Emails not being received for 3 days after being sent

#1

I have a client who says he is receiving some emails 3 days after they are being sent. He knows this because the person who sent them told him when they were sent. And he has also tested it by having his wife send him mail from a different domain other than one I am hosting for him. This happened about 3-4 months ago, and I switched him from Outlook to Thunderbird, and it seemed to have fixed it. Now he is calling me again with the same issue.

What would be causing this? Doesn’t happen to me or other clients as far as I know. I might get stuff delayed till the end of the day, but not for 3 days.

#2

My first thought would be that the client is mistaken … but I would want to see the email headers of a few emails with this behaviour happening to determine if there is something odd happening with the delivery of the mails.

Normally, the only time this should happen is if the incoming mail server is down and mail is queued. Even then most mail servers retry for 2 days, not 3.

I would also double check the domains MX records. There SHOULD not be anything wierd happening here, but stranger things have happened.