bouncing emails

I'm having problems with emails bouncing. I send an email to someone, they reply back but sometimes it doesn't get to me - it bounces back to them with an error message that says "could not send, due to fatal errors."
But it doesn't happen all the time. People keep telling me that something is wrong in my incoming mail pref. but if that was the case, I wouldn't get any emails right? They would all bounce back.
I checked my mail pref. and everything is correct. My mailbox is empty so that's not the problem. No huge files in there.
What could be going on? Is it something with the server??
Thanks --

Check with your incoming mail service provider (presumably your ISP, but maybe not).

Mail will not automatically bounce messages unless you tell it to. Something is going on with the Mail server at your ISP. Who do you use for your email, your ISP or someone else like Google or Yahoo mail?

My ISP. I'll have to give them a call Monday morning. I also use yahoo as a second account but it's not set up as a SMTP and I have no problems getting emails back from yahoo.
What could be happening on the ISP end? They always seem to try and give me the run around like... blaming the Mac I'd like to know what I'm talking about a bit when I do speak with them.
Thanks...

I'm not really sure, I mean setting up an e-mail account is stupidly easy on most servers. They could just be a crappy service.

Agree - it's so simple and not much to enter as far as server stuff goes. I've gone thru 3 servers already! Lets see... the first server couldn't help me with emails not going out. I'd get an error message that said mail would not go out on port 25 and I went the rounds with them on that and got no where. Next server - same thing! Port 25. I asked them if port 25 was blocked and they got snippy with me so I quit them.
Now I'm with aros.net and now the problem with bouncing emails. I'm not doing so well with ISP's.
If they don't fix it, I guess I'll look someplace else. I'm running out of options now tho. I can't get DSL service where I live so it has to be dial up and I need dial up access numbers for when traveling with the ibook in case I can't get wireless service.
This is getting quite frustrating.

Talked with my ISP and they said that the DNS numbers are wrong on other people's mail and not mine. They are picking up DNS number 22 and should be picking up either 24 or 40. She said that they need to make sure they are up to date on their numbers. Does this sound correct??
Nothing else I could tell her since she was insistent on it. And I don't know enough about it.
I told her it was coming from three different ISP's not just yahoo.

I think your ISP is "dancing"...

I had a similar problem and I was advised to go into our webmail account and delete all messages I had received in my inbox since I started having the problem. That fixed it for me.

luv2create said:

I had a similar problem and I was advised to go into our webmail account and delete all messages I had received in my inbox since I started having the problem. That fixed it for me.

Click to expand...

I did that and it did nothing. I talked to another tech support person this evening and he agreed it was something that shouldn't be happening. He was checking into it. He said that they were having problems over the weekend with spam and it was clogging their system.
I told him - ok.... but I want it fixed. At least I didn't get the girl who told me that it was the other server's problem What an idiot.

UPDATE: Tues... seems to be fixed now. Hopefully it will last! I guess you just have to get a good tech.