topic Re: Creaky sign-up process in Plusnet Feedback

Creaky sign-up process

keithl — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:35:51 GMT

The sign-up process disallows valid e-mail addresses of the format one.two.three@gmail.com, presumably because there are two dots before the @. The password form lets you put in five characters for the password, but requires 8 characters for the confirmation screenshot

Re: Creaky sign-up process

keithl — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:54:37 GMT

Because of the e-mail address problem described above, I had to let PlusNet generate an e-mail address and assign that to my account. I've now changed that address to the address I wanted to use during the sign up process, but I wanted to check the PlusNet-assigned address to see if an e-mail was sent to it during the sign-up process, perhaps with details about the order status. When I try to check the PlusNet e-mail address using webmail, I get this error message: "ERROR: Connection dropped by IMAP server.
".

Re: Creaky sign-up process

adamwalker — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 08:35:58 GMT

keithl,
It's a major concern to us if our signup journey is rejecting any kind of valid e-mail address so I am going to go away and test this now. With regards to the password the rule is between 8 and 16 characters so I'll be testing that too.
With regards to webmail it's not possible to log into it straight after signup, however I will test this against your account details to make sure it's working. I'll report back ASAP.
Adam.

Re: Creaky sign-up process

adamwalker — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 08:58:03 GMT

I've just attempted a few test sign ups out with a number of test e-mail addresses with 1, 1 or even 3 dots, all worked fine.
With regards to passwords the site does say "8 to 16 characters" as a guideline and would not let me enter any more or less. However the username can be between 5 and 16 characters so I'm not sure if you mean that perhaps.
As for your webmail I did get the same error as you I'm afraid so I have performed some account maintenance which seems to have resolved the problem.
We would appreciate it if you could give us some more details about what account type you were trying to signup for when you encountered these problems although we're struggling to find anything wrong.
Adam.

Re: Creaky sign-up process

keithl — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:06:00 GMT

Hi Adam, I was signing up for a Plusnet Value account. I don't want to post the e-mail address that was rejected here, but if you look at my account, it's the address which is now saved in my account details. I've checked webmail and I can now access it--thanks for that--but I notice that updates on my order are being sent to that plusnet address even though that address is not the one in my account details. I would prefer the order updates (and all other communication from Plusnet) to be sent to the e-mail address in my account details.
On a related note, I tried to get gmail to pull messages from the plusnet address using the pop server but it reported invalid login credentials. Is there anyway to get that working?
Regards,
Keith

Re: Creaky sign-up process

keithl — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:18:01 GMT

I've just had a look at the headers of the e-mails in webmail and I see that they were sent to the gmail e-mail address associated with my account and copied to the Plusnet address, but I haven't received them in gmail.

Re: Creaky sign-up process

keithl — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:26:15 GMT

I've just forwarded one of the e-mails manually through the webmail interface and showed up in gmail instantaneously.

Re: Creaky sign-up process

adamwalker — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:53:57 GMT

Hi Keith,
Unfortunately say why you might not have received any e-mails from us to your gmail address. I'll try sending you a ticket from your account, can you let us know if you receive the e-mail notification?
With regards to pulling mail via google from other addresses/servers this should just work fine. I'm just wondering when was the last time you tried this as you may have had authentication failures when trying to login before I completed the account maintenance I referred to earlier.

Re: Creaky sign-up process

keithl — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:13:42 GMT

Hi Adam, I can now pull e-mail to gmail using your pop3 server, but when I try to set up the SMTP server I get this message "Your other email provider is responding too slowly. Please try again later or contact the administrator of your other domain for further information. "
I haven't received the e-mail regarding the ticket yet.

Re: Creaky sign-up process

adamwalker — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:52:15 GMT

Hi again,
To be truthful I hadn't got round to sending that message yet but it should be with you now.
With regards to sending mail you won't be able to send via our server using gmail due to server restrictions.

Re: Creaky sign-up process

keithl — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:48:12 GMT

No sign of the e-mail, Adam.
I've received a text telling me to expect order to be completed on 31/8. The order tracker tells me to expect it to be completed after 12pm on 1/9. Any idea which is right?

Re: Creaky sign-up process

BenTrimble — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:13:54 GMT

Gmail often marks our emails as spam so if you check your spam folder, you should find some
The order tracker allows some extra time for us to receive notifications of your orders completing, and activate your account. However, this is normally a conservative estimate so I'd say the 31st is more likely.

Re: Creaky sign-up process

keithl — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:08:04 GMT

Gmail hasn't marked any mail from you as spam. If I manually forward mail via the webmail interface--which comes from your servers--it turns up in my gmail inbox immediately.

Re: Creaky sign-up process

mikko — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:35:21 GMT

Quote
(from Adam_Walker) With regards to passwords the site does say "8 to 16 characters" as a guideline and would not let me enter any more or less. However the username can be between 5 and 16 characters so I'm not sure if you mean that perhaps.

Going back to the 2nd part of keithl's original complaint, his screenshot definitely shows "password 5 - 16 characters" and "confirm password 8 - 16 characters". It does not show "user name 5 - 16 characters".

Re: Creaky sign-up process

keithl — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 18:49:29 GMT

That's the way I saw it at the time, when it gave me the error. I took Adam's reply to mean that 5-16 referred to the username (which is presumably the box off the top of the screenshot --i.e. the figures refer to the box above, not the box below. I can't remember now which way it was.