Email Update - *UPDATED 29/08/14*

[SeanD]

Hi Everyone

Thank you for your continued patience with us whilst we undertake the massive job of migrating all our customers over to BT Mail. 

We are regularly feeding back comments made on the forum to the email team so that they can get an understanding of the issues that customers are facing during and after they have been migrated.

 With the help of this team we are in a position to offer some updates on issues that some of you have experienced.  We will keep this thread at the top of the board and will look to update it when we have any new information to share.

To kick things off we have a number of updates that we can share with you today.

System Responsiveness

The performance and reliability of our service is something we take very seriously and we constantly develop our products to maximise performance and meet our customer's needs. Recently, some customers have reported issues with system reliability and responsiveness, including various error messages when trying to use the BT Mail service.

Last weekend we made some changes that we hope will improve this but we’ll continue to closely monitor the situation in the weeks ahead and deliver further updates to maximise performance as necessary.

BT Mail: Saving Email Preview Mode

There has been quite a lot of feedback relating to the fact that having changed the setting view for email preview, it’s not automatically saved and at next log in the user has to re-set it. This is a known defect.

We’re pleased to tell you that we delivered a fix for this last week. On changing your view mode, you will now be asked if you wish to save the new settings.

Alternatively, you can save your view mode by:

• Selecting Settings and then Mail from the left hand navigation
• Next select the 'default view' icon and your chosen view mode from the options presented
• Finally click Save 

Full advice can be found at http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/45781/c/346

BT Mail: Deletion of emails

This is another issue that has caused some frustration for customers. When deleting emails individually from your Inbox, you are returned to the top of your Inbox each time a selection is made.

We’re pleased to tell you that we delivered a fix for this last week and this should no longer happen but we’ll continue to monitor to ensure that no further issues exist.

BT Mail: Email Send Limits

Although we cannot share them, BT Mail email send limits are set with reasonable limits for residential use. We do however recognise that there may be quite legitimate reasons why some customers may need to send regular emails to multiple users i.e. secretary of local sports club or similar

If you are facing difficulties in sending emails to multiple recipients please try sending your email to smaller recipient groups through more than one email.

BT Phishing Emails

BT Security is reporting increased volumes of reports that directly relate to 2 new BT phishing scams. One of these

does not contain any links but a HTML attachment that then takes you to the phishing page.

We are happy to report that our security team has already successfully closed the phishing site concerned. More advice on phishing can be found at www.bt.com/phishing

Paging through emails

A number of customers have reported loss of functionality for paging through their emails. We can't promise that we can fix this immediately but can assure you that this is one area that we are looking to improve ASAP.

We’ll keep you updated on progress in this area.

Please check back for more detail.

Managing Spam

Some customers are reporting a change in behaviour with the way in which their Spam filtering is now working with some genuine emails being marked as Spam and others previously flagged by the customer as Spam, appearing in their Inbox.

If an email you are expecting has not been received we’d strongly recommend that you first check your Spam folder. If the email is there, remember you need to mark it as Not Spam. Likewise if you are now receiving email into your Inbox that is Spam, remember you need to mark it as such.

Error 0781

A have had some reports of an error 0781 message when trying to send email when using webmail which we believe was due to Norton security software that some users were running.

We’ve made a change that we expect to resolve this but will continue to monitor to ensure that this has worked.

Cheers

Sean

***Edit - Changed the title of the thread to show updated date***

[SeanD]

Hi Guys,

We are pleased to offer a few more updates on BT Mail.

BT Mail: Session Timeout

A session timeout security feature was introduced as part of the new BT Mail service that will be quite a significant change of experience for BT customers who are used to unlimited sessions. This was introduced as a security measure to help protect customers who regularly use Wi-Fi and potentially unsecured networks to access their email.

Our BT Mail product has, from launch, had a 20 minute timeout setting. Recently, as we have been migrating existing email customers across to the new platform, they are telling us that they find that timeout limiting. Customer feedback is important to us and therefore we plan to increase the timeout soon.

Extended Log In 

A number of customers have selected the extended log in feature on BT Mail. This means that for an extended period of time, each time they wish to access their BT Mail account they won't be required to log in with their email address and password.

The session timeout feature does not log the customer out of BT Mail; it just closes the email browsing session. Customers with the extended log in feature selected need to click on the Email link on BT.com to be taken straight back into BT Mail.

Changing landing Page from What’s New 

As part of our BT Mail service we’ve introduced the What’s New page, this is the page you will see when you first log into your email.

If you’d prefer to directly access your Inbox, then you can do so.

1.        Select the Settings tab from your toolbar
2.        Next select the Mail tab from your left hand navigation bar
3.        Now select the tick box to go straight to your Inbox at log in
4.        Finally, don’t forget to save

When you next log into your email you should now land straight in your Inbox

Logging  In to BT Mail 

A number of customers are finding the new log in processes confusing.

There are two ways in which you can access your emails.

Firstly, you can select the My BT link in BT.com, you’ll be asked for your BT ID and password. This doesn’t have to be a @btinternet.com email address. Logging in here will give you access to your MY BT account including all your personal BT Mail email addresses so if you have more than one, you don’t have to log in separately to view them.

Alternately, if you only have one email address that you wish to access, you can select the Email link on BT.com, you’ll be asked for your @btinternet.com email address and password.

Cookies

Some customers are reporting that they are continually having cookie pop up messages

The cookie settings are part of the /home/bt.com configuration and are browser specific.
http://img01.bt.co.uk/s/assets/290414/globalheader/cookies/more-about-cookies.html

In Internet Explorer there is a per site privacy option where users can disable specific websites from keeping cookies. Similarly in Chrome > advanced settings users can define which websites can save cookies.

So depending on how the user has set up his client, he may be prompted each time to accept these settings.

Managing Spam 

Some customers are reporting a change in behaviour with the way in which their Spam filtering is now working with some genuine emails being marked as Spam and others previously flagged by the customer as Spam, appearing in their Inbox.

If customers have previously marked emails from a particular sender as spam but continue to receive emails from them they should try Blocking the Sender. Advice on how to do this can be found by clicking the Help link within BT Mail.

Some customers have reported that the limit on blocking senders is currently insufficient so we’re pleased to tell you that we’ll shortly be making a change to increase the volumes of blocked senders you can add to your account.

If an email you are expecting has not been received we’d strongly recommend that you first check your Spam folder. If the email is there, remember you need to mark it as Not Spam. Likewise if you are now receiving email into your Inbox that is Spam, remember you need to mark it as such.

Customers can also add senders to their Safe Senders list and this will ensure that emails received from this source are delivered to their Inbox or a folder of their choice. Again advice on how to do this can be found by clicking the Help link within BT Mail.

If you’re still having problems, please get in touch 

[SeanD]

Hi Everyone,

Below are a few more updates from our email team.

Attachments  

BT Mail supports email attachments of up to 25MB but a few customers have told us that they have had problems when trying to open or attach larger documents.

If you've experienced issues with this feature, please get in touch as we need further examples to help our investigations.

Using Drafts  

When saving an email to ‘draft’, in order to edit or complete your email, you will need to click on the “Edit” link from the Toolbar.

Fonts 

Through feedback, our customers have told us that not only would they like to see a wider range of fonts available through BT Mail but they'd also like to be able to set a default. As we take all customers feedback seriously, we are currently looking to improve this feature and meet our customers expectations.

We can't confirm when we'll be in a position to make these changes just yet but can promise you we're working on it.

Folders 

Following customer feedback we're pleased to tell you that we've now added some “Add” and “Delete” buttons next to the folder options so that you can more easily create and delete sub folders.

Line Spacing  

we've had a few customers complaining about the double line spacing when composing emails, with no option to change the display.

We believe this could be a browser dependant experience but are continuing to investigate whether anything can be done to address this for those affected customers.

If you've experienced this problem, please let us know and the browser you're using.

Forwarding an email 

When forwarding an email, customers were presented with two options; to forward as an attachment or to forward inline. Many customers were confused by this so following your feedback, we've now removed the options which we believe simplifies the action for you.

Importing Contacts from Facebook & Twitter 

At this stage we have no immediate plans to provide this facility but we'll continue to monitor feedback and develop the product to meet our customer's needs.