OK, this isn’t a thread about pies, but about administrative assholery at my ISP - EasySpace.
I’ve seen a significant increase in the volume of spam and virus emails in my mailbox of late; to the extent that it often fills up with crap and legitimate messages get bounced before I can get home each day to empty it. Of course I could buy a bigger mailbox, but I’d still be getting lots of spam, so I thought I’d splash out and spend the money on their server-side mail filtering service instead.
So I bought the package and nothing seemed to happen, even though it said it had been activated; their tech support sent me a link to the control panel - the same link I had already tried - it suddenly worked this time (I think they probably forgot to switch something on the first time around), but anyway, that part was not deeply unsatisfactory.
So I tried configuring the mail filter; I’m immediately disappointed that it doesn’t seem to have very many options - a sender black and white list, a keyword filter (more on this later) and a quarantine area where filtered mail can either be deleted or made to deliver normally.
That’s it.
No way to configure the antivirus at all (such as blocking certain file types regardless)
No way to configure the strength of spam filtering.
No way to blacklist mails addressed to certain recipients (I get a lot of spam addressed to sales@ and info@ my domain - addresses I never use)
No way to train the filter, etc.
On top of that, about half of the spam and virus-laden email still comes through unhindered.
On top of that, legitimate mail is intercepted and quarantiend (and not the kind that I can easily add to a white list - stuff like PayPal messages, where the ‘from’ field is the name of the person sending the cash).
On top of that, the bloody keyword filter just doesn’t work - OK, it does work if the keyword is in the subject line, but not if it’s in the message body. The response from tech support on this?
(my test keyword was ‘monkeytrousers’, BTW)
Ohhhh, I see; that’s useful - because I can just ask all those spammers to repeatedly mention the keywords, and if my friends want to contact me to sell me viagra, or hot naked teen pics, their important messages will still get through, that makes perfect fucking sense. Not.
So, anyway, after not much more than 24 hours of using this ‘service’, and having to check the quarantine area frequently to release legitimate emails, I decided enough is enough; here’s the conversation so far:
Fucking unbelievable! - and the irony of it all? The package is called Easy Mail Filter, provided by NetIntelligence - maybe I should just switch ISP anyway. I’ll post more news as it develops…
I was with an ISP that had similar problems - I got the living jesus spammed out of me because they had very bad policies concerning how their ISP was used. They had some archaic POS antispam program they offered that that was completely useless, so the only way to get any kind of effective spam blocking going was to go out an get a real package on my own and then hack (good sense of the word) the system to get it working properly…
I switched ISPs, ended up with a great company with responsive tech support, a spam filter that uses heuristic tests, and my spam has dropped to basically nil.
Yes; NewNet is supposedly very good and their office is just down the road from me (not that this probably helps at all, as I’m sure they won’t deal with tech support in person). It’s just the hassle of switching, however, the hassle of dealing with these idiots is beginning to outweigh that.
It’s all gone quiet now; they certainly had a chance to respond to my last comment during the working day, but they didn’t. It’s a bank holiday weekend too, so I don’t suppose I’ll hear anything further until next week. I went back to the ordering page of their website (where it does indeed say that the charge is £1.50 PM or £18.00 PA) and I took a screen grab… just in case…
I’m actually not sure what I’ll do next; I could just shrug and change ISP, but I only just paid the hosting renewal for this one.
I think I could probably push for a refund, even though they say it isn’t possible; after all, the service they provided was not of merchantable quality, although my comment that they could keep the damn money may have prejudiced that.
One thing is certain; their filtering ‘service’ is intolerably inconvenient; they’ve absolutely got to remove it from my account - and since they’ve already done this once, then put it back again, they can’t plead impossiblity…
I assume you paid for this “service” with a credit card? Contact your credit card company and dispute the charge. Watch how fast the “service” gets cancelled.
Probably not a good idea; they might freeze my account in response and that could cause big troubles getting them to release the tag if I want to transfer the domain away.
Oh, and see, I thought only US companies were outsourcing their customer service functions to third world companies staffed by people who don’t understand English.
I don’t know if yours is a UK domain or if they work different from .com/.net/.org/etc, but you really should have it in your own name anyway, and the ISP shouldn’t be able to touch it, change it, or hold it hostage whatsoever. When I switch ISPs it’s as simple as changing the name server IPs with my registar.
What is it with web hosting that seems to make that industry the bleeding edge of Asshole-Enabled Customer Service? I’ve heard so many stories like this… it’s just sad. Mediocre techies to think they can hang out a shingle and run a hands-off web hosting business just because they can buy cheap billing and hosting software.
Since you’re having problems, I’d like to plug my hosting company of choice, www.asmallorange.com. The support is mind-bogglingly fast and efficient. The normal response time on issues is between 5 and 60 minutes. I’ve never gone more than 8 hours without a response or 24 hours without a satisfactory resolution.
Yes, it’s a .UK domain - registered with Nominet in my name; transfers involve getting the current ISP to set the IPS tag to point at the new ISP; Nominet can also do this independently or in spite of the ISP, however it isn’t at all simple if the current ISP doesn’t want to cooperate (or is unable to) - I had a similar problem with another domain where the ISP went bust without any warning - getting the tag changed involved providing documentary evidence that it really was our domain and we had to wait a few weeks while it all got sorted out.
