NTL ISP email problems
As you may have noticed, I had been having problems with my email service. (It's all working now, so I do not need offers of other providers.) When you send emails to me through this site, my web site hosting service receives the email, rewrites the envelope to point to the email address provided by my ISP, and sends the email on to my ISP, so I can collect it using POP. This way, I can change ISP as many times as I need, and you never need to know, because I can direct the email to my new ISP. The email address you use never needs to change.
This is perfectly normal, and is done by many email users. Aditionally, it means I can create as many email accounts as I need, and direct them to any recipient mailbox that I want. And if I decide to change my public email address, I can do that without ever having to change my ISP. I actually use several hosting services, and depending on how everything is set up at the time, your email may go through more than one of these. But eventually, the last host (tomsk.portland.co.uk) should send the email to the NTL email server (smtpin.ntlworld.com).
However, on 15th March 2005, NTL (my current ISP) started rejecting every email that my host tried to send to me. About 100 emails a day were being rejected, including emails sent by any of you. I tried testing one of these myself, and tomsk.portland.co.uk sent me this bounce:
Final-Recipient: rfc822; foo@ntlworld.com Original-Recipient: rfc822; original@mydomain.co.uk Action: failed Status: 4.0.0 Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; host smtpin.ntlworld.com[212.250.162.8] said: 452 Message rejected (in reply to end of DATA command)
For those of you who are unfamiliar with bounce messages, this is tomsk.portland.co.uk saying that it tried to contact smtpin.ntlworld.com to send it the email. smtpin.ntlworld.com said that it would accept the email, but then when tomsk.portland.co.uk actually tried to send the email, smtpin.ntlworld.com rejected the email without giving any reason why.
What follows is a transcript of the emails sent between me and NTL, provided (almost) in full, with email addresses changed to protect the guilty.
I sent them this via their feedback form (no email address listed on site):
28th March 2005 [Loads of information reguarding the account, such as the address and post code, the type of account, etc.] Account is held in the name of [NAME REMOVED] - I do not have the account number to hand because I am out of the country right now. I use the NTL email address: foo@ntlworld.com and my wife uses bar@ntlworld.com Neither of these email addresses are given out directly, and instead we use email aliases for *@mydomain.co.uk Since 15th March, neither of us have received any email at all (except one spurious email on 18th march). Normally I would expect to receive about 100 emails a day - about 90% of which is spam, but at the moment I am not receiving the legitimate email either. I have sent myself a test email which finally bounced after 5 days (nearly a standard retry period). The bounce email was sent by my mydomain.co.uk hosting service: portland.co.uk, saying that the NTL servers rejected the email after the DATA stage. I would attach it so you could see all the headers yourself, but the NTL site refuses to give me an email address (potmaster@ntlworld.com maybe?) and insists that I use a web page form that does not allow me to attach emails. The bounce message is included below, with appropriate headers. This sounds like an over-zealous spam filter. If it is, please disable it, because it is trashing all my legitimate email, and I am perfectly capable of filtering my own spam. If it is not, is it just that you have blocked my email alias domain because it sends you too much email? (it's an email alias domain, it is meant to do that) Cheers Tarquin --- original message follows --- To: original@mydomain.co.uk Subject: test send failure From: Tarquin (Mark) Wilton-Jones (myaddress@opera.com) Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 09:10:38 +0100 testing --- bounce message follows --- Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 08:52:48 +0000 (GMT) Final-Recipient: rfc822; foo@ntlworld.com Original-Recipient: rfc822; original@mydomain.co.uk Action: failed Status: 4.0.0 Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; host smtpin.ntlworld.com[212.250.162.8] said: 452 Message rejected (in reply to end of DATA command)
I got this response (fast enough):
28 March 2005 From: cablemodem_support@ntlworld.com Hi Thanks for your recent e-mail We currently don;t have any active spam filters on the servers so I would suggest you contact mydomain.co.uk for more information I am sure you can appreciate, some faults are very complex and in some cases there too many variables involved for it to be practical to resolve the problem via e-mail. On these occasions, our Technical Support Callcentre is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to help you. The number is 0845 650 0121 . Calls are charged at a local rate I hope this helps to answer your queries. Should you need further assistance, please don't hesitate to contact me again. Yours sincerely Emma Technical Support Team
I sent this:
28 March 2005 To: cablemodem_support@ntlworld.com Emma, thanks for the reply. > suggest you contact mydomain.co.uk for more information I am the owner of mydomain.co.uk, and an (ex) email administrator, so I am quite used to the headers I am seeing in this bounce email. NTL's servers are rejecting my emails, not mydomain.co.uk. Since you have no spam filters blocking it, there must be some other reason for your servers rejecting the emails that my hosting service is attemting to pass on. If it is not spam filtering, it may well be a manual filter for certain recipient addresses (or aliases), sending servers, or message content. Unfortunately, I am getting no more information than the bounce message itself (where your servers do not say why they rejected it, they just reject it), so I probably need to get in touch with the NTL email administrators. Would you have a direct email address I can use to contact them? > On these occasions, our Technical > Support Callcentre is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to help you. > The number is 0845 650 0121 . Calls are charged at a local rate I am currently in Norway for a few months, so a telephone is not such an easy thing to use, as international phone calls get very expensive Cheers. Tarquin
I got this response:
28 March 2005 From: cablemodem_support@ntlworld.com Hi Thank you for your recent e-mail. Unfortunately, in order for us to help resolve these issues we will need to speak with you directly. Please call us on 0845 650 0121, (lines open between 8am - midnight) where an agent will be happy to help you. Apologies again for any inconvenience caused. I hope the above answers your query, however, should you need further assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us again. Regards ntl Technical Support Bureau
I sent this:
28 March To: cablemodem_support@ntlworld.com > Please call us on 0845 650 0121 This number does not work from Norway. I have added the 0044 international prefix (00448456500121) as for other UK numbers, but it appears that 0845 is a special number that is not accessible from international lines. Do you have a number that will work from Norway?
I got no response so I sent this (for the first time, I did not include the email comment history):
03 April 2005 To: cablemodem_support@ntlworld.com Hi, I already sent this but got no response, so I am trying a resend. > Please call us on 0845 650 0121 This number does not work from Norway. I have added the 0044 international prefix (00448456500121) as for other UK numbers, but it appears that 0845 is a special number that is not accessible from international lines. Do you have a number that will work from Norway? > (lines open between 8am - midnight) where an agent will be happy to > help you. > Apologies again for any inconvenience caused. This problem is, as stated, a significant inconvenience, as I have now been without email for about 3 weeks. So I really want to get this sorted as soon as possible. But since I am going to be in Norway for nearly another 6 months, I cannot use an internal UK number. Thanks Tarquin (Mark) Wilton-Jones
Again, I got no response so I sent this direct to postmaster@nlworld.com (just guessing - since all email domains are required to have this account for contacting the email administrators):
07 April 2005 To: postmaster@ntlworld.com Hi, I have tried going through customer services, but they have only given me a phone number that does not work, so I will try contacting postmaster directly; I am an NTL broadband customer, and I use NTL's POP service for my personal email. Normally, I would get about 100 emails per day, of which about 90% are spam, but have received only two emails since 15th March. I do not give out my NTL email address directly (foo@ntlworld.com) and instead I use an email alias domain which I own (*@mydomain.co.uk, hosted by tomsk.portland.co.uk). Since 15th, NTL servers have been bouncing every email that is sent via my alias. Unfortunately, the only message provided in the bounce is this: "host smtpin.ntlworld.com[212.250.162.8] said: 452 Message rejected (in reply to end of DATA command)" Without any reason as to why it was rejected, so I do not know what I am supposed to do to stop you bouncing it. Have you specifically blocked my host or alias domain? I am currently in Norway for 6 months, so I am unable to use the 0845 internal UK number. Tarquin (Mark) Wilton-Jones
Miraculously, my email immediately starts working again.
Finally I get this response to an email I sent 8 days earlier:
11 April 2005
From: cablemodem_support@ntlworld.com
Hi
Thank you for your recent e-mail.
Unfortunately, I do not have enough information from your e-mail to
diagnose the problems you have been experiencing or locate your
account. We need a clearer view of your computer's activities prior to
this problem occurring. Can you please email again with a few more
details about the problem. I will then be in a better position to help
you.
I need to know the following:
<<insert technical questions here: no more than 4 unless its
essential>>
[The fact that they left that line in the email speaks for itself]
Also, can I ask you to include either your NTL username/email address,
or your full postal code in all future emails. This will enable us to
keep an accurate account of any correspondence between us, and avoid
repetition of the same advice.
I hope the above answers your query, however, should you need further
assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us again.
Regards
Jason
ntl Technical Support Bureau
I sent this (unimpressed) email:
11 April 2005 To: cablemodem_support@ntlworld.com Jason, > Can you please email again with a few more > details about the problem. The original email sent to you (I got replies from Emma) had full details, including the bounce message showing that your servers were bouncing email. Emma also sent me a number saying I would have to call to sort out the problem. However, the number did not work from Norway, and my reply was a simple question; to get a number that _would_ work from Norway, something that you have also failed to provide me with. Maybe it might be useful to reply using individual email addresses instead of the generic cablemodem_support@ntlworld.com, that way, when I reply to Emma, she might actually get my response, and know what I was talking about, instead of you, who (through no fault of your own) know nothing of the history of this incident. Nonetheless, I have now bypassed your customer services, and gone directly to your postmaster. The problem has been solved. It is unfortunate that this is the course of action I have to take to get a simple problem solved, when all that was needed was either to forward the original email to your postmaster, or to give me a simple telephone number. Surely it is not _that_ hard to tell me your international phone number. You are, after all, a telecom company. > Also, can I ask you to include either your NTL username/email address, > or your full postal code in all future emails. I will do so for all future contact - although in this instance the problem was purely related to your incoming SMTP servers, so all that was really needed was to forward my original email on to your email postmasters. My original email contained all the details that they needed and did not need any further information. Tarquin (Mark) Wilton-Jones
I received this email in response (note the change of email address):
noresponse@ntlworld.com 12 April 2005 Hi Thank you for your recent e-mail. Unfortunately, in order for us to help resolve these issues we will need to speak with you directly. Please call us on 0845 650 0121, (lines open between 8am - midnight) where an agent will be happy to help you. Apologies again for any inconvenience caused. I hope the above answers your query, however, should you need further assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us again. Regards chris ntl Technical Support Bureau
AAARGH! Not only are they incompetent, completely unable to use the 'Forward' button, unable to send a phone number that works in the country I am living in, unable to read a simple request, unable to work out that it is not their name at the top of the email. They are also incredibly insulting; "noresponse" and the same useless phone number. Again!
So I used their complaints form to send this:
12 April 2005 Area of Service: Customer Service Issue: Issue Resolution Rating: Bad Enter your comments here: Your email servers were misconfigured and were blocking me from receiving email. It was a simple problem, and could have been fixed in just a couple of minutes. But the sheer incompetence of the NTL staff who replied to my requests was completely astounding. I have kept a full log of the conversations, so you can see for yourself what I mean. http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/emails/ntlemail.html