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email only account

Gandalf
Community Gaffer
Community Gaffer
Posts: 26,563
Thanks: 10,265
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Registered: ‎21-04-2017

Re: email only account

Thanks for getting back to me @sinewave 

I'm sorry for the issues you're having. Could you double check that your mailboxes and settings as shown in manage my mail now are the way things were before your account was cancelled?

If they are and you're still unable to log in, could you try changing the password for these mailboxes? Where you've said that 'as' is now in front of the mailbox name, I'm not sure I follow. Could you PM me a screenshot?

With regards to the rest of your account pages, things will look a little difference as you've now got a mail only account for example I'd be surprised if the billing tab will work at all or if it does it likely won't update after your final bill generates.

Also if you can PM me your sister's account username I'll be happy to try to make sure it goes through as smooth as possible.

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
sinewave
Grafter
Posts: 305
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎17-08-2007

Re: email only account

Hello,

I am now fully back online with email following my transfer from Plusnet broadband to an “email only account”

 

For anyone leaving Plusnet here are my tips:

if you are leaving Plusnet you can keep your Plusnet email address by asking for an “email only account”.

You must do this before you leave and give good notice. 
Your “email only” account is free of charge and for that I must say Plusnet, “you do us proud”. (compare to btbroadband and sky etc. And don’t even mention virgin media!)

Note: I was told explicitly on a CS ticket that email-only accounts are not possible/don’t exist. This is not true.

 

OK here’s important bits: (my experience was the same for my sister who moved to email only at same time)

assume all your email on the PN servers will disappear. All mailboxes will stop. You will end up with a fresh account but you will retain that all important email address whatever@username.plus.com. So back-up emails! Look for “export mail boxes” in your email software. I’m a Mac user and use Apple Mail. I exported my inbox, sent and drafts mail box. This is very easy. You get a single file for each export - but note it might be quite a big file if you have lots of mail on PN servers! When things got working I “imported” these backups back in and everything was super fine.

When your email-only account is activated (at some un-specifiable time), your mailboxes will be gone or broken. Your catch-all will be switched off. At this stage every email sent to your address will bounce back to sender. I suggest the first thing you do is switch on catch-all. For some reason, Plusnet choose a route here, that looses email for you. (there may be a sound reason!). If email is vital, you need to keep checking  in order to activate catch-all ASAP.

Once my catch-all was on I started receiving mail and I lived with things like this for a day or so to see if anything   developed (kinda hoping my mailboxes would get sorted - but no). All mail for all my family (ie for any mail box) came to my catch-all address (and to be clear that’s where your username login has no “+”). Through my catch-all account we heard about amazon deliveries, Facebook posts and all sorts but at least my family head!

 


After 24Hrs or so, and with my mailboxes still broken, I deleted them all and recreated them ... and now everything is working fine. It was a good time to update to more secure passwords too! Those old passwords seemed ok back in the day!

i am back to normal with Plusnet email and my family is happy. 

So to be clear, if you are leaving Plusnet:

If you are leaving Plusnet you can ask for an email-only account and keep your Plusnet email address.

Do not expect Plusnet to preserve your emails in this transition. Back-up and save those emails to your local storage.

After the account transition, the default settings are such that incoming mail will  “bounce back”. quick fix: set catch-all email to “on”.

your mail-boxes will not be preserved. You need to recreate them.

all family relying on name@username.plus.com  will get their email back online eventually but only after their go-to tech-geek sorts things out for them. and they are very likely to loose mail in the process. Be warned.

 

plusnet has served me well, and done me proud.. even when things went wrong Gandalf and this forum were here to sort things out. FTTH with virgin media was too good refuse. I’m on 220Mb/s today on proper fibre. My super long aluminium enriched wire to the green cab gave me 12Mb/s with PN, if I was lucky. But I’ll miss you Plusnet!

 

as a customer who has served longer than most of the staff, I just wanna say,..

 

Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.

 

 

 

 

Gandalf
Community Gaffer
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Re: email only account

Thanks for the overview @sinewave 

To confirm/correct a couple of points you've made. We do retain your emails on our server, this is the next step of the process once you've confirmed your mailboxes were working again. Let me know if you'd want us to restore your mail.

The reason we have to cancel an account down is because this terminates thing in the billing engine, which means that your final bill is generated and ensures you're not charged following that as we provide email free of charge. I recognise it's not an ideal process though and I'm looking at ways we can improve on this to feed this back.

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
martincleghorn
Newbie
Posts: 3
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎18-06-2020

Re: email only account

@sinewave  or @Gandalf 

Can you clarify if email only applies where PN are hosting your domain name. Surely there must be a cost as domains have to be renewed at a cost. I think I pay £1 pm now for the hosting.

I too need to drop PN but only for a while as I'm going to be off-grid for 6 or 12 months.

Gandalf
Community Gaffer
Community Gaffer
Posts: 26,563
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Registered: ‎21-04-2017

Re: email only account

Thanks for getting in touch @martincleghorn 

There is no charge for an email only account and this includes domain services if we're hosting your domain. We hadn't charged for our email or domain services since the 1st September 2018.

If you want to downgrade to an email only account you would need to first call us (0800 013 2632) to cancel the account and once the account's cancelled, let us know and we can get it reactivated.

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
martincleghorn
Newbie
Posts: 3
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Registered: ‎18-06-2020

Re: email only account

@Gandalf 

Hey, thanks for the speedy reply. Its good news that I can keep my email while I put Broadband on ice, no-brainer who I will be contracting with when I need it again.

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Gandalf
Community Gaffer
Community Gaffer
Posts: 26,563
Thanks: 10,265
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Registered: ‎21-04-2017

Re: email only account

Awesome, sounds like a plan. Btw, once an account's downgraded to a free email account, this can't ever be 'upgraded' again to a broadband account so you would need to create a new account as if you were a new customer.

Let me know if there's anything else you'd need help with.

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
tangey
Grafter
Posts: 145
Registered: ‎29-08-2007

Re: email only account

@Gandalf 

 

Can you confirm that on an email only account, I will still be able to send emails using the plusnet email smtp server.? An important aspect of keeping an email alive is that a lot of registered accounts require email support, or indeed requests to change email address, to come from the exact email that was used to sign up. I guess like many, I have used many many "name@accountname.plus.com"  with "name" changing based on whatever I am signing up for, in order to enhance security, so I'd need to be able to send emails, notionally from each of those "@" addresses on an email only service.

Townman
Superuser
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Registered: ‎22-08-2007

Re: email only account

Hi,

Staff cover is a bit thin at the moment. So I hope this will help you - yes when an account is down-graded to email only, you can still send emails via relay.plus.net

That said what you seem to be concerned about would not stop you sending emails as name@accountname.plus.com - in practice you can send anything@anywhere.com through any SMTP server if you have the credentials to access the relay server.

There are though some potential for issues...

  1. Accessing 'off-network' (alien) SMTP servers should be done on port 587 not 25 as often configured (incorrectly) by email clients
  2. The recipient email services processing incorrectly SPF rules - SPF rules specify which SMTP servers are permitted to send emails on behalf of @domain.co.uk - Plusnet's SPF rule for @accountname.plus.com has "soft fail" specified, so if the email comes from another SMTP service is should be accepted.  Some poorly implemented SPF enforcement gets this wrong and the email is rejected

Anyhow, you do not need to worry about this - on an email only account things continue as they do at the moment - setting aside that there will be SOME INTERRUPTION to your email service during the account change during which any emails sent to your Plusnet service WILL NOT BE RECEIVED.

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

tangey
Grafter
Posts: 145
Registered: ‎29-08-2007

Re: email only account

hi @Townman

Many thanks for your comprehensive reply which answered my query.

I've a couple of observations.

1) I've been a plusnet customer for many years now...don't know how long, but it's a LONG time. I have no reason to change, except for when BT launch their FTTP domestic product in my area. I understand that plusnet have no stated intention to provide FTTP. THis could either be a commerical decision or perhaps they are being held back by BT, I don't know. However, I would suggest that plusnet should monitor how many requests they are getting for email only accounts. It would be a good indication of people that have been customers for a long time, and who are leaving likely for products that plusnet don't provide.

 

2) Given that a plusnet email only account is free, and thus there is no formal contract, I guess this service could be withdrawn at short notice. Also, if there were problems with the account, I could see how such problems might understandably not receive plusnets usual speed of response, as there is no money paying for the service.

Gillan
Newbie
Posts: 3
Registered: ‎13-07-2020

Re: email only account

Hi Gandalf ... I'm having exactly the same problem but I don't know who to get help from.  I left PlusNet last Tuesay (7th July) to get FFTP with BT as you don't provide it in my area.

 I have a Free-Online address that I've used and kept as my primary address since email first started!!  I requested to stay on as a mail only account but after a week I'm still not getting any emails and I can't login.  I'm desperate!  Please could you help me or point me in the right direction!  Many thanks

Martin72
Newbie
Posts: 1
Registered: ‎10-09-2020

Re: email only account

A message for Gandalf

After 18 years with Plusnet I am leaving today.

I would like to setup an Email only account, at least for the next few months to catch any messages sent to my Plusnet address.

Could Gandalf please arrange that for me.

Thank you in advance.

Martin S Sampson

Tibzor
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 282
Fixes: 25
Registered: ‎08-04-2020

Re: email only account

Hi @Martin72

Thanks for getting in touch, sorry to hear you want to leave Plusnet please call 0800 013 2632 and my colleague will be able to help, request to change account to mail only should be created during process of closing account with our Customer Options Team on number above.

JuUK
Newbie
Posts: 4
Registered: ‎04-12-2020

Re: email only account

Hi Gandalf.  I am having the same issues as the above.  Have contacted the PlusNet helpline several times and they keep telling me that the email only account will be activated "in a couple of days".  In fact, on my last call, the PlusNet rep said he would text me in a few minutes to tell me when my email would be activated and confirm the password after he had spoken to his manager.  Of course, I heard nothing.  I am reaching the end of my tether having been without the email address for over a week now.  Please could you help or ask a colleague to contact me as phoning the helpline is not yielding any results? 

NB. I logged the request for an email only account well before my contract ended so I don't understand the reason for the delay.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.