BT Email Problems

On Friday 19th I found that I could not either send or receive BT emails on any of the different BT email addresses I have. Phoned BT who took control of my screen and changed password of an email account (I had already tried this!) and all he got was a screen saying the account needed reactivating. He told me that the problem would have to be escalated to level 2 and they would phone me on Saturday.

Saturday afternoon phone call from Level 2 - she did exactly the same as had been done the day before and got the same result. To which I heard he say "Oh!". She informed me that the problem would be reported to a higher level. When asked how long it would take to solve the problem she said she would ring me on Thursday (4 days later),

Asked why she couldn't ring me before then she said nothing could be done before Monday as "tomorrow is a holiday"

Going online I discovered people on the BTcare site on twitter and on other sites that report on broadband problems reporting the same problem (some saying it had been lasting for many days). Yet there is nothing on the BT website about them having a problem with their email service and their telephone status line states there are no problems.

In these days where banks, utilities and companies (including BT) like or even insist paperless accounts we cannot manage without emails

So are others experiencing the same problem?

What are BT doing about this problem?

From what I see on these forums, BT have been having problems with email for years. IIRC in the time I've been here they have changed the supplier three times, for reasons I don't know but could be profit or because they can't find one that works.

Like now.

By lunchtime today you could have a domain of your own with web space and working email up and running for £22.18 per year. That's equivalent to £1.85pm. More info and a link to my current and recommended supplier on this page.

Their basic service and helpline are excellent, 24/7. I have had one failure of their email and no failure of websites since switching to them in 2010. I rarely need their help but when I do they reply with spot-on help within minutes.

If you go for this solution with them, opt for the cPanel hosting not the Cloud one. You get more control in the future.

Get it up and running and start telling people/shops/customers/whatever your new address. Never send on BT again, just receive from legacy places you haven't told.

I no longer have BT Broadband account. However, still have access to email using collector from my web based account on gmx.com. There have been no new messages since 1 am on Sunday, looks like there is a problem, maybe with Yahoo if they have not changed supplier.
Update= able to log into mybt account. New message received today.

Edited by flippery (Mon 22-Aug-16 09:31:42)

RobertoS offers sound advice about using a 3rd party email co.
If you do not want to pay then google etc are far better than a isp based email service. Which at best is a value added service.

Yes the likes of google do collect data, but then again so will the likes of Yahoo who were providing email for BT at one point.

In reply to a post by JohnR:

RobertoS offers sound advice about using a 3rd party email co.
If you do not want to pay then google etc are far better than a isp based email service. Which at best is a value added service.

Yes the likes of google do collect data, but then again so will the likes of Yahoo who were providing email for BT at one point.

I would agree with your paid for sentiment, if it is not an overkill. Provided there is no referral fee.
Which RobertoS, in the past, has given advice for.
As fo Google, I do not use their service due to reluctance to pay taxes in UK.

As fo Google, I do not use their service due to reluctance to pay taxes in UK.

Sorry, couldn't help but read that as it being you being reluctant to pay tax

If you don't use companies that actively limit the amount of tax you pay then I suspect there are very few people you would get any service from. Pretty much all the big companies are as bad (or as good) as each other at avoiding tax.

I now use outlook.com (formerly aka hotmail) which has the advantage (as do other web-based services of not worrying about syncing emails across various devices such as phone, tablet and laptop). It also lets me scrape emails from my BT and google email accounts etc. I also pay a small fee for my own domain name but I am lucky to have a friend who lets me route email to that through their small business server for nothing. That means that anything sent to <anything> at <mydomain> gets relayed to my outlook.com account. Commercial email hosters don't let you do this anymore or limit you to, say 20, named accounts per domain.

Edited by gomezz (Tue 23-Aug-16 09:54:44)