs in email, but given that the point is that you're not getting your email, I hope the forum will indulge us.

 

Email sent with hopefully the correct information enclosed.

 

Thanks

[+Simply Paul]

<-AOL User ("I could give it up any time. If I wanted to...") too, and having the same problems at the moment. It seems to come and go - I'll have months with no problems and then a sticky couple of weeks. Fingers crossed it gets sorted again soon, as gettting 40-50 emails in a big lump from time to time's a tad annoying.

[+Haggis Hunter]

It is starting to look like it is AOL that is the problem, as when some do arrive they are all together.

[Deego]

Looks like I was right* answer

 

* thats a first

[+Haggis Hunter]

It certainly does appear to be true, as it looks as though only AOL users are affected.

 

AOL said to me that there was not a problem with the server, bloody liars

[+Morton]

AOL said to me that there was not a problem with the server, bloody liars

If it is indeed throttling (and as we've discussed separately, that seems likely), then it wasn't *really* a lie, because it's not *really* a problem with the server.

 

It's more a technique they use to manage their service. The idea is that if a particular sender bombards you with a huge amount of email, you start to "push back" and slow down the rate you accept it. This protects your system from getting overloaded and means that everybody else's mail still gets through.

 

(Think of the Royal Mail at Christmas - important letters get delayed because they're caught up among all those Christmas cards, and the whole system becomes pretty hit and miss for the whole of December. This is the kind of situation throttling is supposed to avoid.)

 

The problem here is that the personalized and time-sensitive gc.com mails have been caught up by rules designed for bulk mailings. If the same thing were happening to the "here are things you might want to buy" mails from Amazon, for example, nobody would be in any way unhappy.

 

It does still seem a bit weird that a huge ISP like AOL would throttle a comparatively small website like gc.com... but, there you are.