INABILITY TO SET MX RECORDS AS REQUIRED

[#1]

As a former refer of businesses this stopped when PN refused to set the MX records as required for my clients' domains to be routed via external e-mail filtering and archiving service providers.
I spent a long time on this with Support and was told that the PN mxlast server had to be listed in the MX records.  PN are the only domain host where this has proved to be so.
I was told that this would make no difference as mxlast was at a lower preference than three other records.  This proved not to be the case, and requests to be able to discuss it higher up the management/technical chain were ignored.
Being unable to find "real" contact details for management I followed the instructions on dialing 0114 220 0000 (The contact details for PN from Dun & Bradstreet) and sent an e-mail to reception@plus.net.  It was never even acknowledged.
PN have a long way to go to overcome a rather sorry recent history.
Is the requirement for mxlast to be present still current?
If so is it ever going to be changed and if so when?

[#2]

Hi Tom.
Thanks for posting.
I wont pretend to be knowledgeable regarding the configuration of MX records, but I will ask one of my colleagues and gain an understanding of your needs and requirements.
What I will say is that we have many thousands of business customers using our services and in my 6 year association with Plusnet this is not something I have seen being queried before. However I will ask the question and get an explaination.
As for contacting our support teams. The support numbers are listed at the bottom of every page on the website and in the How to get in touch section of Help and Support link . If we need to make that clearer let us know, but it seems easy to spot, but then I aint a customer anymore We provide geographical contact numbers as well as 0845 depending on which suits our customer best. No premium rate support here
As an aside, albeit an important one. We have a highly skilled and dedicated business support team whose contact details are listed in the link supplied. Call wait times for those guys are in seconds and they have a lightening fast ticket response time. If your dealing with queries for business customers, then I'd highly recommend you ring the business support team, you wont be disappointed.

[#3]

Hi Phil,
Thanks for the prompt reply and I look forward to the technical answer.

Quote from: Mark

... this is not something I have seen being queried before.

I know that some businesses "voted with their feet" without contacting PN as it is a "known problem" within the e-mail filtering and archiving community.  PN is not alone, other ISPs have other "issues"!

Quote from: Mark

As for contacting our support teams. .....

There are many ticket numbers to show that I completely exhausted that system and was looking for the next level up, which wasn't apparently available.

Quote from: Mark

... dedicated business support team ...

If I remember correctly this wasn't in place at that time.

[#4]

Whos Phil? I'm Phil. He's Mark
I have spoken with mark regarding this, and made him aware of what prevents the removal of the mx.last record from domain settings.
In simple terms, it is a result of our domain control system and its automation.
In regards to addressing these issues at a higher level. This has already been done and is something that is actually raised on a regular basis.
However it has been a question of priorities. The fact these entries exist, has not and does not prevent email from working, however before you jump in with your case, we know there are many reasons why these should be removed (spam control is the screamer).
As part of the business support team, this is something we especially see and I have been tracking progress of internal debate on this issue.

[#5]

Hi Guys,
Sorry for the name confusion!
Until the complusory "mxlast issue" is resolved it has to remain inadvisable for any one who might need a bespoke set of MX records to have their domain hosted by PN, and in the evolving field of e-mail filtering & archiving and people running their own smtp servers that probably means the majority of business domains.
This has been a known issue for PN since at least February 2005 to my knowledge.  Maybe a little bit of grease is required on the wheels to get this moving?

[#6]

Hi Tom.
I have had a chat with Phil, he's a fountain of knowledge and I have an understanding of the issue here.
I realise that it has caused grief in the past and I will ask the question of the business on Monday and give you and the community an answer as soon as I can.

[#7]

The main problem with the mxlast is that the lowlife spammers target this knowing that mail is going to be accepted, whereas most filtering on many SMTP servers will reject it. I have complained about this because I am unable to tag the offending bots IP (range) into my blacklists.
Has anybody else had an increase in spam when the new mail servers were switched on last year?

[#8]

Hi there,
We have made a number of config changes of late to try and minimise some of the junk that passes through the mx.last servers. Most notably the changes as described in this blog post.
The ability to remove the mx.last record is a request that props up quite frequently. There's an open issue raised by the Usergroup here (feel free to vote!).
I'm sure Mark will report back once the possibility of getting this work done has been raised internally.

[#9]

Ok. As promised I have discussed this issue with my colleagues in Networks and Development this morning and we should be able to deliver this.
One of the dev guys is investigating this as we speak and hopefully I will be able to announce timelines and deliverables very shortly.