I totally agree that this has been going on for years and that there is no need to adjust your setting that were working perfectly well before This is proven when as correctly stated the problem that BT wholeheartedly and repeatedly deny they ever had, magically resolves itself.
I have read pages and pages of user forums on this subject and it is quite frankly amazing that BT have any customers left and despite the agro of changing my email addresses again, they will certainly be loosing another once my current contract naturally expires.
The stance of BT Customer Services and I use the term lightly is quite simply if the email account works when access via the web then the problem must be with your own 3rd party software such as MS Outlook. When explained that the timeout and or repeated requests to re-enter user passwords etc has spread across 3 separate machines and only occurs on the BT email accounts falls on deaf ears. Again it would not seem unreasonable to deduce that the problem is BT's end as at some point it resolves itself without any setting being altered.
The problem appears common to both POP3 and IMAP accounts so I would not recommend making any changes their either and stick with the system that best suits your use.
It beggars belief that this problem continues to frustrate so many people to date and appears to be ongoing. MS Outlook must surely be the ultimate and most commonly used email software but BT never really seemed to have mastered it!
