o2 mail server down again

This is the third night in a row, at about 2300, that the o2 mail server has gone down. The great thing about o2 is that their helpline is an 0800 free number. The people there seem genuinely concerned about this. One of them told me it's a spam attack. Someone trying to persuade o2 users to jump ship.

Tom in London

POP at least is OK here.

So is SMTP.

Edited by Deadbeat (Fri 03-Jul-09 00:04:46)

yes, it came back on again shortly after I posted. But the last three days have been pretty chaotic.

Tom in London

it's down again (Friday 3 July, 1100)

Tom in London

It's OK here.

I called them and they said they're "working on it" and "hopefully in the next few hours" I'll be able to collect my emails.

This isn't good enough. If it continues I'll have to consider looking elsewhere.

Tom in London

I've given up relying on ISP provided E-mail for this very reason. My previous ISP - Plusnet also had a very flaky E-mail service.
I now use Gmail which is free and allows you to access it via POP3/SMTP so you can use outlook express or whatever.

An added bonus is that you don't need to change you Email address if you decide to change ISP.

Admittedly Gmail aren't immune from problems - they've suffered a couple of outages in the last year, but they seem to be a good deal more reliable than O2 at the moment.

Yes. Gmail is currently my fall-back solution, but it may become my main solution if o2 can't solve their problems. Generally I've been 100% satisfied with o2 since I signed up - a fault-free service, totally reliable, so these email issues are new. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, for a while....

Tom in London

As long as you mean looking elsewhere just for email. It would seem silly to leave the best LLU ISP over it as all ISP email systems seem flakey to me.

I have used Purple Cloud for well over two years and am still very satisfied. Now costs £7.34 for your domain for 2 years and £10 per year for Home email to go with it. 1&1 seems to have a good reputation as well.

I don't fancy having all my email going through Google even if it is free. At the time I signed up to Purple Cloud you couldn't have your own domain with Google anyway, and it was just webmail as well which I cannot stand for normal use.

Bob: Demon dialup >> Freeserve dialup >> BT Broadband >> Prodigynet >> Newnet >> O2 Standard.
Purple Cloud for domain, email and web space.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I don't fancy having all my email going through Google even if it is free. At the time I signed up to Purple Cloud you couldn't have your own domain with Google anyway, and it was just webmail as well which I cannot stand for normal use.

Yeah, Google Mail has come a long way though. Not only can you use POP3, you can also use IMAP which means you never have to log on to the website to check the spam folder. And all of this with or without your own domain.

I'm quite surprised they allow spam folder checking via IMAP, as there is now no reason to log on to the website (and be fed adverts which fund the service).

Oliver.