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Email - cannot send to specific servers

With very few exceptions, no one with a verizon email account can send email to trinityarlington.org or hardts.net. Any sender gets a daily email from verizon saying that delivery failed (6-12 times) and verizon will try again for 3 days. The error is always "initial status response expected". This is probably a handshake error between verizon and trinityarlington.org or hardts.net.

I tried talking to a support agent who kept trying to blame my email client (a ridiculous approach since the rejection letter implies there is nothing for me to receive). I have to tell my 250+ member church that verizon email accounts cannot send mail to our pastor, choir director, etc. And Verizon doesn't care. (Interesting fact: one email did reach me - the sender was using a BlackBerry so probably using a different email server).

I expected Verizon to research the problem and tell me that they could solve the problem or tell me that the host of trinityarlington.org was not following standard protocol and should upgrade their server. I am very disappointed.

If anyone has solved a similar problem - please let me know...

Comments

spacedebris

Chances are that trinityarlington.org and hardts.net have filters that have either blocked the verizon domain or the IP addresses associated to verizon. With only a few exceptions, when you get a bounce back message saying undeliverable, it is almost always a problem on the reception end. What you would need to do is contact those hosts and work with them to clear their block or filter.

Now you can try and go through Verizon, but you are not likely to get many results. They will just say, "Can you send to other locations? Yes? Then the problem is on the other end". And rightly so. If it was a problem on Verizon's end you would get a different kind of bounce back stating that it is either a banned site or been flagged for spam. So this looks like an issue on the other ends.

lasagna

If you can post the exact contents of the bounce message (obfuscating any personal information like a name or email address but not IP address), it would help to determine "who" is actually blocking the message.

Your next best bet is to to the exact contents of the bounce message and using another email service (Gmail/Hotmail) or support page, contact the ISP which provides the mail services for the two domains in question. Since it sounds like it's the remote side which is not able to be reached, this is likely where the fix will be needed. But, more info is definitely needed to understand for sure.

DougHardt

Thanks for replying. Here is a typical "bounce" message:

This report relates to a message you sent with the following header fields:

  Message-id: <4C4DCD5A.6040505@verizon.net>
  Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:00:58 -0400
  From: Doug Hardt {edited for privacy} 
 To: Doug Hardt {edited for privacy}
{edited for privacy}
 Subject: Testing from outlook using verizon.net account

Your message has been enqueued and undeliverable for 2 days
to the following recipients:

  Recipient address: {edited for privacy}  Reason: unable to deliver this message after 2 days


Delivery attempt history for your mail:

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:57:35 -0500 (CDT)
; initial status response expected

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:47:04 -0500 (CDT)
; initial status response expected

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:36:49 -0500 (CDT)
; initial status response expected

lasagna

OK ... so in the test message you posted, did the copy of this same message sent to the gmail account get delivered?

If so, then the message is getting successful queued on the Verizon outbound mail servers (i.e. it's not your mail client) and then problem is that for some reason Verizon's outbound mail server can't connect to the mail server for the destination site.

So, in the copy of the message that got delivered to your Gmail account, can you look at the headers and see what outbound mail relay IP address at verizon delivered the message? (In Gmail, under the tab in the upper right corner of the message labelled "reply" usually, drop down the menu and select "Show original"). Post the header contents (everything down to the first blank line where the message starts).

Once we know the IP address which is connecting, we'll want to go to the ISP on the other and have them check their firewall logs / mail logs for connection attempts and attempt to do a traceroute from their mail gateway back to the Verizon gateway we determine is originating the connection.

DougHardt

Thank you so much for replying!

My email client (Thunderbird) does not allow me to copy the header information except a field at a time. Hoping that I picked the right info:

Received: by 10.229.94.196 with SMTP id a4cs60253qcn; Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:25:17 -0700 (PDT)

Received: by 10.150.2.1 with SMTP id 1mr1460733ybb.424.1280424295973; Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:24:55 -0700 (PDT)

Received: from vms173001.mailsrvcs.net (vms173001pub.verizon.net [206.46.173.1]) by mx.google.com with ESMTP id l5si3044009ybj.6.2010.07.29.10.24.55; Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:24:55 -0700 (PDT)

Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of {edited for privacy} designates 206.46.173.1 as permitted sender) client-ip=206.46.173.1;

Authentication Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of{edited for privacy} designates 206.46.173.1 as permitted sender) smtp.mail={edited for privacy}

Received: from vms074.mailsrvcs.net ([unknown] [192.168.1.2]) by vms173001.mailsrvcs.net (Sun Java(tm) System Messaging Server 7u2-7.02 32bit (built Apr 16 2009)) with ESMTPA id <0L6B005AJXPI9WI2@vms173001.mailsrvcs.net> for {edited for privacy}; Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:24:55 -0500 (CDT)

Received: from 71.191.175.47 ([71.191.175.47]) by vms074.mailsrvcs.net (Verizon Webmail) with HTTP; Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:24:54 -0500 (CDT)

Is something in this what is needed? (apologies for my inexperience)

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