Mailbox capacity message and deleting emails

[#1]

Hi All, my first post here... Firstly, so sad to see Plusnet moving their "support" to a community forum.

Anyway, I received an email telling me my mailbox was filling up, but I cannot do anything about it (I have to use webmail to do it, and it just returns error after error). So I tried to raise a ticket (you know, the good old-fashioned way that actually worked!!!) but there is nowhere on the website to do it.  So I emailed support@plus.net, only to receive an auto response that I cannot do that. Fun part, the response included: "We prefer electronic 'tickets' to emails, this means that you can always see what updates have been made and check back over previous tickets too." But you cannot create tickets any more, so... 

Come on Plusnet - this is just damn frustrating.

[#2]

@joakims 

You are incorrect in stating that Plusnet are moving "support" to a community forum.

Customer support is available, as it always has been, by a freephone telephone service.

The forum facility simply gives opportunity for experienced existing customers to supplement Plusnet's existing facility.

There has never been an email access to support.

[#3]

@agedgopher. Thanks for your response. 

Whilst there has never been email access to support, one could always raise a support ticket in the past, as mentioned in the auto response from Plusnet. However, that option is no longer available, or if it is, it is buried deep in the website somewhere where no man nor beast can find it. Trying to find support on the website is, frankly, a nightmare - it simply loops you back and forth between FAQs and the account home page, without actually producing any relevant information., And yes, you can phone someone, but that means having time to hold on the phone forever and a day, which right now I don't have. If I could just raise a ticket, it would not be a problem.

So if you do not have the time to wait around for someone to answer the phone, the only access to "support" is here, as far as I can see.

And still my mailbox fills up and cannot be emptied...

[#4]

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@joakims wrote:

...one could always raise a support ticket in the past, as mentioned in the auto response from Plusnet.

---

The auto-response says "We prefer electronic 'tickets' to emails, this means that you can always see what updates have been made and check back over previous tickets too." That is true - it's just, as you correctly state, that you can't raise one yourself.

I don't agree with the policy, and it's been discussed to death on the forum in recent years, but Plusnet refuse to budge on the issue.

[#5]

I suspect the rationale behind it is because it makes commercial sense to prevent Joe User from creating tickets as it potentially avoids time wasters who'd raise a ticket at the drop of a byte.

[#6]

@joakims 

A warm welcome to the forums.  Your post seems to focus on not being able to raise a ticket, not on what help do you need?  Raising a ticket is not going to fix your mailbox nearly full issue.  You need to address that by doing some house keeping.

Yes the webmail interface can experience performance issues with large mailboxes, but have you followed the published mitigation measures which can be found at the top of the email forum board?  Why not tackle this problem by using an email client on your computer / tablet / phone?  if you insist on using webmail to do the deletes then there are ways of optimising this.

Culling mailbox contents

If you need to clean out your mailbox, may be because it is over quota, then as well as tidying up the inbox, you need to also look at the SENT ITEMS folder and then afterwards clear out the TRASH folder. However some times webmail performance can make this process very tedious, particularly if the delete action (actually a move to the trash folder) fails.

If you primarily want to delete emails, you can mitigate delete performance issues by doing an "immediate" delete (rather than a move to trash for deletion later) by holding down the SHIFT key when pressing the DEL key. This works in both webmail and most PC based email clients. WARNING SHIFT+DEL is not recoverable so be certain absolutely, that you do not need the email before pressing the buttons!

Alternatively, in webmail (Round Cube) Settings -> Server Settings there are some options worth exploring controlling how deletes are performed...

1. Flag the message for deletion instead of delete
2. If moving messages to "Deleted Items" fails, permanently delete them
3. Compact Inbox on logout

Setting these options and using them together will avoid the over heads of moving items to the trash folder when you wish to delete them. They will simply be greyed out and remain in the inbox list. After logging out of webmail, they will then be removed from the mailbox.

Whilst this might be highly proficient, it needs to be used with care, for when they are gone, they are gone. Note also that Plusnet house-keeping clears out the trash folder weekly.

[#7]

@Townman Many thanks for taking the time to respond and the helpful tips. Eventually I found time to phone support, but I still cannot clear out any messages because nothing is listed under webmail - all it returns is a blank screen. Support suggested setting the Sorting Column flag to None, which I have done. According to webmail, there are no messages in any other mailbox other than the Inbox.

I'll keep trying in there hope it will work one day...

[#8]

Slow webmail

There is a known gremlin in the third party Round Cube webmail program which can cause delays in listing emails - see the end user mitigation post at the top of the Email board here. It somewhat appears that any sorting or filtering on a large mailbox cripples the performance of RC webmail, where as the 'basic' webmail program (Squirrel Mail) is not affected. Using Squirrel Mail can be an effective way of accessing a mail box which is running slow with RC.

There is no necessity to restrict your access to your Plusnet email via the Plusnet Webmail interface. Virtually every IT device comes with an in-built email program which can be configured to access your Plusnet email service. See the setting up an email client guide.

Some have found logging into their mailbox using this third party webmail client - https://mail2web.com helpful in clearing out clutter from their mailboxes.