A question for techies. Our company does quite a bit of business with foreigners. If we get an email inquiring about doing business and we send a reply can we assume that if there is no error message that the customer received our reply ? Can emails be lost in cyberspace ?
Lost Emails
- Thread starter squid
- Start date
Assuming the reply to address is the same as the sender's address it might get there. There is no guarantee in email, you can try to use a read receipt however that's not always a guarantee either because some email clients/servers don't support it.
Also, the reason you may not know for sure if the email address you replied to is valid is that not all email servers will reply with an 'undeliverable' msg. This is to thwart spammers, why confirm that the email address they tried to spam you with is not valid?
Another consideration is when was it sent? Some email servers will keep on trying to deliver for a long time even up to 5 days before giving up.
Also, the reason you may not know for sure if the email address you replied to is valid is that not all email servers will reply with an 'undeliverable' msg. This is to thwart spammers, why confirm that the email address they tried to spam you with is not valid?
Another consideration is when was it sent? Some email servers will keep on trying to deliver for a long time even up to 5 days before giving up.
Emails can be lost
Yes emails can be lost in cyberspace. Some firewalls or security programs can simply block delivery with no NDR. Some go into SPAM folders configured to delete upon receipt. Some can configure their email servers to drop emails without an NDR. There are actually quite a few ways that an email can be lost, as you put it, in cyberspace. Your own mail server could have a problem delivering it, it stays in queue, the Server will retry for a set period of time and depending on the configuration by the Admin, can simply drop the email when all retries have failed, again with no NDR. To name just a few of the ways.
BTW NDR = Non Delivery Receipt.
Cheers
D
Yes emails can be lost in cyberspace. Some firewalls or security programs can simply block delivery with no NDR. Some go into SPAM folders configured to delete upon receipt. Some can configure their email servers to drop emails without an NDR. There are actually quite a few ways that an email can be lost, as you put it, in cyberspace. Your own mail server could have a problem delivering it, it stays in queue, the Server will retry for a set period of time and depending on the configuration by the Admin, can simply drop the email when all retries have failed, again with no NDR. To name just a few of the ways.
BTW NDR = Non Delivery Receipt.
Cheers
D
Thanks, It's not as cut and dried as I thought. But in some instances I've received telephone calls from people asking why I haven't replied ! I ask them to check again because I did reply. In fact several times with no error messages ! I've even used " hotmail " as a back up with no success.
"They" figure 8-10% of emails never reach their intended destination. I presume much of that is due to operator error. I find that about 1% of my emails mysteriously do not arrive - one or two per week. Firewalls, spam filters and just lost in the ether, I guess.
You can request a read receipt with most email apps. While not infallible, you at least know which ones have been opened and don't need to worry about. Then you know which ones you don't need to follow up on.
You can request a read receipt with most email apps. While not infallible, you at least know which ones have been opened and don't need to worry about. Then you know which ones you don't need to follow up on.
