Buzzin Disgrace

Yet another cause for unnecessary distress because of poor customer service from BT

This morning I spent too much of my time attempting to work out why I could no longer send emails from my various email accounts.  After running various tests I attempted to contact BT, my ISP (Internet Service Provider).

After eventually getting through I explained the situation – that I was still able to receive emails but as of this morning, was unable to send email from my various accounts; all of which are now forced to use BT as the outgoing server.  I made it very clear that I was 100% sure that none of the email account settings had been changed.

Using remote PC software BT support was able to look at my email account settings.  It wasn’t long before he realised the problem.  I had used SMTP instead of MAIL in the outgoing mail settings.  The change was saved and tested OK.  I asked him when BT had made this change to the settings.  He told me there had been no change and they had been using MAIL for some time.

So I’m assuming, BT has made a change that doesn’t allow a choice betwen SMTP or MAIL anymore, as SMTP was definitely working hitherto yesterday. Some ISP’s work with either setting.

A customer of mine called shortly after I had spoken to BT, with exactly the same problem, and I was able to offer her a solution.  She too had not changed any settings.

The stress and waste of my time this email setting change has caused, and it is a change, annoys me.  Why not email all BT Broadband customers explaining the change.  That way I could tackled the problem in less than one minute instead of several hours.