Re: E-mail
Vumes
Enthusiast - Level 3

@mcpgh wrote:

I've been having a problem for a couple of days now.  I'm only able to access my mail about 50% of the time via http://verizon.net.  Problems I understand & can deal with.  Not having any mention of this in the System Status is mind-boggling and frustrating.  Email is critical to people -- several days of no-to-shoddy service and no mention of it on their site is unprofessional and unacceptable.


Back in the day when I had Comcast, I had email issues, and they told me that I was only paying for internet service. That email was an incentive that they gave to their customers. I believe that Verizon is the same way. (I could be wrong here, please correct me if I am).

Let me tell you that I feel your pain because I have been there, done that, but if it is a free service and not something you're paying for, maybe you're better off with a free email address from say Gmail or the like.  Just my opinion.

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Re: E-mail
defilm
Newbie

The sad part is if you call verizon tech support they have no clue.  They try to do remote support by having me log into verizon.net/showme, yet of course verizon.net is not working.  When that didn't work, they wanted me to get my mail via the web at start.verizon.net, of course this didn't work either.  After rebooting my router, they diagnosed it as a bad router.  Of course there's nothing wrong with my router "besides it's a piece of junk" given its significant wirelese encryption capabilities NOT!

The real sad part is everybody needs email today.   Reliability in delivering email is absolutely critical and apparently verizon doesn't understand this.  There's no status page on services, and this problem has lasted all week.  It started on Sunday, that's 4 days and their support people don't even know about the problem yet, or telling customer to wait on 15 minute queues to speak to an ill informed support person, with limited technical knowledge in the first place.

I have had optimum online/boost for over 8 years.  I'm no fan of cablevision.  Other than email problems they had when they first started offering service, and I was a beta user, in the 8 years I had not one outage of service and no email problems.   Having verizon for so many years and knowing how poorly they execute I decided to keep my optimum online and I have a dual WAN router..

Here is a helpful suggestion so you don't have to be held hostage to verizons email technical inadequacies.  Register a domain of your choice at godaddy.com for $10 per year.    You can create 100 email addresses for free and forward them to any email address you want.  For example my email mark@domain.com is forwarded to my verizon email account.    When they started having problems, I changed my forwarding address to my email on gmail.com.  Now all my email to mark@domain.com is arriving and working properly.    This is called a reflector, costs you only $10 per year and you can receive your email on any account you have while maintaining the email address everybody knows you by, at your domain that you own.  In my case it's mark@echebon.com

Don't waste your time hoping verizon will change.  They haven't in 20 years.

BTW thanks for the information in this thread, it was the only way we could confirm verizon was having a problem.  Of course you would think verizon would have one section called system status, even on the forums.  But no such brain power exists.

Message Edited by defilm on 04-23-2009 07:26 AM
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Re: E-mail
DzWR
Contributor - Level 1

You also have to look at it with an open mind.  If a problem arises and you are one of the first people to report it -- no one knows there is an outage.

Same thing when I was with Cox cable, my internet was going crazy with about 95% packet loss on evening.  Called them up and verified what I did to try to fix it, scheduled a tech to come out a few days later and I received a callback the next day because they had an outage that was resolved and wanted to verify with me that everything was okay and I didn't need a tech out. 

The first guy I spoke to wasn't aware of the outage but when enough reports come in that is how they find out most of the time -- through the customers.

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Re: E-mail
WinnerTee
Newbie

Having same problems in the NYC suburb of Long Island, for the past 2 days, unable to access "incoming.verizon.net" and

even the Verizon Central web site..or any Verizon webiste that is secure (https://.....

Does anyone in Verizon FIOS Customer Service,  know of a time frame for this problem resolution ?  Webmail portal access for

email is not the same as a good email client software....Let's get an answer soon from someone.

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Re: E-mail
prisaz
Legend

@WinnerTee wrote:

Having same problems in the NYC suburb of Long Island, for the past 2 days, unable to access "incoming.verizon.net" and

even the Verizon Central web site..or any Verizon webiste that is secure (https://.....

Does anyone in Verizon FIOS Customer Service,  know of a time frame for this problem resolution ?  Webmail portal access for

email is not the same as a good email client software....Let's get an answer soon from someone.


I have had Verizon Email for many years and only have lost POP3 access a few times. So overall they are good. Yes the Webmail may not be what you like, but you can leave your messages on the server, and if you wish set your client to delete them from the server when they are downloaded. That is what I did during the short outage when I could only use Webmail. Then I downloaded them later.
Message Edited by prisaz on 04-23-2009 06:00 PM
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Re: E-mail
Cthulhu93
Newbie

I have been having issues with their SMTP server for 2 days now. Getting a person on the phone was easy. I allowed the tech to access one of my computers. Once connected  the tech stated that they did not support Thunderbird, then stated they did not support Outlook 2007, and then told me that they needed to set up Outlook Express. After all of this nonsense, I still could not send an email. The tech during the process decided to click on my start button to see what was installed on my box, then clicked on all the icons in the taskbar, and then proceeded to click up multiple menu levels on a virtual drive program to see what was mounted. This was intrusive to say the least. After examining almost everything other than the issue at hand, the tech stated that he would send it to his superiors and I would hear something within 48 hours.

This is of course after I had let the tech know that I had disabled all firewalls, AV, routers in my home and had connected directly with 3 different computers (all hardwired). The tech still demanded that they needed to remotely connect to my computer. 

Epic fail.

Message Edited by Cthulhu93 on 04-23-2009 05:15 PM
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Re: E-mail
WinnerTee
Newbie

Just to inform everyone that was experiencing email problems with Verizon email servers the past 2 or 3 days, here in the New York

area, about 10:00PM  (EST) email service (in and out) and web access to Verizon Central (www.verizon.net) is back on line.

Let's see how long this will stay up, , until they screw something else up again.....for now,it's  yippee, all systems GO  !

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Re: E-mail
defilm
Newbie

I had a similar experience, but disconnected the rep.  They are venturing in to

area's where they are not trained, and you are letting a {please keep your posts courteous}

individual look through your computer and judge what is OK and what is not.

Well they have to support a small set of clients as they are working with limited

skilled employees but to not support Outlook (the largest email client in use today with 92% market share),

really says something about their lack of any training.  When I told them I have a MacBook

they told me Verizon FIOS don't support MAC's as well!!

Based on the lack of consistancy, I would say that the Operations group of tech

support does not have a "Run book". {edited}.  The "Run Book" walks a rep. through

the exact steps to follow.  Clearly emergency services like 911 work well with their book and

have saved thousands of lives.  Be glad Verizon is not in the business of 911 operations! Yikes!

This goes to the top, and clearly is driven by senior management (CIO, COO, SVP, VP)  to try to

appear to provide a service to the best of their ability within a specific $ budget.  It is economics

and clearly it is not working.

I have maintained my Optimum Online Boost, I still have my DirectTV, but the minimum package of $29/mo

and I am so annoyed at the poor FIOS DVR, I may switch back fully.  As for the phone line?

I installed an AAsterisk Pbx on a PC and some IP phones, and I dumped 3 of my 4 POTS lines

and now use 1 POTS line from verizon, and a VOIP SIP channel to a CLEC (broadview.com).

That one phone number has 4 channels. (I can make 4 outbound calls while taking 4 inbound)

all for $29.95 plus $3/mo for 911.  That replaced 3 Verizon lines at $40-60 a month each).

My Optimum Boost is 30Mbs down/10Mbs up.  I currently have 20?**bleep** down/20Mbs up from FIOS.

The quality is the same as the VOIP is jitter sensitive.  Jitter on both services is below 20ms.

In the 8 years I have have Optimum Online, I have never had an outage, and my email worked

always. (In the beginning it was tough, but they scaled up and resolved their issues putting in

email clusters).  My email issues started Sunday night. 5 days is a long time to fix any real-time

IT problem.  It says something about the skills of their IT teams, and the lack of procedures,

announcements keeping customers informed is poor management.

I have worked with Verizon Residential, and Verizon Business for 30 years starting as a Network

Engineer, and most recently as a Managing Director of a company that runs large scale service

provider networks similar to Verizon's. in my experience the Verizon business/digital side is not

any better.  While it is not as bad as dealing with carriers in India such as SIFFY, at least in India

they are just ebcoming a world compeditor.  One of the largest Indian communications companies

"Tata communications" was started int he 1800's and is massive enough that they have 7 divisions,

from Tata communications, to Tata Power and Light.  They plan a big push in to the US market,

which is a great thing for us as consumers.  I look forward to that day. IMHO Verizon Fios is very

over-rated. I have no love for Cablevision, but they had fiber on the poles long before Verizon did,

and I have no intention of terminating my Optimum online.

To date I have had more FIOS issues than I had in the last 8 years with Optimum/Cablevision.

I think many will jump to Verizon, then after a year of suffering a percentage will jump back. BTW

it took three months for Verizon to get my FIOS installed and my services cleaned up and working...

Message Edited by KaLin on 04-24-2009 12:18 PM
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Re: E-mail
defilm
Newbie

The question is...

While their SMTP connectivity was down for inbound mail, you will never know how many

emails were sent to you that you didn't get.  I need reliable email.  While "Internet email"

of course can not be guaranteed, having your server clusters working properly and scaled

properly increases the probability you will get your emails.

My wife averages 40 inbound emails a day.  Last email erceived was on Monday 01:24am EST.

She just received a flood last night dating back to Monday. 76 emails over the 4 days of outage.

So clearly she likely lost some email as the number should have been around 160 emails.

I truely hope the email service gets better and my family can experience the same level of

service you have received. So far it has been pretty bumpy.  FOr me, it is so critical to have

solid reliable email service Ihave been using an external email service for over 15 years.


I have no affiliation but you can find them at www.panix.com.  $50/year for email, in business of email

since BEFORE the WWW was invented.When they started there was BitNET, USENET news, and

email to people on BITNET, or fidoNET, (the .edu domain), and some companies, mostly the

major ones (IBM, HP, etc).  One outage I am aware of in my 15 years about 9 years ago.

Mark

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