Is it time for telecom to quit yahoo?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Is it time for telecom to quit yahoo?

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#760458 12-Feb-2013 23:42

freitasm: My parents-in-law have a Google Apps account. My wife's domain has a Google Apps account. They would never in this world be able to setup this - buying a domain, registering with Google, updating DNS, configuring email clients.

There's a place for ISP provided email. Telecom did great moving to Yahoo!. Telecom did not so well by keeping @xtra.co.nz addresses.

Yes but they could get an email host to manage that all for them with a domain based email address. I am a bit surprised that there are companies that provide third party support for setting all this up, but probably little money in it

allan

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#760470 12-Feb-2013 23:59

boby55: Go back to microsoft I say but instead of XtraMSN, Use outlook.com :D

+1 for that

exportgoldman

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#761600 13-Feb-2013 10:34

graemeh: I don't agree. Most people have no idea about how to do these things.

I'll get my Dad to ring you next time he needs support.

There is a large group of people like him who know how to use what they have but coping with any change is way beyond their abilities.

He got a new PC recently and in the process of setting that up he managed to sign himself up for an outlook.com email address. He had no idea why he did this when I asked apart from to say "Microsoft told him to".

Unfortunately this is very common among those who are not PC literate and people like this are best to keep using their ISP provided email as the ISP also supports that email service for them.

I loled on this, my mother is just the same! and I deal with a good chunk of this at work, it's a lot of hard boring work doing e-mail, and if your using yahoo or ISP e-mail then your e-mails can be crashed in a laptop crash if you don't know what your doing.

Webmail/activesync/etc with a big outlook.com/gmail/yahoo is a solid option for a chunk of people.

I would never use it - but I'm not their target market.

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#761788 13-Feb-2013 15:21

Another possible issue with yahoo is their CEO

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/yahoos-mayer-says-mobile-mail-is-broken

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer thinks there are problems with checking email on a smartphone, but her company is working on a solution...

...One issue lies in how smartphones and desktop computers are synchronised. Reading emails on your phone and then taking the extra step of marking them as unread so they will still be there on your desktop is a key problem, the executive said.

Has she never heard of imap? Or isnt the new activesync standard now been opened up?

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freitasm

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#761791 13-Feb-2013 15:26

That's bullshit. I don't have to do this - and haven't done this since Microsoft Pocket PC 2002 OS and ActiveSync.

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#761807 13-Feb-2013 15:55

I think she must be referring to limitations in her own product, clearly been living the life of an ostrich.

Cyril

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#761810 13-Feb-2013 16:03

She's talking about Yahoo! Mail clearly. She came from Google less than six months ago, where Marissa was head of search, one of the most important jobs in the whole company. She is very intelligent and knows really well what other platforms can do.

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#761963 13-Feb-2013 21:29

The biggest issue with emails and customers is the continued providing of pop3, which often ends up getting setup for people who then have email go missing etc, xtras retarded decision to block xtra email addresses from having imap causes most of the support issues among people I know, who have no way to see their spam folder, no way to mark things as spam in their email program other than the local outlook spam filter and often resort to forwarding things back to themselves to get it on another device when it inadvertantly gets removed from the server.

POP3 must die.

As should any non SSL access to mailboxes or SMTP for sending. Which is the one thing that xtra got right somewhat.

Richard rich.ms

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#761973 13-Feb-2013 21:46

richms: The biggest issue with emails and customers is the continued providing of pop3, which often ends up getting setup for people who then have email go missing etc, xtras retarded decision to block xtra email addresses from having imap causes most of the support issues among people I know, who have no way to see their spam folder, no way to mark things as spam in their email program other than the local outlook spam filter and often resort to forwarding things back to themselves to get it on another device when it inadvertantly gets removed from the server.

POP3 must die.

As should any non SSL access to mailboxes or SMTP for sending. Which is the one thing that xtra got right somewhat.

I hear you, and agree, pop3 must die. But, there is no Xtra. That was a brand, email is hosted and managed by Yahoo. Xtra doesn't not provide IMAP. what is provided or not provided is Yahoo. The odd thing is that I have an Xtra email address, I use webmail, but on my iDevices and I assume Android/WP also, the mail app is IMAP like in that is provides email, duplicating the server mailboxes, no settings required, in a smartphone webmail interface. I cannot see the logic is having email tied to a computer, I want email accessible everywhere. If they provided a true IMAP that would be good, but the support issue is that non literate users are faced with settings. Ports, etc. Webmail is ideal, although low on features. I actually prefer the Yahoo webmail to Gmail or Microsoft as its less klunky, but thats my own opinion. Before Yahoo "updated" their wenail interface, it was very Outlook like. Clean.

richms

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#761976 13-Feb-2013 22:02

real yahoo users get imap, the decision not to offer it on @xtra.co.nz addresses is one that telecom have made.

Im not sure what the yahoo apps use as my limited recent use of xtra's yahoo provided services has been setting up to that people can move away from them ;) - but there is no imap available since that would sort most of the problems that I deal with out. Which is spam folder getting real mails, and lack of read visibility between devices which is particually problematic when you play with the pop3 leave on server settings and one of the PC's is often off for weeks at a time since it is at a secondary house etc.

Richard rich.ms

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#761983 13-Feb-2013 22:29

richms: real yahoo users get imap, the decision not to offer it on @xtra.co.nz addresses is one that telecom have made.

Im not sure what the yahoo apps use as my limited recent use of xtra's yahoo provided services has been setting up to that people can move away from them ;) - but there is no imap available since that would sort most of the problems that I deal with out. Which is spam folder getting real mails, and lack of read visibility between devices which is particually problematic when you play with the pop3 leave on server settings and one of the PC's is often off for weeks at a time since it is at a secondary house etc.

Again Richard, I don't disagree. IMAP is ideal for the reasons you state. I can check tomorrow, but to my knowledge the decision not to provide IMAP wasn't Telecoms. Telecom doesn't host or manage Xtra email addresses, Yahoo does. The emails are located on Yahoo servers in Sydney and Seattle, and probably elsewhere as well for redundancy purposes. We have tools to do some basic functions, these are tools provided by Yahoo. I do recall that Yahoo does have IMAP settings, whether they work, if still applicable, with xtra addresses I am unsure. Yes, leave messages at server is a potential issue for sure. When the pop client is reinstalled and the user forgot to set that checkbox!
Just did a Google and there are settings for IMAP, so worth trying that if that will help.

My ideal solution is a webmail interface that resembles the clean look of a pop client, and in that regard Yahoo is ok IMO. That gives me server access and I use iOS and while that is not IMAP (Its just a nice clean webmail access) that suits my needs.

A perfect solution is a non provider webmail UI that is clean and can be used on any provider, I assume the providers (Yahoo, Google and the like) don't want that for ad revenue reasons?

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#761998 13-Feb-2013 23:15

You get generic webmail interfaces like atmail or roundcube, if you actually pay for email with a paid provider. The free services however use ad supported email, as the ads partly pay for it. Personally I find atmail really good and simple to use.

Dairyxox

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#762046 14-Feb-2013 07:52

Last time I called telecom about a potential pop block issue (Last week before all this spam/hack issue) the CS told me that iPhone and iPads were a problem, and i had to remove all accounts that were installed on mobile devices. Now I know this is sound advice for getting around a pop block, but they were telling me that I shouldnt use mobile devices with their system anyway. Kind of stunned.

raytaylor

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#762558 14-Feb-2013 18:36

Dairyxox: Last time I called telecom about a potential pop block issue (Last week before all this spam/hack issue) the CS told me that iPhone and iPads were a problem, and i had to remove all accounts that were installed on mobile devices. Now I know this is sound advice for getting around a pop block, but they were telling me that I shouldnt use mobile devices with their system anyway. Kind of stunned.

What i have found is that if someone sets up a mobile device, and changes the password, the mobile device will still try and use the old password to login.

Yahoo has some stupid system where if you try and login via pop3 with the wrong password a few times, they lock your account. This then means that outlook express on your computer will stop being able to recieve emails.

You have to login to the webmail interface at http://webmail.xtra.co.nz to unlock it again.

Saying "Dont use mobile devices" is just a simple way of preventing the lockout from happening due to one of its major causes.

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Dairyxox

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#762563 14-Feb-2013 18:45

raytaylor:
Dairyxox: Last time I called telecom about a potential pop block issue (Last week before all this spam/hack issue) the CS told me that iPhone and iPads were a problem, and i had to remove all accounts that were installed on mobile devices. Now I know this is sound advice for getting around a pop block, but they were telling me that I shouldnt use mobile devices with their system anyway. Kind of stunned.

What i have found is that if someone sets up a mobile device, and changes the password, the mobile device will still try and use the old password to login.

Yahoo has some stupid system where if you try and login via pop3 with the wrong password a few times, they lock your account. This then means that outlook express on your computer will stop being able to recieve emails.

You have to login to the webmail interface at http://webmail.xtra.co.nz to unlock it again.

Saying "Dont use mobile devices" is just a simple way of preventing the lockout from happening due to one of its major causes.

Yes I understand this. Thanks for spelling out for us all though. I think this is a poor system because I can put anyone's Xtra address onto my...whatever...and end up blocking their pop access. Maybe forever, causing much grief.

They seemed to imply that their system isn't suitable for mobile devices. When a proper "fix" would be to update the password on the mobile device.

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