Dr__Azin's profile

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Cox SMTP Does NOT Properly Process outbound mail when traveling out of country!!

Dear Cox Technical Support:

You've got a MAJOR problem that you are not making your support staff (and customers asking related questions) aware of.  I found out the hard way when critical e-mails sent while traveling in Brazil and Mexico were never received by the recipients.  The worst part about this is that Cox's SMTP Server smtp.cox.net (using SSL and Port 465 as instructed) receives and acknowledges the mail, and sends no error message (so the message goes to the "Sent" folder on the device sending the e-mail, appearing that the email has been successfully sent).    The only way you will ever find out there is a problem is when people complain that they never got your email.  This can cost $$ or even your job (or a promotion) because you will seem like a flake.    

If you cannot or will not allow these e-mails to be processed, at least you MUST respond with an error to the customer's mail client. 

You should educate your support staff that this is the way it works, and contact the users that inquired about this to tell them you now acknowledge the problem, and if Cox doesn't fix it, everyone traveling must use an alternate SMTP server (such as gmail). 

Here are a couple of the people who were steered wrong by Cox Technical support in this forum:

Mike Sics:
http://forums.cox.com/forum_home/internet_forum/f/5/t/4919.aspx

Mpphred:

http://forums.cox.com/forum_home/internet_forum/f/5/p/4554/17892.aspx

Feel free to contact me if you need more information on this (and please, please fix this!).

David

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While correct if there are server side errors on delivery those are bounced back and logged, however it is not a black and white issue on why mail is not delivered whether its being picked up in a filter or spam on the receiving side. Or issues with the message timing out or being blacklisted from the ISP it is originating from can also cause issues with little to no information on it being sent out correctly. The two cases referenced on the forum are different issues altogether. In the end using a 3rd party SMTP server will work if you are using a outside client or program otherwise when traveling, we do recommend using Webmail to bypass some of those problems.
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