Rant time.

I am fed up with people that EXPECT the email they send to arrive instantaneously EVERY SINGLE TIME. They don't realise that email has never been an instant technology, it's not really supposed to be. Yes, it can arrive pretty much instantly... but that's not going to happen every time you send something. That's just the way it is - it's just much quicker than sending something via the Royal Mail / Postal Service.

The Internet is made up of thousands of different systems, all running different types of hardware and software, and connected via different types of links. It's not totally unlikely something somewhere is going to fail... sorry, but it happens quite regularly!

My provider for instance has a layered email system. Email arrives at their firewall, then passes through their clustered anti-virus servers, and finally gets to the clustered mailbox servers. If one of the many systems is overworked or not working properly, the email gets put in a queue and delayed. Plus if your ISP's SMTP server is running slowly/overworked/dead your email will also end up in a queue before it's even sent to OUR email servers.

What can I do about any of this? Nothing. Once Send is clicked and the SMTP server receives the message, it's out of my hands. So when email is delayed, get on with something else... there's nothing anyone can do except wait.

If you want to send a message instantly to someone - they have software called Instant Messengers for that.

*sigh*