# A customer says they never got your email.

> Before you resend, apologize, or assume they're lying: check whether the address can even receive mail. Most mail providers never send you a bounce notice when they silently drop a message - so "no bounce" doesn't mean "delivered."

## Why you never saw a bounce

A hard bounce is supposed to come back to you with a clear reason. In practice, a lot of mail providers rate-limit, delay, or simply swallow bounce notices to cut down on backscatter spam. The honest state of things: you can send a message to an address that doesn't exist and hear nothing back at all.

So "I never got a bounce" tells you almost nothing. The only way to know for sure is to check the address directly, without sending it anything.

## Check it without emailing them again

A verifier asks the receiving mail server whether it would accept a message for that address - no message is actually delivered. In a few seconds you get one of three honest answers:

- **The address doesn't exist.** Now you know - it's not spam filtering, the address is wrong. Ask them for the correct one.

- **The address is real.** The problem is somewhere else - keep reading.

- **Unknown or Probably valid.** Their domain is catch-all or the server won't confirm. The address likely works, but no tool can promise more than that.

## If the address checks out, the problem is deliverability

A real, working address can still land in spam, get silently filtered, or sit in a promotions tab the customer never checks. That's not an addressing problem anymore - it's whether your domain is authenticated properly. If you've never checked your domain's SPF, DKIM and DMARC, that's the next thing to look at, not another resend.

## Questions

**Why wouldn't I get a bounce message if the email doesn't exist?**
Many mail providers delay, rate-limit, or drop bounce notices entirely to reduce backscatter spam. A missing bounce is not proof the address worked.

**Does checking the address send them anything?**
No. It asks the receiving mail server whether it would accept a message for that address - nothing is delivered.

**The address is real - so why didn't they get it?**
Likely deliverability, not addressing: check whether your domain's SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set up and aligned, since an unauthenticated domain is far more likely to be filtered.

Tool: [Check the address right now](https://www.emcheq.com/tools/email-verifier)