2013-08-31 Apple me.com email issues

The Apple mac.com / me.com mail servers are broken, in a way that makes them unreliable. If you use Apple for mail service, I recommend that you find a better provider.

By "broken", I mean that they do not follow the accepted standards for delivery of internet mail over SMTP. These standards are published in rfc5321.

The SMTP protocl as defined by rfc5321 is only concerned with the transport of an email message between the sender (a computer acting as an SMTP client) and a receiver (another computer acting as an SMTP server). In this particular case, the web server is generating the email message, and is acting as an SMTP client sending that message to the Apple SMTP servers.

The Apple servers accept the email message. In other words, they take responsibility for delivery of that message. However, they consistently fail at this. They don't deliver the message into the recipient's mailbox. They don't deliver the message into the recipient's spam box. They don't send any bounce message to the sender of the message.

Aug 29 20:56:16 373639-web2 sendmail[9438]:
r7U3uDpf009436:
to=<MUNGED@mac.com>,
ctladdr=<apache@373639-web2.palientertainment.com> (48/48),
delay=00:00:03,
xdelay=00:00:03,
mailer=esmtp,
pri=512898,
relay=mx5.mac.com.akadns.net. [17.158.8.111],
dsn=2.0.0,
stat=Sent (Ok, envelope id 0MSB00BVNS9QXBJ0@nk11p00mm-smtpin011.mac.com)

Note that that message was sent "from" apache@373639-web2.palientertainment.com, which is where any bounce message should be sent. That email address will accept incoming mail, but the Apple mail servers did not send any bounce message to that address.

If you use Apple, Yahoo, Google or any other free email provider, you are NOT their customer. Your eyeballs are the product that they sell. You are a customer in the same sense that a cow is the customer of the feed-lot. Since you are not a customer, Apple and others have no interest in talking to you individually, or solving your individual problems. I don't think there is any phone number to report such issues with their mail servers. If you find one, please let me know.