My webmail has been archived by Plusnet. Help needed to restore them.

[#1]

I was warned by Plusnet that my Webmail box was more than the 1Gb allowed and told to make it smaller.  I tried at least ten times to do it, but the Webmail servers were always busy whenever I tried and the Webmail would just crash.  I tried regularly for a week genuinely.  Now I have discovered that just about everything has been archived, despite my efforts.

I have a series of monthly folders into which I transfer email as it comes in.  I used to keep a year's worth of these folders, but because I keep being asked to reduce size, I have been deleting older ones from time to time, and now only have about six month's worth in monthly folders.

Can someone from Plusnet please restore some of the folders as I am lost without them.  Everything was removed, not just a few of the monthly folders to bring me down to below the 1Gb.  I really do not understand why Plusnet had to remove everything, especially as it is not my fault that Webmail kept crashing due to heavy demand, presumably due to lockdown.  I have had a big increase in email traffic since lockdown, as I expect most people have.

1 Gb of data these days is not much especially when Gmail offers 15 Gb.  I am going to have to migrate away from Webmail but I cannot bear the thought of everything that is involved in doing so.  That's another nail in the Plusnet coffin for me, because if I have to do that, I might just as well change ISP while I am about it.

[#2]

@shermans Not a great help, but why do you not use an email client - that way you could save as much as you wanted locally?

[#3]

@shermans 

The issue with webmail being slow is a known issue if you are using the Round Cube webmail interface rather then the basic one.

See this thread on the forum on the fix: Standard Webmail (Round Cube) slow performance mitigation 

Personally I never ever use webmail, I have mine delivered to my computer, that way there is no real limit.

[#4]

No, I am using just the basic webmail.

What is interesting is that Plusnet stopped the ticket system in preference to using social media and this forum as a way of raising tickets.  Interestingly, since I raised this issue and asked for my webmail to be restored, I have enjoyed absolute total silence from Plusnet.  Not a dicky bird.  So much for being better than the ticket system. Wash dirty linen in public when there is a problem and then do nothing about it.  I call it rank hypocrisy.

[#5]

@shermans Whilst I agree strongly that the removal of the ticket system is/was a retrograde step, to be fair to Plusnet, they are operating with reduced staffing, and has been said, they are prioritising those with NO CONNECTION or vulnerable individuals.

Whilst losing your email is a severe pain, it is not quite in the same league.

As has been said, relying on webmail, especially given the small storage allocated, is not the best policy (IMHO) and if you need to keep a largish volume, it is prudent to use a mail client, which will allow for local storage and avoid this issue.

I have had a home PC/laptop now  for 20+ years, and one of the first things I did was to enable Outlook Express - the Windows mail client in those far-off days. I now use ThunderBird, but even with that, I archive my mail to external media.

[#6]

I am afraid that you are missing the point.  I fully appreciate that Plusnet have to prioritise.  I have been with Plusnet for more than twenty years and in the good old days, the customer service was unparalled.  Today it is worse than TalkTalk who have always been at the bottom of the league.  The important thing about the Ticket system was that when you logged a ticket, you knew that it was in the system as you received a ticket number.  Plusnet always replied efficiently.  Today, you are expected to wash dirty linen in public, and get no advice that someone has even registered the issue.  That is not a lot to ask for.

As regards webmail, everyone's circumstances are different.  Even in Covid, I move around a lot.  I have tablets, mobile phones, laptop, desktops, notebook - a great variety of machines of differing capability.  I have used  Outlook (and MS Exchange) since 1995 when it all started, and indeed I download my emails when I can onto my desktop, and I have archives of everything I have done going back still to 1995 when tape streamers were the back up medium !  (I doubt if I could recover anything from the tapes though today !)

For me, the value of webmail is that everything is consolidated in one place and no matter what piece of equipment I am using, I can access my mail remotely with the minimum of fuss.  That is why I archive in Webmail into monthly folders, and then delete the folders when space requires, because my Outlook master files are backed up already.

My objection and annoyance is the arbitrary manner in which Plusnet have simple deleted EVERYTHING when it was only necessary to delete just one month's folder, which means I have nothing at all to access when I am on the move.  I have to be sat at my desktop to see anything.  Again, I understand that Plusnet are under pressure, but if they want customers to reduce their mailboxes, Plusnet must ensure that the mailboxes are accessible so that customers can do maintenance.  I tried and tried to reduce my mailbox size, but the server kept cutting out and I could not log back in repeatedly.  Deleting just one file could take ten minutes !

So that is my issue.  By all means ask customers to reduce mailbox size, but give them the reliable tool to do so !  Then, if reliability is beyond Plusnet's technology, do not arbitrarily wipe everything clean when it would only be necessary for them to delete a few files to bring the mailbox down below the 1 Gb limit.  Why did they have to remove 1Gb ?

And when I ask for the archive to be restored at least for the last month, no-one responds.  No ticket number.  No reaction.  Just silence.  That is why after 20 years I am now very seriously looking at the competition.

[#7]

OK - I get your point. In that case, why not just keep, say, two months on webmail (plus any really important older ones), I doubt that would equal anything close to 1GB, unless they included large photos/attachments.

As to PNs deletion policy, no comment except to say that it is automated, but I've no idea what criteria is used to determine the deletion.

[#8]

Hi @shermans 

Plusnet send email usage emails each week after you have exceeded 750MB storage usage.  After you have exceeded 1GB usage, you get two weeks warning notices before emails are archived 7 days after the last warning.  Archiving is not exactly unannounced and when required, Plusnet do not delve into the contents of your mail folders, they just archive mailbox by mailbox sufficient to being you within the FUP for mail storage.

Yes email restores are in the slow lane at the moment.  I have raised the issue within the SU group, the issue has been noted.

Superuser citation

This topic has been cited by one of the Superusers; the purpose of which is to provide a note for information which might help to focus continued discussion (but might not result in a staff response).

[#9]

Have you phoned support requesting a restore?  Whilst getting through on the phone can be difficult, I rather need to know if you have sought a restore through another contact route?  There are two issues in play (a) get the restore request raised and (b) getting a raised request actioned.

[#10]

Thanks for your comment.  I did indeed get notice, but as I have explained, trying to do maintenance on Webmail is nigh impossible because the system keeps crashing or is busy.  I suppose I could have got up at 2.00 in the morning but  ....

You say "they just archive mailbox by mailbox sufficient to bring you within the FUP for mail storage."  I sincerely wish that were true, but in my case they just took a sledge hammer and deleted everything.  All my emails were neatly stored in six individual monthly folders; all they needed to do was to archive just one of those folders to bring me within the FUP.

As for calling Plusnet, I have tried calling many times but as usual the waits are long, and I have better things to do than to sit on the phone all day.  In any case, Plusnet have repeatedly recommended to me that the best way to raise issues is publicly on this forum or Facebook, Twitter and other social media, rather than trying to telephone, because social media is monitored for this purpose.

I hope that answers your questions, and many thanks for highlighting the matter as a Super User.

[#11]

Plusnet do not archive parts of mailboxes (folders) - it is the whole mailbox.

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.

[#12]

Thanks for getting in touch @shermans 

I apologise for any delays or other problems you've experienced trying to request that your emails be unarchived.

I've now started the unarchive process so they should be back with you some time soon.

The requests are processed in a batch, every 30 minutes. Please note it may take some time to restore the mail, especially if the mailbox was very large.

I hope this helps.

[#13]

HarryB

Thank you for restoring the mailboxes.  I will endeavour to remove some of my monthly folders now.  I have actually just tried, and out of four attempts, the system crashed three times, just to delete one folder !  It takes at least a minute each time to change screen, and 50% of the time, just when changing screen from one folder to another, the system crashes.  You cannot be very proud of this product. I will migrate away from Webmail to Outlook.com, but it is going to take me a long time to try to sort out all my contacts etc.  But there is no point in continuing with Webmail any longer and I will just have to bite the bullet.

[#14]

Try the basic webmail option.  It looks a bit less elegant, but it is equally functional and generally a lot faster...

• Standard email took 28 seconds to load the first 100 of 2250 items
• Basic webmail took just 9 seconds to load the first 50

The standard webmail program seems to be showing signs of stress under lock down usage.

This is not a webservice issue, but a Round Cube (third party) webmail program issue, which is not seen with the (less pretty?) Squirrel Mail option.

[#15]

The Basic webmail is all I ever use.  The time lag for me is not measured in seconds but in minutes.  Just to open the first page takes a minute but to change a page takes even longer.  I would not dare to use the Advanced version (HTML) - actually, having written this, I decided to try the Advanced Webmail just to see what happens.  It took about 4 seconds to open.  So then I tried the Basic version again and it took over 30 seconds, having hung doing nothing for 15 seconds and then 15 seconds with just the outline but no messages.

So my experience is just the opposite.  I get 22 mbs of fibre broadband - not the fastest but all that is available from Plusnet for where I live - which is perfectly adequate for anything else that I do normally, including streaming opera from the Met every evening during Covid !  So if it can cross the Atlantic without any lag, why can't Webmail keep up ?