egafd.com

yeah that spam motel looks the likely suspect, if i'm replying to a mail I can see how it would redirect to prevent spammers getting hold of the email

Not sure, but it looks as though your friend might have the Spam Motel application installed on his PC?

A brief (VERY brief, so I may have got the wrong end of the stick here!) search for info suggests that it is an email masking application.

Emails to people using it get routed through the Spam Motel service and presumably checked against some kind of 'approved sender' list before being forwarded on to the 'real' email address or intercepted if the sender is not recognised.

Your friend's original message probably has an X-Reply-To: xxxxx@spammotel.com Header, so your reply goes there, and Spam Motel will either hold the email until your friend confirms your address as someone he wants to hear from, or, if you're already on the 'approved' list, forwards it straight on to his proper email address.

As I said, just a guess as to how this system works. Could be total bollox

yup, after following Duece's link I sort of came to that conclusion too, it was a bit puzzling as i'd never seen that before and i'm usually quite careful sending/recieving stuff i'm not clued up about