Is there any hope?

[#1]

We have been without working email since Tuesday 7 August and are beginning to lose faith in PlusNet ever being able to get it working again for us.

The story is complex but I will try to explain it briefly...

We have had a Force9 account for many years which included Broadband with email. Force9 hosted a domain for our family which is surname.co.uk.

We moved to a rural home four years ago and continued with the Force9 account with our domain hosted but we had to use methods other than broadband to access our email due to the distance from our house to the exchange. But no worries, we could use POP3 over 4G and IMAP over WiFi when away from home. Sending with the outgoing server relay.force9.net worked fine.

It all went wrong on Tuesday 7 August when we received an email from PlusNet announcing "Your broadband product change is now complete”. We had not been consulted about any product change so we rang up and asked what it was and were told that we could no longer have broadband because we were not using it, but that this would not cause us any loss of service because our domain would still be hosted OK.

Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

We were immediately unable to send any emails using the outgoing relay.

Eventually we found out that we needed a broadband account so that we could log onto the outgoing server so we asked for our broadband contract to be reinstated.

Rather than reinstating our broadband account, PlusNet have reinstated someone else's account with the same surname as us. We can only log onto the wrong account - which is a PlusNet account for a different family (Janet and John - not their real names).

Our domain has completely vanished.

We have been given default passwords for our mailboxes, which have apparently been reinstated, but as we cannot log onto our account we have no access even to the default emails sent to our mailboxes or to any domain emails that might miraculously arrive in the mailboxes.

PlusNet keep asking us to check our configuration.

We currently have no domain, no incoming emails and no access to our account, if it still exists. We do have access to the account of Janet and John, which is a GDPR no-no.

I have composed a complaint letter which I will post tomorrow, which includes the following:

Please provide us with assurance that you will:

1.    Consult with Customers in future before making changes to the product that you supply them with.
2.    Provide full information as to the consequences that any product change will make when consulting with Customers.

Incidentally, we have found the telephone support staff at PlusNet very polite and helpful. What we doubt is that PlusNet actually employ any technical staff who can unravel the web of software and configuration chaos that they have created.

Can anyone reassure me that our technical issues can be resolved?

[#2]

Hi @totterdell,

Firstly, welcome to the forums and I am extremely sorry you've had nothing but problems recently. I'm going to try my best to explain what's happened, why it's happened and how I believe the issue should now be, for the most part, fixed. The problem is actually quite complex so I'm going to break it down as much as possible. 

Why the issues started:

As part of Plusnet procedure and also requirements set by the regulator, checks are regularly performed to make sure services that are being billed for are being used. If they are not then they are ceased as we unable to bill customers for services not used. This is initially why your broadband services were ceased and the account changed to a generic account (to accommodate your other services). Unfortunately the person that has done that has changed it to the wrong account type - a Plusnet branded one which has then broken all the Force9 services on your account.

To clarify this is why you received the account change email. Unfortunately the problems have then become compounded when you've spoken to the support desk, that's not to say anyone has necessarily done anything wrong; the correct processes, and the majority of the correct advice has been given, but ultimately nothing would have been able to fix the problem without reversing that account change that happened in August and that technicality has been missed by everyone.  

I'd like to clarify during this process your domains were not lost, they were and are still are listed on your account. 

The only thing I'm not sure about is the logging in and being able to see someone else's details. I say this because until today your account hasn't had a portal login component so would never have allowed you to login (which also explains your inability to access any of the Webmail systems you have mentioned). 

What I've done to fix the problem:

I've reverted the account to the original account it was on. This means you will have a multitude of emails about account changes, there is nothing I can do to stop these as they will have been sent as I hopefully fixed the issues. I've individually removed all components relating to Plusnet and manually re-added all components back on the Force9 service. I've double checked and everything should be working as it was - to an extent, and I'll go into this shortly. 

Extra work that needs actioning:

You should now be able to login to the portal, see your domains, access them and also access the Webmail system. The only part of the problem that I will be unable to resolve is related to the individual mailboxes. I'll need you to recreate this on the website, this is because they will have been removed as part of my account change to rectify the base cause of the issues. I am unable to see any password details that were previously set on the mailboxes, so instead of creating them and adding generic passwords, I think it will be easier for you to login and create them again with the password you originally held on them. Once this is done your ability to use emails as you previously did should and you should be able to collect the ones that have been unable to be collected.

In the long term:

While the account has been returned to its original format eventually I would expect the broadband to be ceased again if it wasn't used because reporting would pick up that we were billing for a service that hadn't been used for a prolonged period. There are a couple of ways to work around this, the easiest being to plug a router in that makes a connection and just leave it there and don't use the service. The alternative is to move all your services away, as ultimately we're unable to host a phone only service. This would mean that without a broadband service eventually any other services would be picked up and you'd be instructed to migrate those away otherwise they would also be stopped. I realise this might not be the outcome you'd like, or the service you would expect to experience but unfortunately it's the outcome that would eventually occur. As part of this you'd probably need to think about moving your domains (and emails) to a dedicated hosting provider too. 

I can only apologise for what has happened but to make sure what I've done has 'fixed' the problems I'll need to you test everything and let me know the outcome. 

[#3]

Hi Joe

Thanks for getting involved in resolving this. You appear to have worked out what happened pretty accurately apart from the mysterious ability I had of logging into the PlusNet account with the same surname. That has stopped now so was possibly related to their having a PlusNet account with the same username as our Force9 account.

It sounds like we may have to move our domain and email hosting from PlusNet/Force9 which is a bit disappointing as we are in Sheffield (just) and have been with PlusNet since the early days.

Many years ago, when PlusNet was down by the canal, I called in to the office to get a technical issue resolved and the MD at the time, accompanied by a couple of his dogs, took me on a tour of the server room. He said they never had visitors so was quite glad to meet a customer.

[#4]

@totterdell I'm glad to hear Plusnet have managed to restore your Force9 email functionality..Albeit depending on the presence of a fragile broadband presence.

With regards to this, did the Superfast South Yorkshire processes totally pass you by? I have in mind not-spots and the USO commitments which I read about though, on a personal level, haven't needed to study closely.

[#5]

Thanks spraxyt

We are trying to get a Pine Media microwave link installed, as part of the South Yorkshire scheme. This is taking some time!

Our domain is working again, which is great, but for some reason we are now unable to access Ruth's emails.

We are using surname+ruth and the password that is configured for her mailbox plus imap.force9.net and port 143. We are getting "your username or password is incorrect" on two devices. This was working until 6 Sept from 3 Sept but now no longer works.

Any idea why this doesn't work now?

Nick

[#6]

Hope getting a microwave link installed progresses soon. Is that to feed several properties or just you?

For the problem mailbox I suggest trying to log into webmail using that username string and password. If that works, along with sending and receiving you know the mailbox is set up correctly.. Otherwise you would have to go into Manage My Mail and reset the password for that mailbox. Then try webmail again.

Once webmail works try your client email program again. If that still fails you could try deleting the password for that username from the client's password store. Trying again would normally then advise a password is required, request it and ask if you want it stored. I think you might guess the answer to that is "yes". Hopefully all would then be well.

Otherwise I would try completely removing the problem email account from the email client. For good measure then restart the PC, go into the email client and set the account up from scratch. Be prepared to overtype some (most) of the filled in suggestions which are likely to be wrong.

Hope this fixes the problem.

[#7]

Hi @totterdell

Thanks for getting in touch.

I can only echo @spraxyt 's excellent advice on this one.

Did you manage to get this up and running in webmail? 

Best wishes,

Dave

[#8]

Hi Dave

Thanks for the message.

We are still struggling with Ruth's mailbox. We have tried changing the password a few times but still no joy. Can't log into her mailbox on the webmail either.

I have made a new mailbox and that works fine so I wonder if there is some sort of corruption with Ruth's. The other two are fine using POP3, IMAP or Webmail but Ruth is just not there.

I am tempted to delete her mailbox and recreate it but would rather not in case there is anything in it that she might like to read.

Perhaps you could have a rummage?

Cheers Nick

[#9]

Hi @totterdell, I can't see any issues this side that might prevent you from logging into the 'ruth' mailbox. 

When logging into Webmail , have you tried using both 'username+ruth' and the full email address as the username?