Order Confirmation Emails

I'm having an interesting issue with my emails. I can send emails to customers from the TOOLS - Send Email area and the customer receives them. The customer can fill out the comment box in the "Contact Us" area and I get it. When the customer orders something, they DO NOT get a confirmation email, but I get a copy sent to me. Also when a new customer signs up, they don't get the welcome letter. Also, if they forget their password, they DO get the reset email. When I try to send a coupon via email, it doesn't send.

So the big issue is that it seems that ZENCART initiated emails, like the order confirmation and the welcome letter, don't send to the customer. But I can send emails manually just fine and they go through.

Any ideas anout this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

A fairly common reason is that the 'Shop Generated' emails are getting binned as spam.
The Admin manually sent emails and the shop use exactly the same mail transport, the one you selected in Admin-Email Options. Similarly, I seem to remember that the order copy email is generated immediately after the customers copy is sent.
I presume these are HTML emails (the usual cause of all the trouble)?