[RESOLVED] Sending 2 emails with different headers from same file

[riojimmy]

We have been using the following to send email for several years now.
Recently we've encountered the following:
The first is sent and received.
The second is presumed to be sent but not received.

This does not happen with any consistency, in other words both will be sent and received for days and days and then, suddenly the customer receives their email
and we don't.

Has anyone encountered this? I have done lots of searches and I can't come up with it elsewhere.

<?

////////////////// CUSTOMER Email //////////////////

$to = "$email";
$subject = "Your NML order for blah blah";

$msg = "Yada yada yada\n";
$msg .= "yada yada yada\n";

$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
$headers .= "Reply-to: <[e-mail]>\r\n";
$headers .= "From: US<[e-mail]>\r\n";
$headers .= "X-Mailer: PHP/" . phpversion();

mail($to, $subject, $msg, $headers);

////////////////// OUR Email //////////////////

$to = "US<[e-mail]>";
$subject = "Order from Mr. Who's He What's It";

$msg = "Yada yada yada\n";
$msg .= "yada yada yada\n";
$msg .= "yada yada yada\n";

$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
$headers .= "Reply-to: <$email>\r\n";
$headers .= "From: <$email>\r\n";
$headers .= "X-Mailer: PHP/" . phpversion();

mail($to, $subject, $msg, $headers);

?>

[dalecosp]

Checked your mail logs, spam filters, and "junk" folders?

[riojimmy]

This is hosted on a shared server, which we do not control or have access to beyond the hosts control panel, which by the way is godaddy.com.

So there is godaddy's firewall.

But why would it send one and not the other? And why would be intermitant as it is?

[dalecosp]

I'm not sure you answered the question, exactly.

If your answer means, "I don't control the mailserver and therefore can't read the logs", perhaps you could add an "Errors-to" header to your mail and get some information from that?

We could be barking up the wrong tree, but these days, intermittent mail delivery issues are almost always the result of the spam problem and the rich and varied ways that server administrators attempt to use in controlling it.

[riojimmy]

Sorry, yes we do not control the mailserver and can't read logs.

Thanks for the Errors-to header suggestion, I wasn't aware of it and searching for it's proper implementation drove me to a whole lot of dialogue regarding mailservers / spam, and ways to overcome being rejected.

In all it seems the problem lies in the From / Reply-to headers not being specific.
And adding a Return-Path header,
but won't that conflict with the Reply-to header?

(Ours shown above are now)
$headers .= "Reply-to: <$email>\r\n";
$headers .= "From: <$email>\r\n";

The From isn't really important so it can be US<[e-mail]>

It's the Reply-to that we want to be the users email.

If we add the Return-Path will it conflict?

$headers .= "Reply-to: <$email>\r\n";
$headers .= "From: <$email>\r\n";
$headers .= "Return-path: US<[e-mail]>\r\n";

[riojimmy]

OK, so I tried specifying the Return path and From emails

$headers .= "From: $email <[e-mail]>\r\n";
$headers .= "Return-path: <[e-mail]>\r\n";

And it seemed to be working. But, just as I was about to return to playing 3-D pinball the problem started again.

It's clearly Spam filtering, with the above added the Spam Assassin rating is only 2 stars (**)

I tested the same formatting from our email server and the rating is no stars
So I'm moving the whole show there.

Resolved?