exhausted all transportation options other than "friends and family" or trying to figure out if getting a driver's license even makes the least bit of sense. And apparently, my email doesn't work "right". Though the "send message to me" worked fine.

That sounds very frustrating.

except... The message was atrociously formatted. Staff Contacts | CDCSS contact form on here, and I get told "your messages are really weird".

lots of other people's emails don't work right because they are polluted with HTML etc formatting instead of being in clean text like all decent people should use.

Who knows if her reply went to my actual address, or to something like "noreply@cdss.ca" like the message I received replies would have gone to. That address does bounce (as it should, except, sending messages out with addresses that bounce, is "non-standard").

if it's that your emails to them are being rejected, it could be they have some form of Caller ID or Sender Policy Framework checking - something which a hosting service we use says they've had to abandon because it generates far too many false positives from legitimate places which aren't set up correctly.

sef_lopod: HTML can work quite well in email (unless you are using something like mutt.

HTML etc in email is unnecessarily evil and dangerous because of what it can conceal if displayed. All decent communicators of honest intent (ie not most commercial advertisers with their silly in-yer-face graphics) should use plain text in emails.

all code rendering turned off in received emails quite deliberately.

SpamBot: It was more that they stated they had sent an email (several days ago) and it never showed up as far as I can see (not in spam, not currently in "archives" which is all messages) it may have gotten deleted.

sef_lopod: It's far easier to format text emails correctly too.

if they've been sending lots of too-similar emails out through a 3rd party which has resulted in them being blocked as spammers before the emails get anywhere near your inbox.

we did find it, but it was difficult to find.

that html only email is only good, if you do not wish to have your message read, if they can't see your fancy formatting. Occasionally this makes sense. Perhaps dropping "html only" email at the server would be very helpful for some people.