After Yesterdays Outage

[#1]

Nothing posted has 'FIXED' this, but it appears I can now send and receive as normal.

[#2]

Arghhhhh!, its started happening again, after 5 hours of normal service!!

[#3]

Well said, stuck. 
Webmail for me exactly as you describe plus Thunderbird is not working at all, it can't log in. I also cannot sign into my account on the Plusnet website. The constant copy and paste flummery from Plusnet cs is beginning to feel truly insulting.

[#4]

The connection to the server failed or was dropped.

just when I was looking forward to a weekend catching up 2.5 days of missing work!

[#5]

OK, I run an automated test every day at 2:03 (AM) , this morning it failed.

Right now it's still failing. However:

$ telnet relay.plus.net. 25
Trying 212.159.9.107...
Connected to relay.plus.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
Connection closed by foreign host.

So it connects, but the mailsever immediately drops the connection . The IP address works better.

$ telnet 212.159.8.107 25
Trying 212.159.8.107...
Connected to 212.159.8.107.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 avasout-peh-004 smtp relay.plus.net

But it looks like it's the same:

$ nslookup 212.159.8.107
107.8.159.212.in-addr.arpa      name = relay.plus.net.

Authoritative answers can be found from:
8.159.212.in-addr.arpa  nameserver = ns1.force9.net.
8.159.212.in-addr.arpa  nameserver = ns2.force9.net.

$ nslookup relay.plus.net.
Server:         127.0.0.53
Address:        127.0.0.53#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   relay.plus.net
Address: 212.159.8.107
Name:   relay.plus.net
Address: 212.159.9.107

[#6]

@PhilipHeyes   Doh! thankyou it works yay!  more than we can say for the official help

[#7]

I take it folks are aware of the status page.

https://plusnet.servicestatus.net/plusnet/status

Not a lot of use, but at least they see some problems (often it just says "all green" while totally broken)

[#8]

Seen it, but "Plusnet emails can be accessed using an email client as an alternative" is not correct.  MS Outlook on 2 PCs here still failing either to receive or send, despite trying the thoughtful workaround suggestions here (thank you) and various others of my own - all unsuccessful.  Am receiving some emails on Android app and very occasionally (not often) sending that way, but desktop client is my primary (and indispensable) daily work tool, and hasn't worked since Tuesday night.  Webmail is mostly inaccessible.

I would really like some evidence that Plusnet staff have identified a specific problem and have an plan of ideas about what to do about it.  I would also like a reassurance that when some customers report that service is resuming, that will not lead to the rest of us (who are still not getting the service) being ignored.  Others here have said it - but I reinforce the message - this is still not fixed, and it's a monumental blight on the company's reputation.  We need urgent help.  Is anyone in charge reading this?

[#9]

I notice next Status update seems to be tomorrow Sat at 9.30am - why not before ?
PN Communication is awful (like to current service) they just don't get it.

Many have said they are thinking of leaving, though this is not always possible some like me are tied into deals and leaving would cost money. Would also lose current email address which is presumably used for most if not all personal and business contacts.  Lots will have lost money etc. because of this and still PN do not explain exactly what the problem is.
Even rail companies will attempt to explain the cause of delays.

Getting any compensation from Plusnet will probably be unlikely - though this should happen

Voting with feet is still an option for some. The loss of goodwill should really alarm PN.

[#10]

Last time I looked at the status it said the problem started Wednesday just before 8am. We had issues from Tuesday late. 

[#11]

I'm receiving emails through Live Mail, but haven't been able to send anything since Wednesday and still no go.

It would be nice to know what the problem actually is, and some sort of idea when it will be actually fixed.

[#12]

Reminder to self: Just like last time you had an issue, don't rely on Plusnet support to resolve issues but go to the forum where likely one of your fellow Plusnet victims will have a solution. Indeed changing from relay.plus.net to 212.159.8.107 has allowed me to send again.

I did try pinging relay.plus.net and the DNS resolved it as 212.159.9.107...

What confused me was that my iPad can receive and send fine so I was sure that it must have been a local PC issue. Although my iPad is set up for IMAP that only concerns receiving so sending should be the same as Outlook on Win10? Maybe its an IOS vs Win10 thing?

[#13]

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@Dippy wrote:

I did try pinging relay.plus.net and the DNS resolved it as 212.159.9.107...

... And that may be the problem in a nutshell.  Since changing the outgoing server settings to use 212.159.8.107 instead of relay.plus.net or smpt.plus.net seems to fix things (at least for now) then it may be as simple as a typo in the DNS configuration of the mail relay.

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[@jonnyfriendly]

@jonnyfriendly

good point. My current contract is up at year end. When my energy company went belly up recently I was moved to "Shell Energy" and they have deals on Broadband for existing energy customer ...maybe get a little +ve out of all these -ves.

WRT you mail address DON'T GIVE OUT YOUR ISP email. Just buy a cheap domain and redirect all the email to your plusnet address . Then you can switch .... eg john@jonnyfriendly.co.uk  ...also you can have as many addresses as you like. I given out the equivalent of john.barclays@jonnyfriendly.co.uk  to my bank, johnHMRC@jonnyfriendly.co.uk  to the taxman etc ...then complain (and block) when e.g. bea sell your email addres.

[#15]

@pwberry Hear hear!

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@pwberry wrote:

Plusnet would earn some much-needed respect if they gave some indication of why they had a problem,  why it took so long, and what steps they're taking to mitigate against it happening again.   

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