Email Archive failure

[#1]

@AlexD - can you get these issues looked at please?

[#2]

My saved emails folders and emails have now been restored much to my relief as you only keep things that you need and that included holiday details/documents and financial documents which would have been difficult to replace. Plusnet told me that they had sent 3 warning emails which were on their system but I never received any of them on my pc, ipad or phone - and I've rechecked now that my emails have been restored..........nothing!!

If you set up your email account under the IMAP protocol (as opposed to POP3) your email folders will sit on the Plusnet server (not on your pc) so you need to set up archive folders (this pc only) to solve this problem otherwise you might have the same problem and, believe me, when all your saved folders disappear with no warning it is not a good feeling!!

Anyway thanks to the Plusnet people who got it sorted - not happy that it took a week but at least it's sorted.   

[#3]

Have a look at http://www.broobles.com/imapsize/ which will not only tell you the total size of your mailbox(s), but also has an option for incremental backups of your mailbox to local disk with each email being stored as a .eml file. I tend to run it roughly weekly just after I've deleted all the message I don't need to keep. You select which folders to backup so you could create special folders which you move the messages to be kept and just back those up.

[#4]

Hi,

Thanks for that - I'll have a look at it.

[#5]

---

@oldboy wrote:

Plusnet told me that they had sent 3 warning emails which were on their system but I never received any of them on my pc, ipad or phone - and I've rechecked now that my emails have been restored..........nothing!!

---

What the support agent told you was technically correct - 3 warning tickets will have been raised (see the PN ticket link below) which should have been emailed out to you.  It has been discovered that some were not actually sent.

[#6]

They said the same to me on the 3 warning emails....nothing received. They told me 24-48 hours to recover the emails to my account, almost 80 hours since logging the ticket, still no resolution. Contact chat after 48 hours told it should be fixed within 3 days which would be 72 hours. Rang Support desk for update this evening to be told close of play Tuesday which will be 144hours, 3 x longer than what they first told me. 

[CSA Removed]:The estimated response time to unarchive an email ia 3 working days
[CSA Removed]:But i will send a note to speedy it up from our network team

Clearly speeding it up with the network team has slowed it down!!! Asked for the issue to be escalated and they advised email team don't work weekends. Why say 24-48 hours or 3 days when they clearly know the teams don't work weekends. Poor poor service from Plusnet. 

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): CSA name(s) removed (to an area staff can see) as per Forum rules.

[#7]

If Plusnet actually cared about users they would have realised that many people had had their emails archived without warning, restored all those mailboxes without being asked and having made sure the notices were working sent out new notices giving people a reasonable time to take action before archiving them again.

[#8]

It took them almost 7 days including a weekend to get mine sorted but I did get everything back and I then archived my folders onto my pc via Outlook so it can't happen again. The biggest issue was not receiving any warning emails even though PlusNet say they were sent - which they were not!! Hope you get sorted soon.

[#9]

Their Customer Support people don't seem to understand their own systems or the effect that their actions have on customers (or maybe they just don't care)  - any trust has now gone as far as I'm concerned.

[#10]

I have revived - and am now posting in - this thread because I suffered exactly the same problem back in early March as Bladerider and others.

On 15 March I got an email from Plusnet into my (non-Plusnet) alternative email contact account claiming (inaccurately) that I had already been contacted several times about the amount of email in my Plusnet webmail Inbox, and that all my emails would be archived and deleted within 30 days.  Panic stations!

Sure enough, when I checked, all my emails had vanished.

Long story short, I raised a ticket with the Plusnet customer service people and - after some delay - they "unarchived" my emails.  I have since weeded them to reduce the size of my Inbox.

But this episode revealed two other issues, neither of which has been addressed by Plusnet.

First, Plusnet has now admitted (as indicated in posts in this thread) that in fact the warning messages they claimed to have sent out were not in fact delivered.  So I, and many others, were evidently taken totally by surprise by the 'unannounced' removal/archiving of emails.  I'd like to see a proper explanation and a proper apology for such unilateral and damaging action.  For some people the loss of emails could be catastrophic.

Second, and this is an entirely separate failure, when this blew up back in March I wanted to raise and discuss the issue here in this Community forum.  I found it impossible to login, and the 'password reset' facility did not work.  I raised it with Plusnet via a ticket, and the matter has been ignored and the ticket closed.  So I am only now able to participate and post in the Community site forums because I have had to reinvent myself with a new username and new login (as described in this separate feedback thread ).

So I'm not greatly impressed by Plusnet's quality of customer service. 

As regards the original problem of unannounced archiving of emails, as well as explanation and apology from Plusnet, I'd like to see some effective action to avoid or deal with the issue. One obvious step, already suggested in this thread, is for the Plusnet webmail site to have a clear "capacity indicator" on the Inbox page.  Most other webmail providers (and cloud storage providers like Dropbox and photosites like Flickr) have such a feature.  If Plusnet wishes to set a limit on the size of webmail inboxes, they should make that clear and provide such a monitoring facility.

As for engaging in further forum discussion here, I will have to wait and see in a day or two whether Plusnet will recognise and allow me, now that I have reinvented myself with a new username, to log in again to this site!

[#11]

Hii @br1anst0rm, I'm  really sorry for the issues you've experienced with our support and I'm sorry that your e-mails were archived without notification. 

@br1anst0rm wrote:

First, Plusnet has now admitted (as indicated in posts in this thread) that in fact the warning messages they claimed to have sent out were not in fact delivered.  So I, and many others, were evidently taken totally by surprise by the 'unannounced' removal/archiving of emails

We were made aware of an issue recently where customer's were not told about exceeding their usage, no excuses here that's our fault. We believed they were being sent as usual, but posts on these boards suggested differently so we investigated and subsequently found and resolved the issue.

To be clear, it's unacceptable that we archived your emails without warning, but we didn't know that the notifications weren't going out.

That being said the email size limits have always been the same, and whilst we endeavour to let you know when you're over your usage allowance, ultimately it's your responsibility to remain within the fair usage policy and failure to do so can result in your email's being archived. 

 I'd like to see a proper explanation and a proper apology for such unilateral and damaging action.  For some people the loss of emails could be catastrophic.

I hope you accept the above apology and explanation of the problem. I'd also like to point out for those for whom the loss of email is catastrophic, that they should take regular backups of their mailboxes, and that if the need arises I'm also able to rush through the restoration of specific users mailboxes on an adhoc basis.

Second, and this is an entirely separate failure, when this blew up back in March I wanted to raise and discuss the issue here in this Community forum.  I found it impossible to login, and the 'password reset' facility did not work.  I raised it with Plusnet via a ticket, and the matter has been ignored and the ticket closed. 

As mentioned in the linked thread we moved over to a Lithium platform a few years ago,  it required people to re-register, we emailed customers to notify them of the change and posted the upcoming change in the community boards, that being said I know it must be frustrating when you know you have log in details but they're not working and you can't reset your passwords. 

As for the support agent closing your ticket there are two points to discuss here

1. It looks like the agent believed your issue to be resolved (I'm guessing that they only skimmed the ticket) once the email was restored they closed it without answering your question regarding the forum. I've provided feedback to the agents manager this morning.
2. Our call centre staff are not able to provide support for forum log in queries,making a new account and letting our highly skilled and impartial moderators take a look, or messaging me directly is the best way to discuss forum issues.

As regards the original problem of unannounced archiving of emails, as well as explanation and apology from Plusnet, I'd like to see some effective action to avoid or deal with the issue. One obvious step, already suggested in this thread, is for the Plusnet webmail site to have a clear "capacity indicator" on 

 I'll pass this feedback on to the people responsible for e-mail, but  want to be open and upfront here and state that we're unlikely to add new features to mail until we've fixed the issues that it currently has. 

[#12]

If you put something in webmail to display the current usage it is likely that would only apply to the current mailbox. For users with multiple mailboxes that doesn't really help.

There is obviously a process that runs (daily?) to calculate the user's total usage across all mailboxes. Could that figure not be saved and displayed on the member centre?

[#13]

Thanks, @JonoH , for that very full and honest reply.  My initial exasperation has now faded away.

As regards the problem of logging in to the Community site, it now seems clear that this was a consequence of the shift (of which I was unaware) to the new Lithium platform.  The suggestion I've made in the other thread is that radical or fundamental changes to services should actually be notified directly to all members as a "user notification", not only to those who (unlike me) signed up for marketing messages.

It's entirely reasonable and fair for Plusnet to limit the size of email inboxes.  But - as @jelv has since noted, if Plusnet is monitoring this in any case, then it doesn't seem unreasonable to share the information with customers in some way.  Many email providers and other data-storage services (eg Flickr) have a gauge or display on the user's home page giving a continuous live reading of space-usage.  Surely it's not difficult to set up the same thing for Plusnet webmail?  Especially with multiple inboxes, or if you save emails into folders on the webmail site, it is really very difficult for the user to know when the capacity-limit is being approached.

[#14]

---

@br1anst0rm wrote:

Thanks, @JonoH , for that very full and honest reply.  My initial exasperation has now faded away.

Absolutely no problem, I always try to be as honest and candid as possible especially when we've clearly dropped the ball.

As regards the problem of logging in to the Community site, it now seems clear that this was a consequence of the shift (of which I was unaware) to the new Lithium platform.  The suggestion I've made in the other thread is that radical or fundamental changes to services should actually be notified directly to all members as a "user notification", not only to those who (unlike me) signed up for marketing messages.

I agree we should have (and I believe we did) send the email to all customers that had an account open, However I'm sorry if that's not the case as I can't be 100% sure as the person who owned the migration has now moved on to pastures new. I can certainly say though that we work hard to maintain the community and any future changes we'd really want to mitigate the number of lost users and the best way to do that would of course be to tell them ALL that we're moving 

It's entirely reasonable and fair for Plusnet to limit the size of email inboxes.  But - as @jelv has since noted, if Plusnet is monitoring this in any case, then it doesn't seem unreasonable to share the information with customers in some way.  Many email providers and other data-storage services (eg Flickr) have a gauge or display on the user's home page giving a continuous live reading of space-usage.  Surely it's not difficult to set up the same thing for Plusnet webmail?  Especially with multiple inboxes, or if you save emails into folders on the webmail site, it is really very difficult for the user to know when the capacity-limit is being approached.

I 100% agree with @jelv and yourself that this would be useful, I've raised this with the products team who've told me that they've previously asked for development time to implement this solution but there was no availability at that time. We're going to push for it again and see if we can get this added.

---