Someone says they didn't receive my email. Hmmm.

[LindorDoubleChoc]

I sent an email 5 days ago. My email address is my name @ email provider dot com. So nothing unusual or fishy.

Yesterday the recipient told me they didn't receive it. So I simply forwarded it using the forward button, having checked that I'd got their email address correct the first time.

This time they've got it.

How is that possible?

Might have gone into spam first time? They accidentally deleted it?

Is it important? Back story?

I sometimes have emails go to my junk box that have been my friends emailing me.

In my book, it's similar to 'oh I've just realised the email I was supposed to send to you is still in my drafts folder'. Ie I forgot to send it.

If she uses Outlook it probably just randomly decided to hide it somewhere. Or that it wasn’t important enough for her to see.

Sometimes an email can stay ‘pending’ in the draft folder if the Internet drops on either side. An email can sometimes end up in someone’s Spam folder and unless they check it, it can be automatically deleted after a set amount of days. Sometimes the recipient is too embarrassed to admit that they haven’t responded yet and invent that they haven’t received it but it’s not like Snail Mail and cheques getting lost in the post fifteen/twenty years ago. So in answer to your question, there are legitimate reasons why an email may not have been received but also some that are just lies and you will have to trust their word unless you have reason to suspect otherwise.

It happens to me all the time. Usually because it’s gone to spam or someone has sent it to the wrong address. I’m sure there are other errors that could prevent it being received.

Business emails go 'missing' quite a lot, especially if you are chasing customers for payment of overdue invoices. I used to do credit control and the number of times I was told they never received the original invoice is unbelievable. One could be forgiven for thinking that they are telling porkies. 😂

Spam folder

My dad is quite paranoid about losing things in online aether and he will send an email 5 times in a row to make sure someone gets it. Doesn’t believe me that you can just check your sent folder and glitches are pretty unusual. Funny and very annoying at the same time.

My email inbox has thousands in it and I receive loads daily, it’s easy to miss stuff

It is possble. Why do you not believe them?

It does happen, can get rejected at server level without the correct security settings for the recipient. Email delivery receipts are your trick in proving it.

It probably means they missed it, or deleted it as junk, which is easy to do if you're getting lots of emails and the sender is unknown or the subject not specific. It doesn't necessarily mean they deliberately ignored you.

That used to happen when I worked for a very large organisation. Usually something to do with firewall’s or the severs, there were several apparently, in a different country. Sometimes the original email would arrive after the second, forwarded email. So it’s definitely possible

Yes it's possible.
I sent dh an email for something I wanted him to order, so at the time less than 5 yds between our computers.. It didn't arrive, so I resent it and it arrived straight away.
In my sent items mailbox you could see both. In his, only one.

I had the Gmail app on both my iPad and my iPhone. Emails would go from the phone but disappear into the ether on the iPad. Didn’t realise until an old family friend in the US emailed again to ask if I’d received a condolences message she’d sent (I had), but she hadn’t received the acknowledgment I’d responded with. It can happen.

That's not the same as not receiving an email though. Why does your inbox get thousands daily?

I’d give them the benefit of the doubt , it’s not worth getting annoyed about. You can’t prove anything 🤷‍♀️

Easily missed especially if it's a busy inbox. It could also have been filtered into spam or junk.

It's happened to me several times, either someone didn't get mine or I didn't get theirs - these are people I'm in regular correspondence with. They just seem to "disappear" sometimes.

Our work security filters once decided that email addresses ending in btinternet.com weren't secure and so we had a number of client emails that quite genuinely weren't delivered to us.

Yes, it is a convenient excuse and is often used as a "whoops, I've ignored you".

But all else aside I'd rather give someone the benefit of the doubt because it's really not impossible.

Outlook puts stuff from colleagues in spam and randomly delays thing in the outbox that have attachments.

Gmail puts things in Spam in an equally random manner and hides things in 'Updates'.

Of course it happens.

Because I’m an international woman of intrigue and mystery.

things go awry sometimes, nothing is foolproof

I sent my DH an email a few days ago, from within the same house, so on the same Wi-Fi network, but he didn't get it. So I sent it again... double-checking the email address was right (it was) and he still hasn't got it. He checked his junk folder and it wasn't in there either.

So it is possible they may not have received it.