The Country's Biggest ISP..
New Zealand is a small place. As such, there is one major ISP (belonging to the major phone company, which is mostly a monopoly post privatization). It's name is Xtra.
I have a real job (yes, tech support), but I occasionally put websites together for friends and friends-of. (For money. Although good friends get sites-for-food.)
Couple weeks ago, I put a site together for a fairly clueless friend-of-a-friend. Got a panicked call a few days later saying that all their email from this site wasn't getting through.
They're right, too. On investigating with the web host, all mail is being rejected by Xtra, their ISP. It's not being dumped in spam filters, it's flat being rejected. Unsurprisingly, this isn't acceptable.
I ask my clients to ring xtra. They are variously told "it's not our problem" and "use pop3, that will solve it". The latter is obviously not helpful; emails sent from the Website addresses aren't going to be received by anyone at xtra, like 90% of my client's client's are.
I ring the xtra helpdesk, on the grounds that I have a mild clue, and might be able to pummel the system into at least listening to me. (Oohh, such naivety.)
I get bounced between four fairly clueless folks, who clearly just want me the hell off their line. (This is partly the fault of the IVR - when I responded with a clear "no" to the question "Do you have an xtra broadband or xtra dialup account?", I was punted to sales. Sigh.)
I eventually find out the name of the technical team I need to talk with. Surprise, they are only open until 8pm; it's now 8.30, and I started my little endeavour at 7.30pm. I email my issue to their email address instead.
I receive a bounceback message. Mailbox is over quota.
I try the general support inbox. It appears to be rejecting emails from Gmail accounts. How rude.
I give up, and ring again the next day.
Once again, the IVR punts me to sales. Sales punt me to phone faults (?), who go "wtf?" and punt me to dial up support; the lacking-in-English rep there politely yet firmly insists that she cannot help me without either my xtra email address or account number. I politely yet more firmly explain that I AM NOT AN XTRA CUSTOMER. She eventually hears the word "email" and transfers me to a line which politely informs me to check my spam filters - and hangs up. I try again. I receive a slightly less clueless muppet, who directs me to ... mobile assistance? What? They bounce me to business support. OK, whatever, I'll go with that.
I have been on the phone for over an hour! 47 minutes of that was on varying queues holding! Finally, I have a person with a clue! We discuss the situation, they ask for email headers (hooray) and we end the conversation. (I have been on the phone for 1:16.)
I have sent them a long and detailed email. It contains all the email headers I could dredge up, from webmail addresses and from the forms on the website that send out emails. (And yes, said forms are designed to ensure that spam is hard. Email's not my thing, but I'm OK with web design.) It contains the mail logs that the webhost support sent.
And I am left with a great deal of frustration at xtra. I really don't hold out much hope that this will be fixed - which sucks greatly for my customers.
I have a real job (yes, tech support), but I occasionally put websites together for friends and friends-of. (For money. Although good friends get sites-for-food.)
Couple weeks ago, I put a site together for a fairly clueless friend-of-a-friend. Got a panicked call a few days later saying that all their email from this site wasn't getting through.
They're right, too. On investigating with the web host, all mail is being rejected by Xtra, their ISP. It's not being dumped in spam filters, it's flat being rejected. Unsurprisingly, this isn't acceptable.
I ask my clients to ring xtra. They are variously told "it's not our problem" and "use pop3, that will solve it". The latter is obviously not helpful; emails sent from the Website addresses aren't going to be received by anyone at xtra, like 90% of my client's client's are.
I ring the xtra helpdesk, on the grounds that I have a mild clue, and might be able to pummel the system into at least listening to me. (Oohh, such naivety.)
I get bounced between four fairly clueless folks, who clearly just want me the hell off their line. (This is partly the fault of the IVR - when I responded with a clear "no" to the question "Do you have an xtra broadband or xtra dialup account?", I was punted to sales. Sigh.)
I eventually find out the name of the technical team I need to talk with. Surprise, they are only open until 8pm; it's now 8.30, and I started my little endeavour at 7.30pm. I email my issue to their email address instead.
I receive a bounceback message. Mailbox is over quota.
I try the general support inbox. It appears to be rejecting emails from Gmail accounts. How rude.
I give up, and ring again the next day.
Once again, the IVR punts me to sales. Sales punt me to phone faults (?), who go "wtf?" and punt me to dial up support; the lacking-in-English rep there politely yet firmly insists that she cannot help me without either my xtra email address or account number. I politely yet more firmly explain that I AM NOT AN XTRA CUSTOMER. She eventually hears the word "email" and transfers me to a line which politely informs me to check my spam filters - and hangs up. I try again. I receive a slightly less clueless muppet, who directs me to ... mobile assistance? What? They bounce me to business support. OK, whatever, I'll go with that.
I have been on the phone for over an hour! 47 minutes of that was on varying queues holding! Finally, I have a person with a clue! We discuss the situation, they ask for email headers (hooray) and we end the conversation. (I have been on the phone for 1:16.)
I have sent them a long and detailed email. It contains all the email headers I could dredge up, from webmail addresses and from the forms on the website that send out emails. (And yes, said forms are designed to ensure that spam is hard. Email's not my thing, but I'm OK with web design.) It contains the mail logs that the webhost support sent.
And I am left with a great deal of frustration at xtra. I really don't hold out much hope that this will be fixed - which sucks greatly for my customers.
