Jeff,
I am starting to suspect that email as a communications vehicle is
breaking down. It might be time to investigate something else
entirely.
That's not at all my experience. At work the vast majority of my communication with clients, and some coworkers, is via email. The incidence of lost, misdirected or delayed email is nearly zero.
Granted though that nearly none of my correspondents are using consumer email services such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, Outlook, or the like. Nor do I for work. Nearly all are using corporate email domains, either self-hosted or hosted by a commercial hosting service. So there may be a bit of "you get what you pay for" in play here.
But even in my personal email I've seldom had a problem. Whether via an ISP or (for the last couple years) via Gmail, I've had a very low rate of spam and no or nearly no (detected) loss.
The snarky side of me wants to say that people who won't check their email, or don't know how to control features like their email service's spam filter, perhaps ought not sign up for email lists. But I recognize that in many cases that might amount to blaming the victim, where it is the service that ought to be publicly shamed.
Shal
Shal Farley