How to handle this strange Gmail bounce: "read error: generic::failed

How to handle this strange Gmail bounce: “read error: generic::failed_precondition”

Several users have recently reported seeing bounce backs from Gmail that look like this:

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

Technical details of permanent failure:
read error: generic::failed_precondition: read error (0): error

We’ve seen bounces like this for both regular Gmail users and Google Apps users using GMass. The error is a non-standard bounce message that is specific to sending via the Google platform. What causes the error? Nobody is certain for sure, but the Internet speculates that it’s either one of the following:

The remote server is rejecting the email due to an SPF failure. This is applicable to Google Apps users that are sending from their own organization’s domain, not from gmail.com or googlemail.com.
The remote server is rejecting the email because Gmail’s sending IP is blacklisted, but Gmail doesn’t want the end user to know that’s the reason for the fail, so this generic message is delivered instead.

Regarding reason #2, generally we’ve seen that the deliverability through Gmail’s servers is the world’s best, but it seems that occasionally even Gmail’s servers get blacklisted.

Regarding reason #1, if you’re a Google Apps user, regardless of whether you’re using GMass, ensure that you have SPF set up correctly for your domain. That means you need to configure the DNS for your domain to allow email to be sent by Google’s servers on behalf of your domain. You can check if your domain is configured allow Google to send email on its behalf via this easy-to-use tool. Just input your domain, and check the results. I just checked my own domain, wordzen.com, which runs on Google Apps, and noticed an issue, which I’m about to fix:

The SPF record for wordzen.com breaks the rules by requiring too many DNS lookups.

In the case of wordzen.com’s SPF record, the record includes permission for Google’s servers to send email for wordzen.com, but here’s an example of a domain of a GMass user where SPF doesn’t include Google’s servers at all:

If you still see this bounce notification after ensuring correct SPF settings, or if you’re not a Google Apps user, it could be issue #2 at play.

How is GMass handling these bounces?

Since GMass categories all bounces and replies for you, and builds an internal Bounce List for your account in order to suppress future mailings to bounced addresses, we’ve added these bounces to our “Bounce Exception” list, meaning we won’t count addresses that bounce with this message as a true bounce. That means that future attempts to send to these addresses will still work.

We’ve also deleted all bounces that were on your account’s Bounce List in the past because of this issue.

References

Here’s an example of a Google Apps user that corrected this issue by modifying his SPF record.

Here’s an example where it’s suggested the bounce is due to a blacklisting of Gmail’s IP address.

Here’s a post suggesting that Google is masking the blacklisting of their IP with this particular generic bounce message.

This email expert received a similar bounce but the bounce mentioned a TLS failure.

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Ajay Goel

Ajay is the founder of GMass and has been developing email sending software for 20 years.

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4 Comments

Unknown says:

August 8, 2016 at 5:48 am

dear support team when i am sending the mail on other mail id then my mail are permanently bouns please tell me how to resolve it.

Derrick Phillips Jr says:

September 15, 2021 at 1:37 am

thanks

adam jacobs says:

October 4, 2021 at 2:35 am

i have this problem hoiw do i fix ?

idri walid says:

April 5, 2022 at 3:15 pm

bon soir cava bien raman alkarim alaykoum