Total Falure by Plusnet

[#1]

After many years with Madasafish then Plusnet I sadly had to inform Plusnet that I would have to leave them at the end my contract for broadband and telephone as Plusnet could not provide full fibre broadband to my address.  I might add that Plusnet seemed to think they could provide full fibre then conceded that this was not the case when I challenged them.

Before this I was informed that my email had been transferred to Greenby and at that point all seemed to work well.  We have always used our original Madasafish email address, not the Plusnet one, and all our emails received and sent continued as normal.

When we changed provider and the fibre broadband was up and running we discovered that we could send emails using our Madasafish email but could not send emails or reply to mail with a message saying it was a Plusnet server issue.  I telephoned Plusnet and was told it was for Greenby to resolve.  As you know there is no easy way to contact Greenby but they eventually replied to a ticket stating it was down to Plusnet as the Madasafish emails hadn’t been transferred over.

After several phone calls to Plusnet I spoke to a manager, Jacob, a week ago who assured me he would sort the problem and phone back after the weekend.  Needless to say there has been silence.  Tickets have been raised on my account but I have been blocked from responding to them.

Plusnet, this is unacceptable and up until this time I would have recommended you to anyone as your service has been excellent.  You have totally let me down, a loyal customer of very many years. 

[#2]

Plusnet need FTTP to be available via Openreach and that can be checked via :

https://www.openreach.com/fibre-checker

Openreach are very busy in our area at the moment and more streets are being covered with FTTP every week.


For help with the email sending / replying issues share the full error messages / delivery rejection message.

[#3]

Openreach cannot provide fibre here.  However we have full fibre from Highland Broadband as do many others in our area.

This is the message when trying to send or forward emails

Server error: '550 <my email@madasafish.com> recipient rejected - relay denied'

Plusnet assured me it could be sorted but we are now 2 weeks plus with very poor communication.

[#4]

To send emails via relay.plus.net from a Highland Broadband internet connection requires the the email app or program to have the SMTP server ( i.e outgoing server ) configured with a Username & Password and preferably with Encryption.

[#5]

@mrsbrown 

Before this I was informed that my email had been transferred to Greenby and at that point all seemed to work well.  We have always used our original Madasafish email address, not the Plusnet one, and all our emails received and sent continued as normal.

Which email account were you told had transferred to Greenby , the Plusnet one or the Madasafish one ? 

I didn't think that any Madasafish accounts had transferred.

What are you using as the outgoing server name in your email client ?

[#6]

@mrsbrown 

You already know that Greenby are incapable of providing a satisfactory service, and that Plusnet gave up caring about email years ago, and expecting anything to be resolved is just a waste of everyone's time.

You might as well bite the bullet, get a paid-for personal domain name and reliable email service, then never have to worry about email problems again.

Yes initially you will have to update all of your email contacts to use your new personalised domain name,  but that is going to be less inconvenient than persisting with the shockingly poor service from Greenby and/or Plusnet.

Take a look at IONOS email (with FREE personal domain name), I've used them for all my family email accounts for nearly 20 years and found them thoroughly reliable and full of useful features.

https://www.ionos.co.uk/office-solutions/email-hosting 

[#7]

@mrsbrown @MisterW 

Is this an example of being caught by the 'gotcha' that was discussed in another thread recently, namely that if you close your broadband account with Plusnet then you can't send emails using relay.plus.net? The gotcha being that Plusnet servers are still being used for outgoing mail after migration to Greenby. However, @Townman implied that there is a way round it although he didn't say what it was.

[#8]

@abitpedantic that's what I'm trying to establish with the questions. Although in this case it may be further complicated due to the madasafish account.

[#9]

I haven't a clue about this so will require to enlist help from someone with no knowledge.  We have always used Outlook so I assume it will still be set with my Plusnet details

[#10]

As I said above I was told the Plusnet account was with Greenby but not Madasafish.  We are receiving pur emails via Outlook because at the moment it would appear they are going through Greenby using the Plusnet email and copied to Madasafish

[#11]

I think I am inclined to set up a new email address using Yahoo or similar.  A friend who only has a Plusnet email address is having issues with her email since it was transferred.  I don't really have much faith in Greenby from what I have read elsewhere.

[#12]

As I said above I was told the Plusnet account was with Greenby but not Madasafish

You didn't state which  account had been migrated, but now it makes sense. Although your Plusnet email  account ihas been transferred to Greenby and mail for that account is being received by the Greenby servers, sending mail is still routed directly to the Plusnet server ( relay.plus.net). Since your Plusnet account is now closed you will not be able to authenticate with relay.plus.net. You should still be able to authenticate with the Madasafish server though.

[#13]

@MisterW  @Townman 

So, can one of you, or indeed anyone state explicitly how to continue sending email from a .plus.com address after one has been migrated to Greenby and has subsequently moved to another broadband supplier?

I'm sure there are a lot of people like me whose broadband contract is up for renewal soon and wish to explore other alternatives without being constrained by the prospect of being unable to send email if they do not renew with Plusnet.

For information, the other thread that I referred to previously is Re: Greenby mail after leaving Plusnet - Plusnet Community

[#14]

@abitpedantic 

So, can one of you, or indeed anyone state explicitly how to continue sending email from a .plus.com address after one has been migrated to Greenby and has subsequently moved to another broadband supplier?

Use relay.force9.net instead of relay.plus.net for the outgoing (smtp) server. This routes via the Greenby proxy and so, for a migrated account,  should send via the Greenby smtp server. You will need to use the full email address as the username but it should accept passwords defined in the Greenby portal.

NB only use this workaround for migrated plus.com accounts