Typo in email domain/mystery of the missing email...

Crabman

I'm a bit confused about this myself so I'll do m'best to explain it:

1) I emailed an organisation on the email address they supplied, e.g. [EMAIL="bob@organisation.org.uk"]bob@organisation.org.uk[/EMAIL] but the email message was supposedly never received.

2) I was given a new email address with a slightly different domain, e.g. [EMAIL="bob@theorganisation.org.uk"]bob@theorganisation.org.uk[/EMAIL] which worked.

3) I was told my initial email didn't get through as the email address they'd given (1) was incorrect.

4) My first reply from the individual was from [EMAIL="bob@organisation.or.uk"]bob@organisation.or.uk[/EMAIL] (note "or" instead of "org" - this was the return path, not the display name)

5) Yet subsequent replies from this individual now match the initial email address ([EMAIL="bob@organisation.org.uk"]bob@organisation.org.uk[/EMAIL]) that I was given and now works fine.

What possible explanations are there (aside from the email being intentionally ignored)? It was definitely sent to the correct email address.

Thanks

fwor

The most likely explanation I can think of is that:

1. They have both [EMAIL="bob@organisation.org.uk"]organisation.org.uk[/EMAIL] and [EMAIL="bob@organisation.org.uk"]theorganisation.org.uk[/EMAIL] registered to themselves, with a redirect from the former to the latter that isn't working properly and

2. Bob has a typo in the "Reply to" field in his email client. If you reply and your email client uses that address it will not be delivered correctly.

esuhl

It sounds like [EMAIL="bob@organisation.org.uk"] [/EMAIL][EMAIL="bob@theorganisation.org.uk"]bob@theorganisation.org.uk[/EMAIL] was the right address and they had set the "reply to" address (which you can set to whatever you like) incorrectly.

Crabman

I've just gone into the message source and the following values all state .or.uk, e.g.

X-SID-PRA: Bob <[EMAIL="bob&#64;organisation.or.uk"]bob@organisation.or.uk[/EMAIL]>

X-Env-Sender: Bob <[EMAIL="bob&#64;organisation.or.uk"]bob@organisation.or.uk[/EMAIL]>

From: Bob <[EMAIL="bob&#64;organisation.or.uk"]bob@organisation.or.uk[/EMAIL]>

Return-Path: Bob <[EMAIL="bob&#64;organisation.or.uk"]bob@organisation.or.uk[/EMAIL]>

Presumably with a 'reply-to' address the correct "from" address would be displayed somewhere?

superscaper

Crabman wrote: »

Presumably with a 'reply-to' address the correct "from" address would be displayed somewhere?

No, the email headers would only give the reply to address that the sender had put in, in their email client. It wouldn't give a "correct" return address since there's no such thing as it's down to the sender what they deem to be "correct", they may want it to return to a conpletely different domain/server than it was sent from.