Incoming Mail Outage

[Antonio_f2s]

We are currently experiencing issues with our incoming mail platform afecting a high number of users. Our engineers are investigating this as a high priority and are working to resolve this as soon as possible.. We will provide further information as soon as this is available. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

[Antonio_f2s]

We are still experiencing issues with our incoming mail platform and our engineers still investigating this as a high priority. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

[KevinP_N19]

I see from a message on the f2s site that they're intending to take down email from 10 o'clock tonight (Jan 16) till 3 o'clock tomorrow afternoon. I'm not aware of any direct notification to customers (anyone?). Maybe they lost our email addresses...

Q: Why are all users not warned about maintenance downtime in advance?
A: Because f2s can't be bothered. Why should they care?

Q: Why have we not received an apology and explanation for the two days at the start of this month when many of us lost all services for most of the day?
A: Because f2s never explain, never admit fault, never apologise.

Q: Will they explain what's gone wrong today - and apologise?
A: See above

Q: Will they postpone tonight's work, bearing in mind the current loss of service?
A: Don't be silly. That would imply a degree of concern for their customers.

[JeffG]

Originally Posted by KevinP_N19

Q: Will they postpone tonight's work, bearing in mind the current loss of service?
A: Don't be silly. That would imply a degree of concern for their customers.

If you look at the latest status update on the F2S web site, posted at 19:37, you will realise that postponing the maintenance would be the last thing anyone would want. In fact they have had to bring it forward, to migrate everyone to a new mail platform, which hopefully will solve the recent problems.

Perhaps if they had said at the outset that the "planned maintenance" was to move the email to a new platform they might have avoided a lot of the recent flak in these forums.

[KevinP_N19]

Originally Posted by JeffG

If you look at the latest status update on the F2S web site, posted at 19:37, you will realise ...

If only I'd known at 12:30 what they would say at 19:37....

Point taken however, Jeff. I just thought it might be nice to have access to our email for a precious few minutes!

Let's just hope this works. To me it feels like every previous systems move or upgrade in the years post Pipex (never mind post Tiscali) has resulted in a worse service not better, so I'm not holding my breath!

So much of the anger comes down to their utter failure to communicate. Regardless of this morning's failure, tonight's maintenance shutdown is a case in point. We should all have been told. Of course we can sign up for maintenance emails but many people won't even know they're available so will have been completely unaware of the planned downtime tonight. The announcements on the f2s site are never glaringly obvious either, so a newbie coming to the site trying to find out why they had no email tomorrow morning (NB no telephone service desk at the weekend) might never find out that it was all planned.

Oh well. At least it takes my mind off the all the doom and gloom on the TV!

[kmount]

Originally Posted by JeffG

If you look at the latest status update on the F2S web site, posted at 19:37, you will realise that postponing the maintenance would be the last thing anyone would want. In fact they have had to bring it forward, to migrate everyone to a new mail platform, which hopefully will solve the recent problems.

Perhaps if they had said at the outset that the "planned maintenance" was to move the email to a new platform they might have avoided a lot of the recent flak in these forums.

They said the last mail platform would fix the issues, and the one before that.

[Shafto]

No further updates from f2s! Do we now assume that the eta of 1530 ish today for completion still holds??
All it needs is a one liner to assure customers that they actually care

[kmount]

The only person from f2s who communicates on here now is Antonio (First Line Technical Support Leader) but even then it's very few and far between which suggests he's limited in what he can do/say.

I remember fondly when lots of f2s staff were around; helping users, listening, and even more than anything promoting the brand as more than a sham.

[Antonio_f2s]

The migration to the new platform has been completed but we still working to restore the service to all customers. Please be aware that until the service is restored completely, some customer would be unable to access their incoming mail.

We will provide a further update when the service is fully restored.

We apologise for the disruption and for any inconvenience that this may have caused.

[j2fm]

Originally Posted by KevinP_N19

So much of the anger comes down to their utter failure to communicate. Regardless of this morning's failure, tonight's maintenance shutdown is a case in point. We should all have been told. Of course we can sign up for maintenance emails but many people won't even know they're available so will have been completely unaware of the planned downtime tonight.

I subscribed to the F2S RSS feed to try and keep up with announcements.

It WAS at http://status.freedom2surf.net/Status/rss.xml but it stopped being updated after 15Nov, then it was removed altogether.

Jim J

[aos101]

There is an RSS feed on the new status site:

http://www.freedom2surf.net/service-...status_xml.php

It wasn't working right for months, but recently they've fixed it. Unfortunately they completely bodged the redirects from the old status site, so people like yourself who were subcribed to the old RSS feed stopped getting updates. Redirects are not hard, so I don't know why F2S/Pipex/Tiscali/[Insert future owner here] make it seem so

[kmount]

There'd be nothing interesting to talk about if they actually did something properly!

[j2fm]

Originally Posted by aos101

There is an RSS feed on the new status site:

System Status

Thanks Adam, I've now subscribed to the new feed.

Jim

[Antonio_f2s]

All users are now able to access their email by webmail or if they set up their mail client as IMAP. Please be aware that until the service is restored completely, some users would be unable to access their incoming mail if they set up their mail client as POP3

We will provide a further update when the service is fully restored.

We apologise for the disruption and for any inconvenience that this may have caused.

[anna]

Well, all I can say is that when I went to my webmail, low and behold I had mail - one to be precise, and it was a spam. Must be at least 50 emails missing, so I beg to differ, neither my email nor my webmail is working.

[KevinP_N19]

Originally Posted by Antonio_f2s

All users are now able to access their email by webmail or if they set up their mail client as IMAP. Please be aware that until the service is restored completely, some users would be unable to access their incoming mail if they set up their mail client as POP3.

But it's not working properly for IMAP OR POP3 is it? Not for me anyway.

What's happened to all yesterday's and today's mail? All I can see using Webmail, POP3 or IMAP is all the messages sent Thursday night/Friday morning - not surprisingly all but one is the overnight spam. No mail sent to me since 03:40am Friday morning has appeared, and that includes anything I've had sent to me in the last hour since the system was supposedly working again.

The account I use with POP3 was failing to delete from the server and therefore downloading the same mail every time my POP3 email client checked for new mail so I've switched to IMAP for now. I assume it's related to this error message:

Receiving' reported error (0x800CCC90) : 'Your incoming (POP3) e-mail server has reported an internal error. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP). The server responded: -ERR [SYS/PERM] Could not read message file'

[Shafto]

Agree with both last posts! Web mail showing no new e-mails as yet!

[gary614home]

Hi
I am receiving this error when I try and get my mail
Message number 1 could not be retrieved. Account: 'Freedom2Surf', Server: 'inmail.f2s.com', Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '-ERR [SYS/PERM] Could not read message file', Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 0x800CCC90, Error Number: 0x800420CD
Message number 2 could not be retrieved. Account: 'Freedom2Surf', Server: 'inmail.f2s.com', Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '-ERR [SYS/PERM] Could not read message file', Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 0x800CCC90, Error Number: 0x800420CD
To have this on-going problem for two days now with no real reason is not good service at all. In any other business we would be getting compensation for this blatant disregard for customers. I have email Freedom 2 Surf but I expect that I will not get an answr and just have to sit it out

[mrjimmy]

Me too. No email since 16:08 on Friday. Just checked my webmail, still nothing despite sending test messages from other webmail accounts

[anna]

As you will see I have been a member since 2003.

I can honestly say that in all this time, 2008 and as early as 2009 have been the worst years to date.

I'm sick of it.

[Antonio_f2s]

We still trying to restore the service for all users and I have PM a few of you asking for some info. If you still have problems with your email I need to know so I can investigate. So if you have no emails coming, your POP3 still failing, you are getting errors when downloading emails or any other issues with your mail, I need you to send me a PM with:

1.- email address afected
2.- password for the email address
3.- whats the issue (POP3,Web Mail, IMAP)
4.- errors that you are getting
5.- what client you are using
6.- is F2S your ISP?

[gary614home]

Originally Posted by Antonio_f2s

We still trying to restore the service for all users and I have PM a few of you asking for some info. If you still have problems with your email I need to know so I can investigate. So if you have no emails coming, your POP3 still failing, you are getting errors when downloading emails or any other issues with your mail, I need you to send me a PM with:

1.- email address afected
2.- password for the email address
3.- whats the issue (POP3,Web Mail, IMAP)
4.- errors that you are getting
5.- what client you are using
6.- is F2S your ISP?

Hi Antonio,
I have pvt sent you this information.
Gary

[Shafto]

Hello Antonio,
Have sent PM of required details.



Sorry, misread your post. Ignore my PM.

[Victor]

Still no pop3 and no new web mail on f2s email address for f2s ISP customer. Now had nothing since Thursday

[steve_cuz]

I have fifteen F2S email addresses spread across two F2S accounts in my two houses. I have most of them synchronized to download at once through POP3 in Mozilla Thunderbird. Some of the connections give me the following message after Thunderbird tells me that there are messages on the server and is attempting to download x of x messages :

" The RETR command did not succeed. Error retrieving a message. Mail server inmail.f2s.com responded: [SYS/PERM] Could not read message file "

The other thirteen addresses just don't download anything when they connect.