Three.ie SMTP server down

alexphoenix

The Three.ie SMTP server is down and has been for a couple of days now.

After spending several hours puzzling as to why my emails had not been
arriving at their destinations, and testing the set-up, I called 3
Customer Service yesterday only to be told that there was no problem at
their end.

My email service is with eircom.net and it was suggested that I should
change my outgoing mail SMTP server settings from the correct setting
(mail-relay.3ireland.ie) to mail1.eircom.net (which only works if you
are an Eircom broadband customer) or to smtp.o2.ie (!), neither of which
worked. I tried to explain to the technical support agent that the
Eircom settings he gave me were only valid if you were accessing the
server as an Eircom Broadband customer (this is to prevent spammers from
using the server and is standard practice here in ROI). He told me that
Eircom had given Three.ie this information, and to query the settings
with Eircom.

I have been a freelance computer technician here in ROI for the best
part of fifteen years and have often had to deal with SMTP settings over
the years, so I think I know my stuff, and I was convinced that the
information given to me was wrong, but the support call ended at that
point.

A couple of minutes later, the phone rang and the technical support
agent informed me that he had just heard from the engineers that the
SMTP server was indeed down (and had been for over 24 hours) and would
probably not be fixed until Monday at the earliest. He advised me to
change my outbound server settings back to mail-relay.3ireland.ie as
they had been before.

Fair play to the man for coming back to me with the updated news,
especially as I had been pretty short with him regarding his incorrect
advice previously. He was, after all, only relaying to me the inaccurate
information supplied to him by his employers.

What I want to know is this:

How come three.ie (parent company CK Hutchison Holdings in Hong Kong,
market capitalization around 40 BILLION euro) do not have some sort of
fail-safe backup in place if their SMTP server goes down? And why should
it take several days for the outage to be repaired?

How come their technical support staff are not aware of this outage 24
hours later? Could it be that no-one in the company NOTICED for 24
hours?

How come they did not (at the very least) send out a text message to all
customers' devices informing them of the outage? They are quick enough
to send out spam-type junkmail informing us of silly promotions through
this medium.

I realize that this only affects the minority of customers using POP3
apps that store email messages offline on the customer's own device (eg
Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird etc) and that those using webmail (Gmail
etc) through their browsers would be unaffected. I was able to test my
email accounts this way and they worked fine.

However, for a company that claims to be "Ireland's largest high-speed
mobile broadband service", this minority represents a considerable
number of people who have been inconvenienced.

All in all, it is just one more example of the shabby service we have
come to expect from three.ie

ED E

UPC have had major f'ck ups with their SMTP nodes before too, three definitely arent the first.

If they considered it important their NOC/Ops would have it resolved within hours, but they've clearly run the numbers on impact. Business customers = 90% MS exchange, POP isn't too popular. So they don't care to call whoever it is they need on the weekend.

ct5amr2ig1nfhp

I have nothing to add to your complaint OP but can I suggest you change your SMTP server to another more reliable provider like Google for example?
It also means that it doesn't matter which provider you're with, you'll be able to send mails without fiddling with your SMTP settings again.

alexphoenix

ED E wrote: »

UPC have had major f'ck ups with their SMTP nodes before too, three definitely arent the first.

If they considered it important their NOC/Ops would have it resolved within hours, but they've clearly run the numbers on impact. Business customers = 90% MS exchange, POP isn't too popular. So they don't care to call whoever it is they need on the weekend.

My point exactly - THEY DON'T CONSIDER IT IMPORTANT!

10% of their customer base is still a pretty large number IMHO. Server has been down since Friday lunchtime. I have a number of business clients that I service on a regular basis, and many of them still use POP3, as do many private clients, who are even more likely to have been inconvenienced by an outage over the weekend.

Bottom line is that IMHO 3.ireland do not care about SMTP for relaying email as this is something that they do not (directly) earn money from, but a significant number of their customers rely on it to work properly, and this weekend all those people have been badly let down. If the outgoing mail had bounced back, or there had been an error message, it would have helped, but the messages went out cleanly, they just never arived at their destination.

ED E

Honestly, I dont know why any serious business user would be with three. You really get what you pay for, go to Vodafone for uptime critical service. Thats where team red excel.

Three have always been bottom price bottom service levels. They're moving contact centres back from india now as it hurt them, but they're still a budget operator. Only Tesco & 48 have worse outage records.

alexphoenix

Charleigh Nutritious Boot wrote: »

I have nothing to add to your complaint OP but can I suggest you change your SMTP server to another more reliable provider like Google for example?
It also means that it doesn't matter which provider you're with, you'll be able to send mails without fiddling with your SMTP settings again.

Excellent advice, thank you, Charleigh Nutritious Boot. I see you describe the process in detail at the end of the thread entitled "Outlook - Receiving not sending mail".

As an occasional poster, it seems that I am not allowed to post URL's (ludicrous, seeing that I have been a member here since 2009!), so perhaps you can post the URLto the thread yourself.

Thanks again for the info.

alexphoenix

ED E wrote: »

Honestly, I dont know why any serious business user would be with three. You really get what you pay for, go to Vodafone for uptime critical service. Thats where team red excel.

Three have always been bottom price bottom service levels. They're moving contact centres back from india now as it hurt them, but they're still a budget operator. Only Tesco & 48 have worse outage records.

Only reason we bother with 3.ie is that we live in a rural area, too far from the nearest exchange for landline-based broadband, and 3.ie is the only company whose signal reaches us. As soon as we have a viable alternative we will switch.

alexphoenix

UPDATE:

At around 1PM I started receiving Mailer-Daemon Relay Failure Notices for around half the emails I had sent during the previous 48 hours. Some of the test emails I sent to myself started ariving here as well and more trickled in over the next 2 hours (not in any logical sequence). Some of the emails I sent out to third parties also arived at their destinations (albeit up to 2 days late). New emails sent appear to be going through OK so it would seem that the problem has now been fixed by three.ie

domeld

ED E wrote: »

Honestly, I dont know why any serious business user would be with three. You really get what you pay for, go to Vodafone for uptime critical service. Thats where team red excel.

Three have always been bottom price bottom service levels. They're moving contact centres back from india now as it hurt them, but they're still a budget operator. Only Tesco & 48 have worse outage records.

Why business user is using operator smtp server?
BTW O2 ad very good infrastructure to provide dedicated soultions.

Mits

This is very bad service by Three. My customer is also in a rural area with no viable alternative to Three for broadband and to be honest the service has worked for two years without any major problems.

The email service is provided by Eircom pop to Exchange 2010 and but the customer was unable to send emails on Friday.

After this I will be prepossessing to move the customer to Office365.

ct5amr2ig1nfhp

Here is the link on how to set up your outgoing mail to use Google SMTP servers, instead of your ISPs SMTP server.

It might help a few people.

Regards

WheatenBriar

Aye use Gmail for business
Three Business customers never had to deal with Indian call centres