Talk Talk Onetel - email issues

[Victor Meldrew]

Those of you who are on this service should note that the Onetel pop server seems to be plagued by the same problem as the Talk Talk server. This has been occurring since 20.00hrs Thursday. The problem is that random messages appear saying login to mail.onetel.com has failed due to your username or password not being recognised. There is also delayed or missing incoming e-mail. A call to the Onetel Bangalore helpline via the Onetel Broadband phone number which features an unknown female assuring the caller that the system is active and responding and there were no known issues. Perhaps she's cocooned in an exMOD A-bomb shelter in Essex and totally isolated from reality. Bangalore bloke heard what I had to say and sent me a test mail which arrived. I pointed out this problem was intermittant. To which I got a response we'll investigate. Today I got an e-mail which included a string of mailings sent to me yesterday which I 'd never recieved from the original senders and still haven't. Once again onto the Helpline past the breezy female announcing the system was active and responding (Can one shoot her??) and on to a Bangalore spokeperson. Presumably the breezy female announcing that all is well is to make those who are less knowlegable blame their PC for the problem and to deter them from proceeding further. The Talk Talk Onetel spokesperson upon being pressed admiitted they had server problems causing non acceptance and also admiitted that mails were being delayed. When asked how long the delay was I got no answer. Its getting on for 24 Hours in the case of mine. I was assured that the Onetel engineers were actively working on a solution but when I asked when this could be expected the reply was shortly. Yet another test e-mail was sent. As usual one got the zombie farewell " Is there anything else I can help you with?". Response "Get the problem sorted". Finally ending with "Thank you for ringing TalK Talk Onetel". Fortunately I use a geographical number to ring them not the 0845 one, so I don't pay Onetel for the call as all my calls to 01,02 numbers are free.

In short there is an intermittent problem with the pop mail server which Duncombe's dithers are trying resolve. When its sorted I shall be asking them for compensation, which to give them credit they have provided in the past.