Lame answer from tech support about email delay

#1

Hello. I sent the following in a support ticket [human being niceties clipped out]:

We have troubles, however, with delays when the [Mailman mailing] list receives or sends to Yahoo or Hotmail addresses. I can’t say this happens all the time, but sometimes there may be an hours-long delay, and the headers seem to indicate that the problem is in the communication between Dreamhost and Yahoo or Hotmail.

Thank you, and please let me know what I can do to help troubleshoot this, also.

I sent along the headers of a problem message, which included as the most recent two received:

Received: from frida.dreamhost.com ([66.33.206.23]) by bay0-mc8-f4.bay0.hotmail.com with Microsoft MTPSVC(6.0.3790.2444); Tue, 19 Sep 2006 16:59:47 -0700
Received: from che.dreamhost.com (che.dreamhost.com [66.33.216.23])by frida.dreamhost.com (Postfix) with ESMTPid 0989B16EE31; Tue, 19 Sep 2006 13:11:56 -0700 (PDT)

The complete answer I got back from Dreamhost was:

Based on these headers, you’re right. For some reason the mail can’t reach their servers. We really can’t do much about that since our servers are correctly tring to send to theirs. You might want to talk to them and see if they have had issues.

Sorry I couldn’t help out more.

  1. Does anybody think that’s a good answer from tech support?
  2. With the problems they’ve been having lately, is there any reason to believe that “our servers are correctly tring to send to theirs”?
  3. Does anybody out there have any suggestions for fixing my problem or doing more to isolate the cause of the problem?

Thanks.

-Chud

#2

I wonder if Yahoo and Hotmail throttle incoming mail from Dreamhost. Seeing that it’s Mailman, then I suspect the message headers state that it’s bulk mail, which would more likely trigger a throttling.

From your headers, it’s hard to tell why it took so long to deliver the message. Some mail servers send a warning back stating that the mail has been delayed if it hits the 4 hour mark, but that it’s been trying.

-Scott

#3

It may not be a “good” answer, but it might be a completely accurate one. Your headers don’t show what the dealy may have been between “che” and “frida” - though you might be able to tell if you know what time the mailman program actually sent the mail.

I think there is; the DH tech should have the tools to check that, and in spite of their recent issues, they have been consistently willing to indicate where they have problems, rather than attempting to hide them.

I think you have already “isolated” the problem, as it seems to be limited to Yahoo/Hotmail - both services that, in my experience often suffer sever dealys in forwarding mail to their users’ inboxes. I don’t have any suggestions for a “fix”, though “throttling” the amount of mail sent to them might be where I would start (though I don’t know how to, or even if you can, do that with mailman).

–rlparker

#4

for what it’s worth, i have had email delays for at least a week now. email coming in to me from various domains (not limited to hotmail and yahoo) are often delayed by 2 - 6 hours each. so, the original poster has a right to be upset by the somewhat lame answer he got from tech support.