Hi Guys - Small deal but thought I'd put it out there as the help desk didn't seem to think it was something they did. Had a customer yesterday who said her outlook managed to forget all her saved pop/smtp passwords after an update. She tried all her passwords before ringing me and ended up that she got her non 2D / Snap emails going but none of her snap ones. I confirmed I had a record of the Snap ones but she couldn't even connect to Snaps mail servers any more, the connection just timed out.

I rang 2D helpdesk and asked if they could remove her IP address from the Firewall that was blocking her due to her repeated failed password attempts and was told 2D don't do that. I explained the fact she could connect everywhere except 2D but they still said its not them. He put me on hold for 5 minutes and spoke to a senior engineer who came back that I shouldn't be using POP on 110 and I explained that it was SSL 995 but for testing purposes to prove the point 110 with Telnet was an easy test (And worked for me from my office connection). He informed me that would be my problem and that if I changed the port to 995 SSL it would work even though I explained it was actually already on that and wasn't working so I gave up as was getting no-where.

The client had moved Rural and is now on Scorch so I rang scorch as they have a static IP but as the client didn't need it they were very accommodating and changed the IP address allocated and booted the connection and what do you know - The mail then worked perfectly and I could still telnet pop.snap.net.nz on port 110 on plain text.

It can get pretty frustrating when its fairly logical and some might say obvious whats happened but the flow chart the guy works off doesn't mention a firewall or mail system security feature so they just send you away. I had it once before where a client had moved from 2D to another provider but had previously had their website hosted at Snap. The domain had been moved and DNS updated but Snap/2D still had some static/manual entries in their DNS so anyone using 2D DNS was getting the old website/webserver. I spoke to the helpdesk for quite a while and was told it was a DNS caching issue (It had been 10 days on a 12 hour TTL) and it was a hosting issue with their provider not a 2D issue and they were no longer a 2D customer so they couldn't help. Spoke to a mate who at that point worked at 2D and he had it sorted inside 20 minutes.

I've heard there is some sort of Dealer process with 2D now - Anyone know how that works?? Does it enable you to step up the helpdesk beyond the flowchart people to someone with a bit more knowledge??

Don't get me wrong - This isn't an attack on 2D's helpdesk as they continue to be one of the best to deal with of any of the large ISP's and are streets ahead of the likes of Vodafone and Spark but its a common theme that when the issue is a little out of the norm it can be a hard job getting past the gatekeeper.