Monstrous new BT email upgrade & VPN

[kenyoj]

Yes there is a price increase underway for September JohnRH so this maybe your opportunity . Check it out at MoneySavingExpert News 2020 July. and published today

[DISRUPTED]

Yes, I still use POP3. If you read the POP3 RFC, downloading a message to the client marks it for deletion, closing the POP3 session then deletes it from the server.

Well, using POP3 you must have similarly enjoyed (or not) BTYahoo and BTMail moving downloaded messages to 'trash' for many, many years.

I'm not convinced messages are actually erased from the server, for one because I can still view stuff which should have 'gone' a long time ago. The RFC mentions them being removed from the maildrop. Then there's the RSET command which undoes deletes.

[Jules68]

It makes no sense to leave BT as a broadband supplier (if that's working well for you) just to get a 'better' email service (impossible to get a worse one). There are numbers of ways of getting alternative services (gmail is effectively forced on you if you have an android phone, and it's got a good calendar associated).

If you're going to have to change your primary etc. e-mail addresses do it to a service which isn't dependent on a particular broadband supplier (don't make the same mistake twice) - and keeping BT Broadband means that you continue to have their e-mail (without additional cost) until you have weaned all your contacts onto your new e-mail address.  If you must, drop out at the end of contract, when you have no cost issues (but note that changing supplier (and not just from or to BT) during Covid-19 has been a nightmare for  a number of the people I know who have tried to do it).

The terrible e-mail service is a very small part of what you get from BT. Allowing that tiny cart to lead the horse would be a mistake, unless you can find a better and cheaper network supplier. 

[licquorice]

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@DISRUPTED wrote:

Yes, I still use POP3. If you read the POP3 RFC, downloading a message to the client marks it for deletion, closing the POP3 session then deletes it from the server.

Well, using POP3 you must have similarly enjoyed (or not) BTYahoo and BTMail moving downloaded messages to 'trash' for many, many years.

It hasn't always done it, certainly not 'many many years', can't remember when it was introduced but not that long ago.

I'm not convinced messages are actually erased from the server, for one because I can still view stuff which should have 'gone' a long time ago. The RFC mentions them being removed from the maildrop. Then there's the RSET command which undoes deletes.

Which is presumably how the 'leave a copy of the message on the server' is implemented by issuing the RSET command.

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[CarolArmagh7]

Since the recent update, I have experienced 6 recurring problems and would welcome advice on how to clear them.

1.  When wanting to send or receive e-mails, the loading symbol will go on and on and the e-mails are not always received or sent. It is as if they are caught somewhere, and just keep sitting ready to be moved on, but that could be the case for several minutes and even then no movement. 

2.  When I send e-mails with attachments, I have little confidence that they will arrive with the attachments able to be opened by the recipients.  Even when sending straightforward word documents, by the time that the e-mail has actually been sent, the documents have ended up being renamed 'Part One', 'Part Two' and so on, and are impossible to open.  At other times e-mails with documents will leave my e-mail speedily and arrive safely, but I do not know when that is going to happen.  You will understand why I have lost confidence in this and how frustrating it is when you want to respond to other e-mails and to send new ones.

3.  I keep receiving the message 'You have New Messages' sometimes 15 minutes after the last e-mail has arrived and after I have opened it.  It is distracting because at times, when it is many minutes after I have checked, I think that perhaps this is a new message.  Why does that keep happening?  There was nothing of this before the update.

4.  When I want to e-mail someone who is in my contacts list, why has the new update meant that even though I type in the full name of the person, the e-mail addresses of all the people in my contacts box with the same first name will be listed and I have to keep scrolling down to find the surname which will be listed alphabetically.  This did not happen before the update.  It is such a nuisance and time consuming. 

5.  I used to be able to scroll up and down e-mails but there would seem to be no provision to do this, so when I want to read or re-read e-mails, I have to go to the  Inbox symbol and the Sent symbol on the left hand side instead of being able to scroll down up while in the e-mail body.  How can I do this once more? 

6.  I have contact groups and want to continue to send an e-mail with ease.  With one group contact of 50 people, normally I can send them within BCC  and can send the one e-mail at the the same time.  I have had to limp through, deleting to 30 people, then having to print out the list of who had received the first attempt, because they have not remained in the list shown in the BCC.  I ended up having to split the rest of the group and, finally, by the third e-mail, everyone would have received the e-mail.  It was not a long e-mail, there were no attachments, but that took such a long time to send.  It defeated the purpose of having a group contacts list. 

I have read others' concerns and complaints about the recent update. It really is not working well and BT must be aware of that by now.  I cannot be the only customer experiencing the problems listed above.  What have others done to sort them out, please?  With thanks for reading the whole way through my woes!

[Roboman]

Apart from all the other problems caused by this new BT email set-up, it has gone bonkers this morning!   I open up an email from Netflix and get Amazon.  I open an email from BT and get Nationwide. Open Nationwide and get Amazon and so on.   Can't BT see this has been a disaster and revert back to the old system until they have someone with the calibre to sort everything out?

[Jules68]

I don't think there is an option to back-migrate customers to BT Yahoo - though clearly any more migrations MUST STOP until BT can offer a working webmail service. Too many people are finding problems for the 'it's all in your set-up, you're the one with a problem, not BT Web Mail' to wash, despite clear attempts to run with that. Basically, if BT Yahoo (a web mail service) works then the problem isn't with the customer.

Edited to add - As I understand it, when BT started offering an Internet service with a portal it partnered with Yahoo - over time it cut back its relationship so that in the end only the e-mail service was still Yahoo based, and that eventually was sectioned off into a BT Yahoo service. BT was trying (and clearly failing) to develop its own Web Mail front end - when it thought (completely wrongly) it had done that it started to move customers off the service still supported by underlying Yahoo Mail and on to a stand-alone (fall down alone?) BT service. Presumably paying Yahoo less and less as customers were moved out. Once moved there was no option to move back, as the service wasn't BT's to play around with.

[DawnThomo]

Roboman, I thought that was just me! I've had that too! Just another glitch to add to the long list . . . 

[Roboman]

Sorry you had the same problem but relieved that it happened to others and not our fault, which BT seem to imply.

[CarianneM]

HELP! Since the update my contacts in my iPhone have all disappeared - I have tried deleting my email account and reloading it but no change.

I can see all my contacts are in my btinternet mail contacts but how can I merge them?