Pipex upgrade causes email snafu
Customers cut off by settings change
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Some Pipex customers have been without email access for several days due to an platform upgrade that meant their settings were wrong.
The Tiscali-owned ISP announced major work upgrade billing and account management on its website. The changes also include new spam protection and anti-virus for the email system.
Users have been reporting problems since Thursday last week. Pipex sent this statement:
The majority of customers have now been upgraded but as the Pipex platform was quite an old one, it has thrown up some anomalies and we have been working through these. One example being some extremely large mail boxes which are being pulled across manually as well as the transposition of some log in details.The migration means that Pipex customers will benefit from improved delivery time and free high quality Ironport commercial anti virus and anti spam protection on all of their email accounts.
We did advise customers on our status page of work being carried out and we have been updating the information available to them.
It seems most of the trouble has been caused by a change to the format email addresses must be recorded in client and webmail settings. Pipex posted a fix here. It said yesterday it had restored webmail.
All the upgrade work is scheduled to be completed by 30 November. ®
COMMENTS
Would you believe it ?
They've launched a new "Help & Support" page in the past 24 hours. Here are the Top 5 "most popular" questions being asked at the moment:
1. Are there any Service Issues?
2. How do I get a Mac Code?
3. I want to cancel, what should I do?
4. When does my contract end?
5. I have cancelled my account. Why are you still deducting money from my account?
"some extremely large mail boxes"
Pipex could possibly make life easier by not automatically creating a mailbox for every customer, or allowing customers to delete unused mailboxes.
I quickly came to the opinion my default Pipex mailbox was useless - their practice of naming it after your pipex username apparently made it easy for spammers to harvest them. I have never made proper use of it - I use Pipex for connectivity only, and handle mail through my own domain. This does not stop my Pipex mailbox being continuously filled with unwanted spam - I occasionally clear it down out of the goodness of my heart.
Sounds pretty normal...
My POP access to email servers that aren't owned by Tiscali, via a Tiscali broadband connection has been iffy at peak times for months.
I've given up complaining or reporting anything as apart from that the connection is bearable.
Last time I reported something the whole connection got screwed up for days! I don't want to risk that again!

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