talktalk talking to Google

Not sure where to put this but as talktalk involved starting here.

Yesterday I was trying to help someone with their email. Having resolved the problem we sent emails from his laptop and tablet to my gmail address; I had my phone with me to receive them.

The first couple of test emails did not get to my phone. After much head scratching we sent some further tests from my phone, from my wife's tablet and finally from the laptop and another tablet logged into the troublesome email address to mine and my wife's gmail addresses; these arrived straight away on our phones as did emails from our phones to the laptop.

As I got home late that evening I did not check on my home computer's email setup.

At 23:55 my phone announced it had an email; the first test email we sent. This morning I looked in Thunderbird on my computer and found all the emails had arrived when expected; seconds after being sent.There is the same situation with my wife's gmail and tests sent to her. 1:00AM receipt on her phone but seconds after according to Thunderbird.

The troublesome email address was friends [email protected]. my address was my [email protected]. others were @talktalk.net or @gmail.com. So the first test email went from a laptop friends [email protected], home wified, to talktalk broadband and sent to my [email protected]; phone on 02 contract. This was received on my home BT Infinity (Thunderbird logged) within seconds but "Google" held it for some 8 hours before sending to my phone; similarly one sent to my wife's gmail account took some 8 hours to get to her gmail account on her EE contract phone.

Was this just some temporary glitch that we should not see that often. The friend is computer challenged so worries if things do not go as expected. (He is a well respected engineer but now retired and struggles with computers; but give him something that needs a micrometer or an electrical circuit and he's your man. I wonder about engineers. We have another friend who is a qualified civil engineer; his staff dreaded him coming near their computers)

Email headers will show where the time was spent.

While email delivery is usually within seconds, there are times where SMTP servers may queue email and deliver it later.

If the headers show it getting to Google quickly then its time to see if others have been moaning about slow receiving of email.

Andrew

The offending email was received on my Galaxy S5 Kitkat phone. The gmail app on the phone does not allow the reading of headers; it just shows the delivery time 23:54. If I login to gmail using the phones web browser I get a time of 15:58.

Looks like I have no way of finding where it hung for all those hours.

Go have a look on the TalkTalk community forums - they seem to having delayed email problems.

May fit your circumstance.

Probably a Google thing. had Gmail held for days here. Possibly some obsessive security idea over there, where they are screened if containing a simple word.