Verifying date stamps on emails.

[Guest]

On Wednesday, I called a customer to complain that they had not responded to
an email I had sent on the previous Thursday. The customer claimed that she
had responded the following day (Friday). I did finally get the email and it
was dated sent on Friday, however I did not receive it until Wednesday. In
review the customer email when I open it claims to be sent on Friday, my
inbox shows received on Wednesday.

Any suggestions!

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

What does the email header say? It should have the time it was submitted to
the senders SMTP server.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Author, Google and Other Search Engines (Visual QuickStart Guide)



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[Brian Tillman]

On Wednesday, I called a customer to complain that they had not
responded to an email I had sent on the previous Thursday. The
customer claimed that she had responded the following day (Friday).
I did finally get the email and it was dated sent on Friday, however
I did not receive it until Wednesday. In review the customer email
when I open it claims to be sent on Friday, my inbox shows received
on Wednesday.

Each mail router between you and your customer is allowed to keep an email
for up to three days with no response back to the sending router. After
three days, if the router could not forward the message on, it's supposed to
send back a response saying, "I'm having some trouble, but I still intend to
deliver." After five days of holding onto a message, a router is supposed
to respond, "I give up, I can't send the message." Now, if there are two
routers between you and the customer, each can hold the mesage for three
days, so a six day delay can occur and still be within defined time
constraints of Internet mail. With three routers, it's nine days, and so
on. So, the delay you see, while inconvenient, is well within the realm of
possibility.