BT email unavailable

Anyone else getting email failures (re-enter password errors) with their BT email?
BT Webmail working fine but POP3 Outlook account not behaving.

This started happening in the last hour or so. BT Service Status page is all clear.

NB - not for me but a neighbour

I'll take the lack of response as a good sign and it's something local/specific to my neighbour

Re-entered saved password on POP3 account but 'login' errors still persisted.

Couldn't see any reason for failure so phoned BT Support. Just as I started talking to the support chap after going through all the security questions I hit another F9 and the Send/Receive worked!

I explained what had happened to him and he said BT were aware of intermittent issues with this in the last few days. I said there's nothing on your Status Page. He sort of spoilt things by then saying Microsoft are rolling out software fixes for this issue?!

All rather strange...

My neighbour's BT email 'rejecting login' problem returned this afternoon.

I've found this long running BT issue that looks like our problem:
http://community.bt.com/t5/Other-BB-Queries/E-mail-p...

I�m guessing by using BT's SPAM controls to allow non-spam through via BT's webmail interface it has opened this problem up!

This post sums things up nicely:

�STILL HAVING TO LOG IN AND INPUT MY PASSWORD ON THE BT / YAHOO WEBPAGE, NOT CHANGE IT, JUST RE-INPUT IT !
YOU WOULD THINK THAT AFTER 510 POST�S OVER 51 PAGES ON THIS FORUM ALONE, THAT SOMETHING WOULD BE DONE. GLAD TO SEE BT / YAHOO ARE TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY !!! AND YES, I AM SHOUTING !....�

Just before I phoned BT's Indian support centre that's exactly what I did and things started working!
Have I missed a TBB thread about this as it looks like a fairly common issue?

EDIT: Here's one http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/bt/f/4105386-cant-g... but no real resolution.

Edited by b4dger (Sat 31-Mar-12 17:41:21)

No problems for me on BT mail ... although I do occasionally get the re-enter password problem (maybe once every 3 months across 10 accounts). It is apparently (or so I have been told) a Microsoft issue.

I also get it very rarely on Orange aka BTw WBC (not Yahoo as far as I know, but I do wonder who supplies Orange's mail servers now they got rid of their network).

It's not a problem, I just retype my same pwd and it works and does not reoccur next time

Don't buy that it is M/Soft; just that ISP's POP3 servers are playing up for a bit.

I see another (edit) 2 users have added their names today to the list on the BT thread I posted earlier - it does seem to be affecting a lot of people though I'm glad to hear you are ok.

Do you occasionally login via the webmail interface to mark blocked spam as not-spam? For this user this seemed to be the thing that opened the problem as they have been with BT for many years and never had the problem before Friday.

I think they have recently added their BT email to their mobile which might be another factor that causes this problem for some BT customers after reading the many posts on the BT thread.

Edited by b4dger (Sun 01-Apr-12 14:58:57)

Just to update my neighbours BT email 'login' failures story...

The poor chap spent a few HOURS on the phone yesterday with BT India as the problem had returned and he didn't want to bother me.
He called me yesterday evening when everything was going pear-shaped!

He let BT India remotely connect to his PC and their 'fix' was to remove the BT email account he has used for 10 years or so and to replace it with another one!!!

So there he was at the end of his tether wondering why he wasn't picking up emails from his friends and clients (this email address is sometimes used for business)...

Luckily BT had only deleted the account in Outlook (2010) and left the original PST file in place so I was able to set the account back up using the correct PST.

The 'login errors' were back once the account was in place.
The 'get-a-round' for this seems to be to login to BT's webmail service and then start to change your password by entering your existing one and pressing cancel!? This sorts BT's end out and send/receives then work again. But this is only a get around as you may have to do the same the next day.

This is what I did when I first visited him before calling BT. I couldn't understand how it started working at the time but reading the BT forum thread afterwards I now realise I had stumbled across this 'get-a-round'!

There are more people now reporting and focusing on BT's on-going thread for those interested, so hopefully a permanent fix will be found: http://community.bt.com/t5/Other-BB-Queries/E-mail-p...

Same problem started for me about 2 days ago.(using Windows Mail)

Enter user and password but it still rejects it.

Only way I can get the mail at the moment is via webmail.

I had this over and over again fairly recently. It was the final straw as far as I was concerned so I shifted to gmail.
A real pain having to tell everyone about changed email addresses and I'm sure that there'll be somebody I've missed, but I 'm convinced it was one of my better decisions.
A side benefit is that my longstanding btyahoo email accounts were attracting vast amounts of spam ..... now despatched into hyperspace.