I am a long-time Orange broadband user. I’m getting heartily sick of trying to download my mail from the POP server. This has gone on far too long and it’s getting steadily worse.
It used to regularly take 10 attempts or so to manually connect to pop.orangehome.co.uk or pop.freeserve.co.uk after bringing up broadband. I slowly realised that if I don’t ask Thunderbird to get my emails when it first runs, instead automatically collecting every ten minutes or so thereafter, it used to mostly work, but not always. The situation has become steadily worse over the past few months. This morning, for instance, I’ve only just managed to collect any email since first trying from just after 9am. At the time of writing, it was 11:47. Not good for a service that costs the best part of thirty quid a month!
Despite what Orange support insists, the problem is not at this end. Thunderbird can always find the POP server and contact it, finishing with the message “Connect: Host contacted, sending login information...” It then sits waiting for a response, eventually displaying one of a number of error messages returned from the POP server. The first seems reasonable enough:
[IN-USE] Unable to lock maildrop.
Maybe it’s busy. But want about the far more bizarre: “Sending of password did not succeed. Mail server pop.orangehome.co.uk responded: onnect because authentication to back server is too long”
Call support, you say? Have you ever tried calling Orange support? Someone from Orange with a real problem should try that, they really should. The online email help topics all focus on problems being at the customer’s end, but it’s clearly not the case here. This service has been getting worse for a long time, and the error messages are all coming from the server itself. Does no one check the kit to see if it’s in trouble? Does it need upgrading to cope? What? I’d love to know what’s going on at the Orange data centre, I really would, but here’s the twist...
I’m not only an Orange customer but a working IT journalist (the recipient of two BT IT Security Journalism Awards, as it happens), and I smell a strong consumer interest story here.
If anyone wants to contact me through this forum with tales of woe or otherwise, please do so. I’m especially interested in talking to a representative from Orange to find out what the problem actually is and how it’s being resolved.
I am a long-time Orange broadband user. I’m getting heartily sick of trying to download my mail from the POP server. This has gone on far too long and it’s getting steadily worse.
I am a long-time Orange broadband user. I’m getting heartily sick of trying to download my mail from the POP server. This has gone on far too long and it’s getting steadily worse.
Have you tried the specific IP address :
193.252.22.136
I tried that months ago, and have just tried it again. It, like pop.oranghome.co.uk, gives the same error messages, so it's not that.
Look, Thunderbird is resolving the IP address just fine. It's connecting to the server and requesting my mail just fine. What's not happening is the POP server sending the email back - save for the odd successful attempt.
I last managed to get some email pulled down before lunch today. I had to change nothing at this end to do so. The server has been unavailable again since, however - though the web interface shows more mail waiting on the server.
Where would you say the problem lies? More importantly, what is Orange doing about it?
EDIT: And now email is downloading again, but for how long? 5 minutes every two hours based on today's experience.
For pop.orangehome.co.uk, nothing is happening after 80.12.201.6 which is :
role: FTLD-IAN Domain Technical Role
address: France Telecom Long Distance
address: IP & ATM Network
address: 3 avenue Francois Chateau
address: 35000 RENNES
address: FRANCE
Traceroute showing that hops 16 - 30 = Request Timed Out
For pop.orangehome.co.uk, nothing is happening after 80.12.201.6 which is :
role: FTLD-IAN Domain Technical Role
address: France Telecom Long Distance
address: IP & ATM Network
address: 3 avenue Francois Chateau
address: 35000 RENNES
address: FRANCE
Traceroute showing that hops 16 - 30 = Request Timed Out
I got the same. Is anyone else getting the same thing?
EDIT: WOAH! I've just noticed the web interface to Orange email ISN'T done over HTTPS!!!
I went back to the ridiculously insecure web interface this morning and discovered that my inbox has over 8 THOUSAND messages. They're mostly spam but looking through them there are emails from friends, colleagues and companies going back SEVERAL YEARS - back to 2003 - including ones from Orange itself!
Suddenly, they've all started downloading. This process has been going on for over half an hour and it's still only done ~1400 of them.
So, why would the mail server not send all my mail? Is this affecting anyone else? Given that Orange monitor this site, would someone like to contact me to explain what's been going on? Or should I just call an editor and pitch the story?
and discovered that my inbox has over 8 THOUSAND messages. They're mostly spam but looking through them there are emails from friends, colleagues and companies going back SEVERAL YEARS - back to 2003 - including ones from Orange itself!
Do you mean messages that you had already received or messages that had not previously downloaded ?
Are your settings to keep a copy of any downloaded message in webmail ?
Do you mean messages that you had already received or messages that had not previously downloaded ?
Are your settings to keep a copy of any downloaded message in webmail ?
These are all messages I've never seen before. Conference announcements, product launches, contacts from ex-colleagues - all kinds of things including a lot of spam.
My working hypothesis is that the query to see how many emails there are times out due to there being too many to count in time. Maybe 8154 of them on a busy server would cause that. I'd never used the web interface until this week and have never set anything up to keep messages on the server. If some clown at Orange has set it as a default, could this be the root cause of people not getting their email? Where is it set? I can find nothing.
It's already happening again, you know. The web interface already says there are 12 new messages, but in Thunderbird the count is only 2 - and this is the figure coming from the POP server! I downloaded my mail, but the web interface STILL shows the other 10 in the inbox. Does this mean the service will degrade again over time? I think a lot of people need to know the answer to that one.
I've checked and re-checked everything, and the setup is fine. The guy in the link had 9000 messages and deleting them alleviated the problem. I suddenly got all 8000+ of mine and everything's fine again. The common problem seems to be that the server a) not reporting and downloading the true number of emails, and b) becoming overburdened when the number of emails it keeps back becomes unmanageable. The question is, why is it doing this?
Do you fancy trying to get an Orange front end support person to understand that, because I don't?
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