You are probably reading this because I sent you an email with a link to this page. Normally this is in response to a question about an email you have received from one of our Email Servers. The message you received probably has a section like this:
MailEnable: Message delivery has been delayed.
Message is waiting at serverXX.goldhosts.net for delivery to
mail.example.com.
The message will be retried for another 29 hours.
The reason for this message is simple: Our Server was not able to send the message onward to the recipient's server.
Many Email Servers do not send these messages, they may not even send you a message, even if the email fails completely.
We believe that you should be informed if the message has been delayed in case the message is important. It is after all better to be informed.
The next questions we are often asked are:
When will the email actually be delivered?
Our Server will re-try to send the message on a set pattern over the following hours. If the message completely fails, you will be informed of the failure.
Is there anything I (or Goldhosts) can do to get the email through.
There are a couple of things you (the email sender) can do: Ensure the email address you sent the mail to was correct - do not assume that "replying" to an email ensures the correct address! Also, check with the recipient, to see if they are having email problems - you may be able to forward the delay message to their tech-support, which may help them find the problem at their end.
If you want a full diagnostic check, we can check our log files. Because of the time-consuming nature of this work, we will not atart without both the from and to email addresses and an exact date and time that the email was sent. Once we have these details, we can look at the log-files, and will report back any findings. Due to the length of time this work takes, there will be a charge.
See also: