Why a quote email didn't arrive

When you email a quote, Swann Retail records the send and then keeps the last thing the customer’s mail system told us about it. You’ll find both on the quote itself, so when a customer says the quote never arrived you can see what actually happened instead of guessing.

Where to find it

1. Go to Sales → Quotes and open the quote.
2. Switch to the Activity tab.

Each row is one send, newest first: when it went, the address it went to, who sent it, and — in the Delivery column — what came back. A quote nobody has emailed yet reads “No send history yet”.

Every row’s Status says Sent: that’s the record that the email left Swann Retail. The Delivery column is the one that tells you what happened after that.

What each delivery status means

Accepted by mail server

The customer’s mail server accepted the message from us. This is the ordinary, good outcome.

It is not proof the customer saw it, and the label says so on purpose. Acceptance is the last thing the receiving side reports to us — what their mail system does next, whether that’s a spam folder, a filtering appliance or somebody’s inbox rule, is never reported back. So the quote reads accepted by their mail server rather than delivered, because that’s the whole of what we know.

If the customer says it never arrived: ask them to check their spam, junk and quarantine folders, or ask whoever runs their email to release it. From the moment it’s accepted, the message is on their side, not ours.

Bounced

The customer’s mail server refused the message and sent it back.

What to do: check the address for a typo, confirm it with the customer, then press Email quote again and send to the corrected address. A bounce often carries the receiving server’s own reason — see the details behind a status below.

Complained

The recipient marked the message as spam.

What to do: don’t email that address again unless the customer asks you to — further sends damage deliverability for every quote you send, not just theirs. Reach them by phone instead.

Rejected

Our own email provider refused to send the message. It never left us.

What to do: this one is on our side, not the customer’s. Confirm the address is valid and try the send again; if it keeps happening, contact support.

Pending

Nothing has been reported for this send yet. It may still be queued, on its way, or waiting while a busy receiving server asks us to try again later.

Pending is not a failure, and treating it as one is the expensive mistake: give it time before you re-send. A duplicate quote email is worse than a slow one. A send that’s just gone out will normally sit here for a moment before it settles.

The details behind a status

Press Details next to any delivery status to open the full explanation, along with whatever the mail systems actually reported:

• When it was reported — the moment that outcome was recorded, on your business’s clock.
• The kind of bounce — permanent (that address won’t accept mail, and sending again without correcting it will bounce again), temporary (their server asked us to try later and the message eventually gave up, so sending again may work), or undetermined (the provider couldn’t say which — confirm the address with the customer before re-sending).
• Reason — the receiving mail server’s own words for why it refused, shown exactly as they came back. That’s deliberate: it can be terse or technical, and it’s the one line worth quoting to whoever runs the customer’s email. It appears on bounces, and only when the far end gave a reason at all.
• Provider reference — the reference for that particular send. Quote it if you contact support.

Each line only shows when there’s something to show. A missing one means nothing was reported for it — not that something has gone wrong.

What this can’t tell you

This is a record of what we observed about a send, and it stops where our visibility does:

• Once a message has been accepted by the customer’s mail server, nothing more comes back to us. A quote that was accepted and then quietly quarantined at their end looks exactly like one that landed in the inbox.
• The reason on a bounce is the far end’s own explanation. If it isn’t clear, the person who can act on it is whoever runs the customer’s email — that’s who the Reason line is there for you to send it to.

For everything else about quoting a job — building one, converting it to a sale, or discarding it — see Quotes.