This topic

Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge cases

kevinshepherd — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 11:20:49 GMT

Hi all,

At my wits end after 6 days, (12 hours total call time) - 3 bridge cases (all closed without resolution) and an open complaint - seems that BT are completely unable (neither T2 or offshore) to solve this issue.

Would start by mentioning that I am CCNA and MCSE qualified and setup exchange servers for a living which makes this all the more frustrating.

Issue started when in Feb we were contacted by BT to switch back to their broadband. Had been a BT customer in the past, but since 2008 was paying for BT premium mail and using another provider.

Eventually considering that the prem mail has crept up from £1.50 to £7.50 per month I thought it made sense.

Only thing I hadn't got around to was importing the premium mail into my new BTid (created for broadband) - so I was still paying up to this month.

Anyway last week the prem mail payment didn't go through due to expired credit card. On Sunday all accounts and sub-accounts were blocked. Paid the outstanding bill and called BT to see if we could get a credit as I've been paying in the meantime for broadband. No problem , payments were credited back to the account and was advised to go into the manage products and import , starting with the primary from the premium mail. Import completed (had to authenticate the source BTid during the import process) and all accounts now show in the manage products/email as active.

Problem seems to be that when the import was carried out, BT had not yet lifted the bar on the mail accounts.

Now we are locked out of all 4 e-mail accounts. Have called BT Prem mail support every day since Monday - each time I'm promised that will be resolved by 'tomorrow' - only to find that next day the bridge case (BTIR01)has been closed without even checking first with the client (or perhaps checking 'last logon time' on the servers.

Eventually when the second bridge case (BTIR) was opened and also closed next day without any resolution we opened a complaint - and another bridge case was opened (BTIR01).

Of the 10+ advisers I have spoken to, all but one were very sympathetic and promised to follow the case personally but as soon as the call ended - so did their interest. We have even given the user/password to the support adviser to confirm that the issue is not on my end and they faced exatly the same issue .

1) Open BT home page :
https://home.bt.com/login/loginform?TARGET=$SM$https%3A%2F%2Fsignin1.bt.com%2Fbtmail%2Fsecure%2Femaillogin

and enter correct user/password (typing wrong password results in red failed authenticationwarning box appearing).

2) Next hop takes us to https://strongauth.secure.bt.com/arcotafm/cap and then to https://samlfed.bt.com/mx_mailbox.htm

3) Instead of opening the inbox : https://email.bt.com/mail/index-rui.jsp?v=2.22.1#app/mail - we are looped back to https://home.bt.com/login/loginforms?

Have offered to send HAR files to prove the issue is on BT end but this confuses the support staff. I could understand that, but I would hope that the offshore team in India would understand what a HAR file is.

At this point I am at my wits end. Having mother/wife/kids all crying 'why can't you fix it - we are waiting for cancer appointment/job interview etc.) is driving me insane.

All it needs is someone vaguely technical to check on the servers and they'll almost certainly find the LDAP accounts flagged as disabled (something that the front end should have unset when the billing issue was resolved) - but it seems that all they are trained to do is check the front end and they see all these accounts as Green 'active' - so they just close the case.

Does anyone perhaps have an escalation path that they could suggest to get the offshore team to pull their finger out and actually do their job properly? Closing the Bridge case just to keep their KPIs looking good without giving a thought to the end customer is shocking.

Thanks for any suggestions (other than stay far away from BT mail). Even an email address of someone of the team in India that might take a sympathetic view of this case. As you can tell, I am completely desperate. BT (if you are reading) - please look into those Bridge cases and complaints and try to update the adviser training to avoid any other episode like this.

Kevin

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

licquorice — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 11:20:35 GMT

@kevinshepherd Please delete the fault references, it is personal information and breaches forum rules.

I will flag your problem to the mods.

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

PaddyB — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 11:22:51 GMT

Hi @kevinshepherd,

Thank you for posting and welcome to the Community. I'm sorry you're having problems with your email and that this hasn't been sorted after contacting BT a number of time.

If you send me your details, I'll be able to get this investigated.

I have sent you a private message with instructions on how to contact the team. You can access your messages via the envelope icon at the top right of the screen, or click on this link, Private messages

Thanks,

Paddy

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

kevinshepherd — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 14:34:52 GMT

Thanks Liquorice/Paddy , I see the case references were already removed. Hadn't thought of them as confidential - will keep in mind for the future.

In the meantime I created two new sub-accounts that are working as far as webmail and IMAP are concerned.

Now I'm not sure if it's related but SMTP (outbound) is blocked. I'm using the same clients (Outlook 2016, iOS Mail) as always , and same server settings (SMTP 465/SSL - have also tried 587). Also tried without SSL - nothing works on any client.

Think it could be related? As said IMAP is working for inbound, but nothing goes out.

On the PC the error is :
Task 'xxxx@btinternet.com - Sending' reported error (0x800CCC69) : 'Unknown Error 0x800CCC69'

On the iPhone the error is just 'cannot send mail'

Think there may be a common root cause? Had an infuriating call with a lady yesterday in Glasgow that swore blind that a) only Webmail was available for Standard Accounts b) Problem was my Windows 10 machine - that is not supported . When I politely asked her to check her facts she put the phone down.

Checked in the next call, and again this morning that the two new accounts weren't somehow 'basic' accounts and was reassured that they were 'Standard' accounts.

After an hour on the phone this morning to try to get this outbound mail working the assistant eventually gave up and said that anyway they don't support client software !

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

licquorice — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 14:27:22 GMT

@kevinshepherd Hmm, now you've posted your email address. Not a good idea on a public forum!!

Have you replied to @PaddyB PM?

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

kevinshepherd — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 15:03:41 GMT

Hi Liquorice, oversight - noted and corrected.

Yes, I've given Paddy all the info.

In fairness the last chap that called from the complaints department yesterday evening was as helpful as he could be. Said he had a friend that was a guru on the mail and could usually fix anything - but unfortunately he was offline in Teams. Hoping that this guy picks up on Monday.

Even so this is a catalogue of failure on the part of BT support so far. Coming from the same field I just can't comprehend how they can close bridge case after bridge case without confirming this the issue is resolved.

Does this happen very often in your experience?

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

licquorice — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 15:42:59 GMT

Hard to tell really, I'm just a customer like you. I can only judge from the forum and people only post on a forum if they have a problem so perception is always skewed.

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

kevinshepherd — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 19:24:11 GMT

Thanks, yes it's always like that. Rarely people take the time so publish when something goes well 😃.

Would be nice to think that BT actually monitor these communities to see how they are doing.

@paddy: I guess you have a way to get their attention?

I was looking around the webmail site to see if there's a way to create a server-side rule to forward everything to another mail address but it's very basic in functionality 😣 Anyone know of a way to setup forwarding rules? Would be the first thing I would do if I ever got access to the mail box again.

I did have another idea - to delete the mailbox - accept I've lost a week of mail (though I've got the rest in PST) - but was advised that the email address would not become available again for 60 days 😔

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

licquorice — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 18:58:05 GMT

You can either configure your account to forward all emails or you can use conditional rules to forward selected mails. All in the mail settings, not sure how that is 'basic'.

You can obviously also 'fetch' mails from another account such as Gmail if you so wish.

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

kevinshepherd — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 19:36:28 GMT

Thanks, found it, sorry - haven't used for years.

Perfect. If I ever get my mailbox back I'll be forwarding everything to a backup gmail account (have to clear it out every 15Gb or so) to avoid ever getting in this situation again.

Thanks for all your support Liquorice - appreciated.

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

gg30340 — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 20:03:52 GMT

@kevinshepherd wrote:

@paddy: I guess you have a way to get their attention?

Just so that you are aware. PaddyB is a moderator of the forum and is BT employee who intervenes and takes on problems that can not be resolved by forum members.

If you have not already replied to his post I would suggest that you should as he will take ownership and will either resolve it or forward the problem to the relevant team and it will give you one point of contact until the problem is concluded.

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

kevinshepherd — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 23:03:05 GMT

Thanks, I didn't know this. That's very reassuring...

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

DanielS — Sun, 26 Sep 2021 07:38:01 GMT

Good morning @kevinshepherd,

I would like you to know that we have your message in our queue. One of my team, the moderators, will pick it up over either later today or tomorrow at the latest.

Thanks

DanielS

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

kevinshepherd — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 11:14:43 GMT

Hi Daniel,

So far nothing, just had my daily call with BT premium mail and the last bridge case is due to resolve at 17:43 this afternoon - precisely 72h after the Cardiff complaints team opened it.

My guess (based on past week) is that they will get to 72h (is that their SLA?) and just close the case rather than have their KPIs affected.

Let's hope I'm wrong, and I can post some good news here...

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

licquorice — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 11:24:12 GMT

There is no point in talking to the Premium mail team now the mods are on the case.

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

kevinshepherd — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 13:24:16 GMT

Thanks - noted.

Hopefully the chap in the Cardiff complaints centre hasn't seen that the mod has stepped in and therefore decided not to follow up from their end. I was disappointed to not have received any contact from him or his 'email guru' today. They seemed so sincere - but as said most of the 15 BT names I have on my list now promise to follow up but never do unfortunately...

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

kevinshepherd — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 10:15:46 GMT

Good news ! They didn't close the Bridge case again without resolving the issue. Bad news, the issue is still not resolved and now has no fix-date.

At this point I start to think the issue isn't security at all, but that the mailboxes are orphaned, possibly even lost. I had this situation on one of my Exchange servers in the past. In theory it's just a case of re-linking then to the accounts - but the offshore team seem to not have even picked this up yet...

Whatever it is, it's got BT stumped for 9 days now, and no feedback from the mods for a while now 😞

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

kevinshepherd — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 16:53:42 GMT

Evening,

So today I was called by one of the BT Mods - which was a first so thanks for that.

The tech team thought they'd spotted the error - there was still a bar on the e-mail accounts. Was asked to try logging in again but still no joy as tomorrow starts day 10 of this saga...

BUT

The loop is different now, instead of going straight back to the login page I now get a message after successful login :

"You are not currently logged in to e-mail - click here to login" in a nice red box. Click the link and we're back to the usual loop.

They did force a password reset in the meantime. But all we have now is an extended loop.

I just wonder how these two BTid and email passwords are related. Can they be different?

When I was forced to do the password reset it asked which one I wanted to change - I just selected email - but it went ahead and changed the BTid password too.

What a mess...

I have even offered to go back to premium mail but seems that this is not even an option now (there goes my conspiracy theory) ....

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

kevinshepherd — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 18:36:23 GMT

Oh joy - now they've messed up the two new accounts that were working (albeit not SMTP - but using webmail or the BT mail app).

Do you happen to know if the moderators have a shared mailbox? I've got three threads from different mods but I'm not sure id when they are off-shift/sick/holiday - someone is getting the messages anyway?

Re: Premium email accounts all blocked since imported to broadband account - 1wk later - 3 bridge ca

kevinshepherd — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 10:01:48 GMT

Eureka, they have fixed 2 of the 5 most critical mailboxes. Thanks to David for his support in getting us this far. Whatever they did the mailboxes started to work properly (also the outbound SMTP issue seems solved).

@DanielS - would you be able to take over in getting the other 3 mailboxes that I've just PMd to you?

Thanks in advance. 10 days later we are getting somewhere...