Email relay issue - about to pull my hair out!

Dryst999

Setup:
We have an email domain with godaddy setup to relay reports from one of our vendors. The vendor has a server that generates the reports, then relays the reports through our godaddy email to the client.


Problem:
We set this up over a year ago, all has worked fine up until December. Now the client is sporadically receiving delayed emails that are weeks behind. The vendor claims that the emails are being delayed at Godaddy, not out of their system. Trying to troubleshoot with the vendor is like pulling teeth.


Troubleshooting:
-- Confirmed that we can relay mail through Godaddy via two separate outside networks, one using outlook and one straight from a firewall to take the outlook client out of the equation. The relays are instantanous.
-- The message header of one of the delayed emails shows that the email was sent from the vendor, received 4 seconds later at Godaddy, then sent to the client 2 seconds after that. The vendor is adament that this header information is not accurate and that it's generated when it hits godaddy, not when it leaves their system.
--Confirmed with godaddy that the vendors public IP is not being blocked



I'm still unable to get the vendor to trace an email from their server, to the firewall, and out the WAN. I've told them time and time again until I can see a log that shows the traffic getting out of their firewall, Godaddy will not be able to help.


The message header shows the following, i'm no expert by any means, but i'm 80% sure the timestamps are accurate.


Report is from December 21st (These reports should be sent daily, it has been delayed over a month)
Hop 1 - Vendor Server on 1/28 at 3:01am CST
Hop 2 - Godaddy on 1/28 at 3:01am CST
Hop 3 - Client on 1/28 at 3:01am CST


It took a total of 6 seconds according to the header. The vendor claims that the Hop 1 timestamp is innacurate and that it's not created until it hit Godaddy since they are just using a "dummy relay" (their term). Which one of us is right? Please be me!

Bloogen

I don't know about the specifics of your issue but heres is summary of a similar experience I had.

We used GoDaddy email relays to send a couple hundred emails a day. Most times it would work, sometimes partial failures, sometimes complete failures.

We started using Email Delivery & Transactional Email Service | SendGrid and didn't have another problem from that day forward. The pay as you go bill was less then a few dollars a month.