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?

Outlook is so hopeless that even if you search for a sender’s name it will fail to find an email from them.

Don't receipts rely on the recipient confirming receipt though? I ignore them. I'm busy enough and prioritise my own workload. I don't want someone following up and telling me, "but you confirmed you received my email on x date".

I always click no when I asked if I want to send a read receipt. Fuck right off with that. I also have my read receipts turned off on WhatsApp, grey ticks are all anyone gets from me.

I regularly have emails go missing. I can see they are there on my phone, go to my laptop and they are not there. Two or three syncs and they turn up. It is not unusual for me to have emails appears several days after they were sent.

If it’s important, use a Delivery or Read Receipt.

No, delivery receipts just notify the sender it's been delivered. Read receipts are the annoying ones you have to click on.

Where did I say anything about delivery receipts?

Although I would turn those off too if I could.

You didn't, I did in the post you quoted. And as the recipient, you can't turn them off or see that they are there.
My advice was to the OP.

'Thousands in it' and 'loads daily' is not the same as thousands daily.

Is their email address @outlook.comby any chance? On mine it has 2 inboxes! ‘Focused’ & ‘Other’ and it drives me mad! I’m sure some other providers have similar. But yes, I have had emails seemingly disappear into the ether or delay themselves by a day or two then arrive at the same time as the one you re-send!

Accidentally deleted, would be my guess.

I've known it to occasionally happen. Same with text messages. They are sent but just don't arrive, or arrive days later for no apparent reason. Not often, but occasionally.

I once received an email that had been sent four months earlier. I wouldn’t have noticed it if the notification hadn’t popped up at the bottom of the screen. When I looked for it, I initially couldn’t find it in my inbox because it was back among all the other emails sent four months earlier.

Heaven knows where it had been in the interim.

My work email rejects email randomly. Sometimes I will get an alert. Some bounce back to sender and some just simply don't arrive. It is annoying.

This. I’ve occasionally had issues both with not receiving emails and with people not receiving my emails. I think that sometimes it decides it doesn’t like something and the emails never turn up - they don’t go into the junk folder either.

is there a reason why you don’t believe them or why it particularly matters in this instance?

You can deactivate the stupid 'focused' thing, so that you (theoretically) just have the one main inbox.

It's as pointless as this Copilot thing they're aggressively pushing as a default. Fine as an option if you want to use it; dreadful rubbish to force on everybody. The number of times it pops up - usually hiding the thing that I was about to click on - and says "Tell me how I can help you". I bet 99.9% of the replies it receives to this question worldwide are two words, with the second being 'off'.

Likewise I have not received emails from my DH when I watched him send it and sometimes they take hours to arrive for no reason. I call it the great email black hole, and the ones that go the long way around the world.

I think there is also checking that goes on during transmission that stops some emails, some sort of failed protocol check. It isn't perfect..

It happens, email systems do sometimes drop messages completely, or they get stuck somewhere in the system and take ages to get delivered. Had this some years ago with a client whose office was really close to mine. An email to them took over a week to arrive. I joked that it would have been quicker for a pigeon to walk round with a handwritten message!

If you think they were reading your email then making a note to willfully ignore it's contents and then allege they never received it then I can only imagine you're a credit controller or debt collector?

You sent it again and presumably they responded?

Have you not ever had anyone saying they missed/didn't get a message before?

Can depend on what device they are using. I was away on the weekend and reported to a business email, because the subject was the same wording as another email, my system linked/grouped the two together, and my reply went to the wrong person… 🤨🤷‍♀️

but I have had emails ignored too.