email errors to active address query

Vegastare

Can anyone shed any light on this.
I sent an email and after one month it was returned with message from BT saying We tried to deliver your message multiple times over a few days; however, the person's destination email provider has not been reachable or has not accepted this message. We have stopped trying to deliver this message. Please check with the person you are trying to send to that they can still receive emails at this address.   It is to a family friend in the US and it has happened twice. Could it be spam there end or blocking of some sort.  It is a valid email address - I was bewildered when it came back yesterday after so long.
Any thoughts - they have suggested I use Telegram and when I googled its not for me as phone app, don't have anything but my laptop.
Any ideas

tronator

Vegastare said:

Any thoughts - they have suggested I use Telegram and when I googled its not for me as phone app, don't have anything but my laptop.

Telegram is also available for Windows/Mac/Linux

https://desktop.telegram.org/

Neil_Jones

The error message referred to normally means somewhere along the line the message has got stuck and its timed out waiting for the next link.

Think of email as being like in a car going somewhere.  Roads are the email servers.  If there is an accident or a fuel spill or something, the road is blocked, cars can't go, and you ultimately end up with a massive queue of traffic.  Once the blockage is cleared, the cars are free to go and the backlog eventually clears.

In email terms if email is going on its way and gets to a server with an issue and there's already a shed load of email waiting, it'll just join the back of the queue.  Eventually the faulty server/kink/node/call it what you like either gets noticed by whoever maintains it and given a good kicking to get it going again, or the existing server will hold onto it and try again later.  So the email sits back in the queue, goes round a few times and then it times out because it can't get past the server having a strop, so it comes back to you with a message saying I've failed, but its not my fault its failed.  In the traffic analogy of the traffic situation its akin to saying sod this, I'm going home.

The timeouts are normally measured in days, not hours.  Not unusual to receive this message a good while after you've forgotten you sent it in the first place.

CoastingHatbox

Is BT your email provider?
Are you able to disclose the latter part of the email's recipient without disclosing their identity? For example '@superdoopermail.com'

Or is the recipient using their own mail server?

Is it just the two emails you have sent to this recipient, or have you sent others without getting this bounce message?

Vegastare

CoastingHatbox said:

Is BT your email provider?
Are you able to disclose the latter part of the email's recipient without disclosing their identity? For example '@superdoopermail.com'

Or is the recipient using their own mail server?

Is it just the two emails you have sent to this recipient, or have you sent others without getting this bounce message?

Thank you and I assume families own email address - as @ name .com.
The bounce back only happens with this address .
tronator thank you....have looked at this but honestly it is not for me, I come on here and an oldies forum and that is me - oldie worldy.
Thanks for your replies