diff --git a/nsqd/channel.go b/nsqd/channel.go
index f2452ee27..bbed70a00 100644
--- a/nsqd/channel.go
+++ b/nsqd/channel.go
@@ -316,22 +316,44 @@ func (c *Channel) PutMessage(m *Message) error {
 
 func (c *Channel) put(m *Message) error {
 	if c.topologyAwareConsumption {
+		// Attempt zone local, region local and finally the memory channel
+		// we do this to ensure that we preferentially deliver messages based on toplogy
+		//
+		// Because messagePump is intermittently unavailable while writing a msg to a client
+		// we continue to have higher priority channels in the select loop, this means at each
+		// attempt a higher priority channel can still win
 		select {
 		case c.zoneLocalMsgChan <- m:
 			return nil
 		default:
 		}
 		select {
+		case c.zoneLocalMsgChan <- m:
+			return nil
 		case c.regionLocalMsgChan <- m:
 			return nil
 		default:
 		}
+
+		select {
+		case c.zoneLocalMsgChan <- m:
+			return nil
+		case c.regionLocalMsgChan <- m:
+			return nil
+		case c.memoryMsgChan <- m:
+			return nil
+		default:
+		}
+
+	} else {
+
+		select {
+		case c.memoryMsgChan <- m:
+			return nil
+		default:
+		}
 	}
-	select {
-	case c.memoryMsgChan <- m:
-		return nil
-	default:
-	}
+
 	err := writeMessageToBackend(m, c.backend)
 	c.nsqd.SetHealth(err)
 	if err != nil {