MWeb Mail Sending Issues

[Dean]

Anyone having issues sending mail through MWeb?

Client has tried both smtp.mweb.co.za and smtp.iafrica.com

Sending to her own account works flawlessly, and the mail returns within seconds.

However, when trying to mail to my address or any other (which aren't with MWeb), Thunderbird says "Delivering..." forever.

MWeb Ops please advise - thanks!

 

[MWEBHelp]

Anyone having issues sending mail through MWeb?

Client has tried both smtp.mweb.co.za and smtp.iafrica.com

Sending to her own account works flawlessly, and the mail returns within seconds.

However, when trying to mail to my address or any other (which aren't with MWeb), Thunderbird says "Delivering..." forever.

MWeb Ops please advise - thanks!

Hi Dean,

I'll need more information about the problem. I'll need the sender's email address to check and we may need to get in contact with her

Regards
Mweb Operations

 

[Dean]

Hi Dean,

I'll need more information about the problem. I'll need the sender's email address to check and we may need to get in contact with her

Regards
Mweb Operations

What further information do you need? I will PM you the email address.

By the way, she has already spoken to the call centre and gone through the usual settings, the outcome of that conversation was "It's a problem with Thunderbird, you should use another email application". Honestly, I've never heard of a bigger cop-out in my life... just another day at the MWeb call-centre...

 

[Lounger]

Mweb e-mail has never worked properly. Best avoid it since the guy in charge of the e-mail section seem retarded.

 

[PsyWulf]

Well using something like telnet you'll tend to get better fault responses


Telnet smtp.mweb.co.za 25


220 wblv-ip-mesg-2-3.saix.net ESMTP Postfix
HELO test
250 wblv-ip-mesg-2-3.saix.net
MAIL FROM: [email protected]
250 2.1.0 Ok
RCPT TO: [email protected]
250 2.1.5 Ok
DATA
354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
test mail
.
250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 6CA244B76

Mine just went through

 

[Dean]

Mweb e-mail has never worked properly. Best avoid it since the guy in charge of the e-mail section seem retarded.

While I'm not one to comment on anyone who works there - I must say, at least 90% of all email queries that I get are regarding MWeb accounts.

 

[Dean]

MWEB Ops, I posted the question on the forum, and thus would prefer to continue the troubleshooting on the forum - as opposed to PM - open-ended threads can lead to confusion for people who search for similar issues in the future.

You mentioned in your PM that you changed the client over to Windows Live Mail. This seems like more of a workaround than fixing the problem.
Why is it that your MWeb servers would be incompatible with Thunderbird?

If anyone on the forum has had problems sending mail from Thunderbird using a non-Mweb account, please let us know... otherwise it's safe to assume that this is an MWeb-exclusive problem, and should be resolved accordingly.

Forcing clients to use closed-source, horribly designed software is far from a fix, in my opinion.

 

[Lounger]

MWEB Ops, I posted the question on the forum, and thus would prefer to continue the troubleshooting on the forum - as opposed to PM - open-ended threads can lead to confusion for people who search for similar issues in the future.

You mentioned in your PM that you changed the client over to Windows Live Mail. This seems like more of a workaround than fixing the problem.
Why is it that your MWeb servers would be incompatible with Thunderbird?

If anyone on the forum has had problems sending mail from Thunderbird using a non-Mweb account, please let us know... otherwise it's safe to assume that this is an MWeb-exclusive problem, and should be resolved accordingly.

Forcing clients to use closed-source, horribly designed software is far from a fix, in my opinion.

Thanks for that. Getting tired of seeing "send me a PM". It isn't a secret and may help others.

The Mweb mail dept definitely needs a re-org. I mean telling my friend to use IE instead of Firefox to resolve a mail problem is just ignorant.

 

[Dean]

Thanks for that. Getting tired of seeing "send me a PM". It isn't a secret and may help others.

The Mweb mail dept definitely needs a re-org. I mean telling my friend to use IE instead of Firefox to resolve a mail problem is just ignorant.

I don't quite follow the logic in your Firefox analogy there, but moving swiftly along...

I'm not sure why they do that PM story - obviously all personal information should only be dealt with in private, that's a given - but then they continue to troubleshoot/update in private. This isn't helpful at all to the forum and should be avoided.

 

[Will@MWEB]

Dean the reason why my team operates in this way is that we prefer to move the individual customer support issues into a telephonic mode with a specialist rather than clog the forum with troubleshooting questions. It's not an attempt to conceal problems - it's just more efficient for us to operate using our existing support processes and it keeps customer details private.
The team will close the loop on requests like this by posting the resolution in public, so if there is anything to be learned from this I can assure you that we will share the information.

Thanks
Will

 

[Dean]

Dean the reason why my team operates in this way is that we prefer to move the individual customer support issues into a telephonic mode with a specialist rather than clog the forum with troubleshooting questions. It's not an attempt to conceal problems - it's just more efficient for us to operate using our existing support processes and it keeps customer details private.
The team will close the loop on requests like this by posting the resolution in public, so if there is anything to be learned from this I can assure you that we will share the information.

Thanks
Will

Thanks for your explanation Will.

This forum, and sub-section thereof, is for resolving and troubleshooting ADSL ISP-related queries and problems. Surely it would be seen more as a positive thing for it to be "clogged" with this sort of troubleshooting, rather than a negative one? After all, that is its purpose...

In a similar way, I see it as a positive thing that my car's fuel tank is clogged with petrol. I can see how the word "clogged" may not lend itself nicely to the cause, but I hope you see where I'm going with this...

 

[Dean]

Will, on a separate note, your technician advised my client that she should get Microsoft Outlook. I find this quite irresponsible, as I see no reason why she should. Besides the fact that it's an expensive package, I fail to see how this would benefit her at all.

Please could the technician advise how he justifies telling an entry-level user that they should use MS Outlook (or that it would be best for them) considering its price tag of up to R2000 package dependent.

 

[Will@MWEB]

Thanks Dean these are valid points I will definitely keep in mind going forward.

We are breaking into fairly uncharted territory as a south African ISP and you might be interested to know that we are currently engaging with customers, here, on Facebook and via Twitter.

This of course requires a certain level of commitment and staffing and needs to be integrated with our existing support processes, so if we've chosen a certain approach to things right now it's with this bigger picture in mind.
We are definitely fully committed as a business to continuing to engage with our customers in spaces like this and I'm sure we will get better at it as time goes by

Kind Regards
Will

 

[Dean]

Attention: Will / MWeb Operations / Ralph

The proposed solution (work-around) was to install Windows Live Mail. Unfortunately while this worked for the test mails, the client has advised me that it has since stopped working.
We're now at a stage where both Windows Live Mail and Thunderbird are allowing mails to be sent only intermittently.

Please could you liase with the client to troubleshoot further - I'm sure she would appreciate a solution to the problem, rather than an unnecessary workaround or being told that her current, relatively new, perfectly functional (besides the mweb part) system is inadequate in any way.

Unfortunately I have to leave the office now to visit another client's premises, so I won't be able to reply until later - so I'll just trust that you'll take the necessary steps to ensure your clients email downtime is minimized, as this has been going on since this morning.

Regards
Dean

 

[Will@MWEB]

Hi Dean

Ralph informs me that this is working now, on both Thunderbird and Windows Mail although I must admit the reason why it was problematic in the first place has me scratching my head a little. I'm waiting on some mail headers from testing that was done to be forwarded to me and I will attempt some fault replication with Thunderbird myself this evening and see if I can get to the bottom of what caused this.

 

[SabreWolfy]

Mweb e-mail has never worked properly. Best avoid it since the guy in charge of the e-mail section seem retarded.

Rubbish. Mine and that of two other people I know works fine. Stop FUD trolling against MWeb and backup your sweeping negative generalizations with details. If your MWeb email has/does not work, then say so. But don't post here suggesting that all MWeb email does not work. That's clearly nonsense. Also, insulting people is inappropriate. If you have a specific complaint or problem with your MWeb email, I'm sure one of the many MWeb reps here would be able to assist you.

 

[Will@MWEB]

Hi Dean

Ralph informs me that this is working now, on both Thunderbird and Windows Mail although I must admit the reason why it was problematic in the first place has me scratching my head a little. I'm waiting on some mail headers from testing that was done to be forwarded to me and I will attempt some fault replication with Thunderbird myself this evening and see if I can get to the bottom of what caused this.

Just an update on this Dean:
I've just installed and tested Thunderbird connecting to our mail servers and had no issues whatsoever (quite frankly I would have been very surprised if there had been). The one thing I did notice when using the wizard setup is that it enables smtp authentication by default and configures an unqualified user name (without the @realm portion), which will fail, perhaps this might have been what was causing today's problems?

 

[Dean]

Just an update on this Dean:
I've just installed and tested Thunderbird connecting to our mail servers and had no issues whatsoever (quite frankly I would have been very surprised if there had been). The one thing I did notice when using the wizard setup is that it enables smtp authentication by default and configures an unqualified user name (without the @realm portion), which will fail, perhaps this might have been what was causing today's problems?

Howzit Will

Almost certainly wasn't the issue - mail has worked since the system was set up a few months ago - today was the first time the client noticed a problem. Apparently it's all fine now since changing to the ipass smtp server - received an email to that effect this evening.

Thanks for all the time spent on this today, hopefully it's all sorted!

 

[Lounger]

I don't quite follow the logic in your Firefox analogy there, but moving swiftly along...

I'm not sure why they do that PM story - obviously all personal information should only be dealt with in private, that's a given - but then they continue to troubleshoot/update in private. This isn't helpful at all to the forum and should be avoided.

My friend was getting mail error messages on every second send. It flashed up a long message (I'll see if I can get a copy) with some unintelligible code in it. After reporting it to Mweb technical, nothing changed for like months. In fact the support guy kept saying "Just use Gmail" or something similar. Then later on he got a mail saying use IE instead of Firefox. They clearly weren't interested in finding out the root cause or where unable so they used the IE ruse which may work on some nubs.

 

[Lounger]

Rubbish. Mine and that of two other people I know works fine. Stop FUD trolling against MWeb and backup your sweeping negative generalizations with details. If your MWeb email has/does not work, then say so. But don't post here suggesting that all MWeb email does not work. That's clearly nonsense. Also, insulting people is inappropriate. If you have a specific complaint or problem with your MWeb email, I'm sure one of the many MWeb reps here would be able to assist you.

I don't seriously think you are in a position to tell people what to say or do. You sound like a sock-puppet for Mweb to me. Anyone else see this in his posts?