topic Re: Email switched off in Email

Email switched off

jandjmp — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 09:23:44 GMT

I am switching providers on the 13 December but Plusnet have discontinued my email on the 27 November now I cannot send or receive emails and cannot access my saved emails can any one help?

Re: Email switched off

Townman — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 09:46:43 GMT

Did you request that the account be down-graded to email only? It takes 3-5 working days.

Email only accounts

When your account is cancelled, any additional services you have such as email, web-space, cgi-service, etc. will stop working. If you want to retain your email service after your account is closed, you must advise Plusnet before the account is closed. There used to be a charge for email only accounts, but they are now free of charge.

Resurrecting an account as email only requires manual intervention from both yourself and Plusnet. The initial stage in account resurrection gets the default email address restored. You then need to setup any secondary Plusnet email address(es) yourself, at which point you'll be able to once again send and receive emails from those addresses.

If you have secondary email address(es), after you have recreated those email addresses, you will need to ask that their contents are restored by updating the existing thread or try posting on the generic email restore topic. Please note that these backups are kept for 30 days only.

The process should go something like this...

Prior to your account being closed, you must tell Plusnet that after your account is closed you wish to retain the account as email only - contact the Customer Options Team - agents receive few requests for this, so if there are any doubts refer the agent to KBMS article #3349
You need to make a note of all of your Plusnet email address(es) by going to manage my mail at https://plus.net/email
Your account is terminated
Plusnet resurrect the account as email only
Plusnet will restore the default mailbox - you might need to change the name before the @ symbol to what you had before
You recreate any secondary email address(es) and then request that their contents are restored
Plusnet restore the secondary mailbox(es) content

Everything should then work as it did previously, however please note that emails sent to the email address(es) between the account being closed and the email addresses being recreated might...

Be returned to the sender as un-routable (no such domain)
Be returned to the sender as undelivered (no such addressee)
All be delivered to the default mailbox if catch-all is enabled

Re: Email switched off

jandjmp — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 09:55:37 GMT

Hi, Thank you for your reply, having the email closed after my contract ends was expected the problem is that the email was closed two weeks before that. Now I cannot get OTP's to change the email on other accounts so I have to call each one to do it

Plus I have had no chance to save my old emails.

Re: Email switched off

jab1 — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 09:55:59 GMT

Good point, @Townman , but the OP is not scheduled to move until 13/12 - surely everything should be as normal until then?

Re: Email switched off

Townman — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 13:12:52 GMT

Sorry, I missed the reference to the date.

Is the account still operative? There have been cases of account termination jumping the gun!

Re: Email switched off

TheMightyAJ — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 13:25:47 GMT

Hi @jandjmp,

I'm very sorry to hear that the account was closed down earlier than expected. I'm afraid that once an account has been closed down, we're not able to restore the mailboxes associated with it. Please accept my deepest apologies for any inconvenience that this may have caused.

Re: Email switched off

jandjmp — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 13:48:44 GMT

Thank you for your help.

Plusnet have apologised but that does not help my position I still have the hassle of contacting every one with my old email address and lost all my emails.

Re: Email switched off

Townman — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 15:37:29 GMT

Superuser escalation

This topic has been escalated by one of the Superusers; please allow time for Plusnet to respond before commenting further.

Escalation does not imply progressing this matter will be given priority, nor that a different outcome will result.

Reason for escalation: Review response

Re: Email switched off

LaurenB — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 19:11:51 GMT

Hiya @jandjmp, where a request was made to keep the account as mail only before closure (and we closed it too early) we can raise a request to get the account changed.

I have raised a task for this to be actioned though please note it can take 3-5 working days to be actioned. I'll keep an eye on this for you and let you know once my task has been picked up.

If the account can be restored as mail only, then once done you would need to re-add any mailboxes you had after which point we can request the mail is restored.

I'll keep you updated on this.

Re: Email switched off

LaurenB — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 14:19:42 GMT

Hiya @jandjmp, just an update.

The initial task I raised was rejected by the team but I have since raised a new one pushing back on this due to it being stopped too soon.

I'll let you know once I have any further update but I'm still currently waiting on the new task being picked up.

I'm sorry for the problems this causes in the meantime.

Re: Email switched off

LaurenB — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 09:36:09 GMT

Good Morning @jandjmp, I'm sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

I have this morning received an update from the team that the account is now mail only. Only the default mailbox will be added as part of this and so if it was named something different you'll need to log in to the member centre and amend it. Once done, let us know and we can request to have mail restored for you.

If you had any additional mailboxes that you still need, you will need to add these also and again if you let me know once done, we can request any mail is restored for you.

Re: Email switched off

jandjmp — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 15:17:32 GMT

I have been unable to reply to you until now as not only was my email switched off but my internet access was also switched off! (I was not a happy)

I now have internet with BT and I can access my old PlusNet email's but I am still not receiving any new email's (I have tried sending one to myself from BT).

You have been very helpful but I am not pleased.

jandjmp

Re: Email switched off

jab1 — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 16:40:46 GMT

@jandjmp Do you get any reports from your BT email to say your message to your PN inbox was undelivered?

Re: Email switched off

jandjmp — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 17:04:22 GMT

Hi, Yes I get unable to deliver message Invalid Recipient

Re: Email switched off

jab1 — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 17:10:48 GMT

Is your mailbox the only one on the account or do you have others? Did you rename the default mailbox?

Re: Email switched off

jandjmp — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 19:49:03 GMT

Hi, Thank you for your message.

The answer to your questions is no to both I just have the default address.

My problem is that plusnet switched me off, they have now put my email back on but I am not recieving emails. LaurenB from PlusNet help has been dealing with it.

Many thanks

Re: Email switched off

jab1 — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 19:55:49 GMT

OK, I understand. Unfortunately I cannot explain (or understand) why you cannot receive email - can you send from that address? If you can, I can only suggest that @LaurenB (or one of her Help team colleagues) are the only ones who can investigate the situation. Hopefully now I have tagged them again, they will pick this up. Again, my apologies for not being able to assist, but like you, I am only a Community member.

Re: Email switched off

adam945 — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 19:57:56 GMT

Hey @jandjmp

Thanks a lot for keeping in touch. Are you using webmail or your own third party client? I can see three emails on our server, all of which are from 27/11/2021. Can you also please send me a PM with your full Plusnet email address?

Re: Email switched off

Townman — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 00:11:12 GMT

@jandjmp wrote:

I now have internet with BT and I can access my old PlusNet email's but I am still not receiving any new email's (I have tried sending one to myself from BT).

I get unable to deliver message Invalid Recipient

I feel the need to clarify some details here, rather than presume them...

You are now with BT as your ISP
Connecting via your new ISP you can access your PlusNet mailbox - is that using a PC based mail client? POP3 or IMAP?
Is your belief that you are not RECEIVING new emails based solely on you being unable to SEND any via your PlusNet email account? In other words have you tried sending an email via another email account, independent of that associated with your closed PlusNet account?

Invalid recipient can be a deceptive error message, especially when connecting from a third party ISP connection to PlusNet's relay servers. To successfully use PlusNet's relay servers when you do not have a PlusNet account, the following need to be true...

You must have an email only account which is permitted to use the relay servers - some (legacy) email only accounts do not allow access to the relay servers - these should not be in use any more, but there was a recent case of a downgrade to email only being done to the wrong type of email only account
The email application configuration for the SMTP server MUST use account authentication
The IP address of the ISP used to connect to the internet must not be on any black list

You can eliminate all of the variables here by running a SMTP connection diagnostic using TELNET ... it is a little tedious, but it will remove the guess work over what is actually going wrong here. See below.

Test SMTP authentication

Email programs often report username / password error for issues not actually related to those being wrong, but for other connectivity issues. Such can be very frustrating when you are convinced that they are correct. Testing SMTP authentication through a command line interface can deliver a more precise error message. The following describes how to do this using TELNET.

This is not difficult, but you need the following resources which might be unfamiliar...

TELNET - this might need installing as an additional option, for Windows see enabling TELNET.
A code64 encoder / decoder such as this.

You can use TELNET to communicate direct with the SMTP server as follows...

Open the code64 encoder in a web browser and leave ready for use in the following steps.

Launch a windows command line window (DOS window) - press windows-key+R - type CMD into the run box - click OK

Enter...

telnet relay.plus.net 587

Press enter. Note if you use one of the other brand email services, use the appropriate SMTP server name for that brand. In response to SMTP server I'm here message, say 'HELLO'...

EHLO relay.plus.net

The SMTP server will then report what it can do after which tell the server you wish to authenticate...

AUTH login

The server should return the following, which is a base64 encoded string that requires your username:

334 VXNlcm5hbWU6

Use the code64 encoder to encode your username and paste it into the telnet window and press enter. For example:

bXl1c2VybmFtZQ==

The server should return the following, which is a base64 encoded string that requires your password:

334 UGFzc3dvcmQ6

Paste the base64 encoded password for the username. For example:

bXlwYXNzd29yZA==

The server will then report success or failure, any failure message should clearly indicate the reason for the failure. If the reason for the failure is not clear, please report back the message.

Close the SMTP / TELNET session by entering

quit

The session should look something similar to the below wherein your input is in bold...

220 avasout03 smtp relay.plus.net
EHLO relay.plus.net
250-avasout03 hello [your IP address], pleased to meet you
250-HELP
250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN
250-SIZE 104857600
250-PIPELINING
250-8BITMIME
250-STARTTLS
250 OK
AUTH LOGIN
334 VXNlcm5hbWU6
bXl1c2VybmFtZQ==
334 UGFzc3dvcmQ6
bXlwYXNzd29yZA==
235 ... authentication succeeded
quit
221 avasout03 smtp closing connection
Connection to host lost.

Here are some examples of failure responses...

535 ...authentication rejected [as username / password is wrong]
535 ...authentication rejected as source IP has a poor reputation
535 Too many SMTP auth failures. Please try again later.

There is one other possibility, but that would be very odd ... if the account is all OK and the access to the SMTP server is all OK and you can send emails successfully to other addressees, but not to your self, that would imply that the DNS routing details for your domain (youraccount.plus.com) have either been lost or have not replicated to your new ISP's DNS servers.

You could try running a nslookup query ...

Launch a DOS (CMD) window
Enter the following commands
- nslookup
- set type=mx
- yourplusnetaccount.plus.com

That should return something like ...

yourplusnetaccount.plus.com MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mx.avasin.plus.net

If you get something like ...

*** UnKnown can't find yourplusnetaccount.plus.com: Non-existent domain

Then the email account restoration is not complete ... and would explain the unable to deliver message Invalid Recipient response.

Re: Email switched off

jab1 — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 07:35:54 GMT

Thanks, @Townman