Why would it take four reset password attempts to finally get the e-mail?

Question

Following up from Locked out of my own blog and password reset not working:

After posting the question I decided to give the password reset route one last try and this time the e-mail did come through and I was able to get back into the blog.

It took me a total of four attempts to reset the password before it finally worked. Given that the first three e-mails were apparently sent but didn't arrive and the last one arrived very quickly, what should I be looking for in my set up that would cause this feature not to work? Or is this just a feature of e-mail that I must live with?

There's been no indication that the e-mails were bounced by my ISP or that they've been marked as spam. My ISP is also my web host and domain name registrar.

I'm still running Wordpress 2.9.2 (as I said before it's a very infrequently updated blog and the next task is to upgrade to 3.0.4), but I do remember having this problem before with previous versions.

Answer 1

Unfortunately email can be like that. It works most of the time, but sometimes messages just poof. Especially if email is being sent by some small hosting account (more suspicious) as opposed to large email service (less suspicious).

You can try to verify with hosting if emails were really sent, but if they were I don't think you will ever know what happened with them along the way.

PS btw maybe it will arrive after all, several times I experienced emails sent earlier stuck somewhere and arrive hours later than newer emails