Spark no longer provides support for its email

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Spark no longer provides support for its email

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

20141 posts

Uber Geek

#1668149 11-Nov-2016 16:26

I think you need to keep escalating to a manager until you get through to one in NZ. POP, IMAP etc is part of the service, so unless they can prove that the issue isn't at their end, they can't then tell you to go to a third party. Doesn't sound like there is much option to move provider if they can't support their services for you.

nunz

1421 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1668155 11-Nov-2016 16:29

yitz: Firstly I don't believe it when you say a third party domain is being hosted on the Xtra email system. At a guess they are forwarding mail from an external email system to their @xtra.co.nz address. Also a username followed by @xtra.co.nz has always been required to authenticate on the Yahoo system.

are you saying you cannot host domain emails on spark / yahoo? - > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tm-4_HAMN4

Bung

6477 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#1668166 11-Nov-2016 16:50

The comments on that video say that Yahoo has changed and it doesn't work.

nunz

1421 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1668180 11-Nov-2016 17:11

mattwnz:

I think you need to keep escalating to a manager until you get through to one in NZ. POP, IMAP etc is part of the service, so unless they can prove that the issue isn't at their end, they can't then tell you to go to a third party. Doesn't sound like there is much option to move provider if they can't support their services for you.

It is impossible to escalate. I've forced my way to supervisor and got no higher. Complaints department didn't respond. Thi sis their new mantra - Webmail we support as it is an app affiliated with us, other mail we don't. support from the app developers.

nunz

1421 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1668186 11-Nov-2016 17:26

Bung: The comments on that video say that Yahoo has changed and it doesn't work.

big changes in yahoo - now calling themselves abaco or similar. https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains

BUT:

https://help.luminate.com/kb/business-mail/business-mail-pop-imap-settings-sln17152

https://help.luminate.com/kb/business-mail/Use-email-accounts-Yahoo-Mail-SLN22048

https://help.luminate.com/kb/business-mail/setting-business-mail-microsoft-outlook-2002-xp-2003-sln17491

yitz

2074 posts

Uber Geek

#1668188 11-Nov-2016 17:30

IMO you're better off using mail forwarding than any POP retrieval functionality.

networkn

Networkn
32349 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1668197 11-Nov-2016 17:58

nunz:

Mate - the arrogance of what you have said is astounding. I could wipe the floor with you when it comes to trouble shooting, as I suspect you are just a baby in comparison to the length of my experience.

Speaking of breathtaking arrogance!

Equinox IT

Cloud spending continues to surge globally, but most organisations haven’t made the changes necessary to maximise the value and cost-efficiency benefits of their cloud investments. Download the whitepaper From Overspend to Advantage now.

mattwnz

20141 posts

Uber Geek

#1668213 11-Nov-2016 18:26

nunz:

mattwnz:

I think you need to keep escalating to a manager until you get through to one in NZ. POP, IMAP etc is part of the service, so unless they can prove that the issue isn't at their end, they can't then tell you to go to a third party. Doesn't sound like there is much option to move provider if they can't support their services for you.

It is impossible to escalate. I've forced my way to supervisor and got no higher. Complaints department didn't respond. Thi sis their new mantra - Webmail we support as it is an app affiliated with us, other mail we don't. support from the app developers.

You can always escalate until you get a deadlock number from my experience. Then you can take it to the TDR.

firefuze

510 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1668283 11-Nov-2016 21:18

Seen many cases where people have been having authentication issues getting pop3 mail. Turned out for most the 'allow non secure applications' (or something also those lines) had to be enabled my logging into the webmail client. Enabled/Allowed and been working fine since. Also starting happening for no apparent reason. Could be worth exploring to rule out.

chevrolux

4962 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1668301 11-Nov-2016 22:06

nunz:
chevrolux: But seriously, if the client has a domain it could be used with another mail provider - one that doesn't have a bad track record of looking after their mail platform.

The only reason I can think is integrated billing. Nothing technical comes to mind what so ever! And the integrated Billing argument I just will not accept from anybody these days where it's all just automatically billed to credit cards. Makes life easier for everybody.

Reasons can and may include:

billing

technical historical reasons

the cost of changing an entire organisations infrastructure for all users, web sites, photo copiers etc,

management not wanting change

loyalty

A built up reputation that gets content past spam filters nad other filters which may hinder legal, financial, religious, medical or other materials but now trust this organisation to send it from server X but wouldn't from server Y.

Have you ever tried to get yahoo / spark to let emails from your organisation go through their filters? Its a nightmare to get thme to stop black listing, greylisting or out right banning you - even when you are one of their clients.

Billing. I will.give you that as one single good reason.

Points 2-5. Just can't accept them. I lack hours in a day to service clients. I look for solutions that work well, require minimal support and I can deploy quickly. Obviously I also look for the margin "per user" to make it worth while. So while I might only get a couple of billable hours for set up, there is a kick back down the track.
Any organisation using yahoo mail is just not going to be that big so setting up a new mail system will be trivial. It's all about what you want to sell your it client.
But if you like getting the support hours out of them, carry on I suppose. Just don't expect much a response from a public forum.

If you like charging lots of hours for support, then sweet as. But apart from that I just can't see why

chevrolux

4962 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1668302 11-Nov-2016 22:06

nunz:
chevrolux: But seriously, if the client has a domain it could be used with another mail provider - one that doesn't have a bad track record of looking after their mail platform.

The only reason I can think is integrated billing. Nothing technical comes to mind what so ever! And the integrated Billing argument I just will not accept from anybody these days where it's all just automatically billed to credit cards. Makes life easier for everybody.

Reasons can and may include:

billing

technical historical reasons

the cost of changing an entire organisations infrastructure for all users, web sites, photo copiers etc,

management not wanting change

loyalty

A built up reputation that gets content past spam filters nad other filters which may hinder legal, financial, religious, medical or other materials but now trust this organisation to send it from server X but wouldn't from server Y.

Have you ever tried to get yahoo / spark to let emails from your organisation go through their filters? Its a nightmare to get thme to stop black listing, greylisting or out right banning you - even when you are one of their clients.

cheshirecat

50 posts

Geek

#1671784 16-Nov-2016 10:30

The pop3.xtra.co.nz hostname still points to Yahoo in the DNS, so that does not appear to have migrated over to Spark yet.

pop3.xtra.co.nz canonical name = pop3.tnz.yahoo.com.

Whereas the new IMAP hostname, imap.xtra.co.nz, is pointing to a Spark IP:

imap.xtra.co.nz canonical name = imap.tmo.xtra.co.nz.

You can also use the SSL checker at https://www.htbridge.com/ssl to check the SSL settings on the new IMAP and old imap.mail.yahoo.com hostnames - this shows that the new endpoint has dropped some of the less secure RC4-based encryption methods, presumably for security. This may be the reason that some mail clients that worked with the Yahoo IMAP endpoint have problems with the new Spark one? It works fine for me here on Thunderbird.

-CC

Technofreak

6530 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1672295 16-Nov-2016 18:46

cheshirecat:

The pop3.xtra.co.nz hostname still points to Yahoo in the DNS, so that does not appear to have migrated over to Spark yet.

pop3.xtra.co.nz canonical name = pop3.tnz.yahoo.com.

Whereas the new IMAP hostname, imap.xtra.co.nz, is pointing to a Spark IP:

imap.xtra.co.nz canonical name = imap.tmo.xtra.co.nz.

You can also use the SSL checker at https://www.htbridge.com/ssl to check the SSL settings on the new IMAP and old imap.mail.yahoo.com hostnames - this shows that the new endpoint has dropped some of the less secure RC4-based encryption methods, presumably for security. This may be the reason that some mail clients that worked with the Yahoo IMAP endpoint have problems with the new Spark one? It works fine for me here on Thunderbird.

-CC

I think you're right as to why some email clients don't work. I'm using POP on my laptop and that's working fine. On my phone and tablet I use IMAP, the Jolla phone works with the new settings as advised by Spark. I use Outlook for Android on my Nokia N1 Tablet and Outlook won't work with the new settings, yet the native mail client on the tablet works with the new Spark settings.

There has to be an compatibility issue with Outlook for Android. To their credit the Outlook for Android support team have been very attentive and are working through the problem.

I can see why Spark have shied away from providing support especially when it appears issues are related to the email client being used.

Sony Xperia XA2 running Sailfish OS. https://sailfishos.org The true independent open source mobile OS
Samsung Galaxy Tab S6
Dell Inspiron 14z i5

cheshirecat

50 posts

Geek

#1672575 17-Nov-2016 09:59

I actually investigated the SSL support a week or so ago. Looking again now, it seems that the support for RC4-based ciphers has since been dropped from the Yahoo POP3 cipher list. So this might be the source of recent POP3 connection problems?

da5id

550 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#1672651 17-Nov-2016 11:40

Got this in my email today from Spark-

-----

Update your settings.

You'll need to update some settings to access your emails. These are the settings your mobile or tablet previously used to connect your email with Yahoo. If you know what you're doing the new IMAP settings are:

Incoming: imap.xtra.co.nz, SSL On, Port 993

Outgoing: send.xtra.co.nz, SSL On, Port 465

Otherwise, we've got a handy online tool to step you through how to check and update your settings at spark.co.nz/emailchanges

Check your bookmarks.

Also, if you use any bookmarks or shortcuts to access your mailbox, you'll need to update them to xtramail.co.nz

1 | 2 | 3 | 4