On not being an Xtra customer
February 5th 2010 21:55
I use gmail for all my email work these days, apart from at the office, where maxnet.co.nz is the provider.
Gmail is great: you always have all your stuff available, no matter where you log in, and unlike many other online email sites, you don't have to go through a heap of pages before you get where your want to be. Plus it's laid out decently; some online email pages are cramped and cluttery. (Maxnet being one, for instance.) It reminds of trying to get life insurance online, something that can be very frustrating and difficult to get to grips with.
Anyway, the point of this post is that there's been a bit of a hitch with gmail of late. It isn't gmail's fault, but the fault of another provider, who will not be nameless. It's xtra, one of New Zealand's giant providers, and one of the worst.
Before Christmas, my wife kept telling me that none of the emails I sent to her via gmail were getting through to her work computer - her work uses xtra. There was no sign of them in the junk box, and we were mystified. Finally she did a bit more digging and discovered that they were sitting in the 'spam' box online, which meant that they weren't even getting down to her computer.
In other words, xtra was treating my gmail emails as spam - in spite of the fact that they were all perfectly innocuous and don't use any of those words that tend to signify that the email may be spam.
We sorted this out - made me an unblocked customer - and things were okay. But then, while selling stuff on Trade Me, New Zealand's successful equivalent of ebay, I found that a couple of the customers were writing emails to me, but not getting any of mine. And of course they were feeling a little aggrieved at my apparent lack of response.
I deduced, since they were both xtra customers, that the emails were getting blocked, and would probably be sitting online. I emailed one of these people from my work address (the maxnet one) and they got the mail straight away, and replied quickly.
So I rang xtra. And got the stroppiest customer service person I have ever encountered. Now I have to admit that I can be a difficult person when it comes to dealing with help desks. It's something I'm working on, and trying hard to rectify, and in this instance I was unfailingly polite, because I know how easy it is for me not to be.
But the woman, after listening to my concern, and interrupting me regularly, began to talk right over the top of me when I said that the problem had to be at their end, and not with my own provider (Orcon). I asked her twice to let me finish what I saying and without warning she pulled the plug! Xtra-ordinary!
I tried ringing Orcon, knowing that it probably wouldn't help, and they were apologetic, but confirmed what I knew...xtra would need to deal with the problem.
So, with some qualms, I rang xtra back and got a person who was the opposite of the previous woman in every respect: polite, informative, and someone who was prepared to listen. She still thought that they wouldn't be able to do anything about it, but did go off and investigate, and even promised to ring back if she came across anything that would help.
Apart from asking the email recipients to unblock me, there's little I can do - and of course I don't always know who's not getting the mail - out of half a dozen people I sent mail to at one point last week, most of whom were xtra customers, all but one got the email. With the Trade Me customers (and Zillion, another auction site) I've put a note on the payment instructions to say that if they don't hear from me within a day, they need to let me know. I can then reply from a different email address.
But this isn't really satisfactory. Next step, I think, is a formal complaint of some sort to xtra, who, by the way, have come out very poorly in the latest consumer magazine survey of NZ ISPs - at the bottom, in fact, in most cases.
Time to get your act together, xtra - though do they really care enough to do it when they have heaps of customers and are making piles of money?
Gmail is great: you always have all your stuff available, no matter where you log in, and unlike many other online email sites, you don't have to go through a heap of pages before you get where your want to be. Plus it's laid out decently; some online email pages are cramped and cluttery. (Maxnet being one, for instance.) It reminds of trying to get life insurance online, something that can be very frustrating and difficult to get to grips with.
Anyway, the point of this post is that there's been a bit of a hitch with gmail of late. It isn't gmail's fault, but the fault of another provider, who will not be nameless. It's xtra, one of New Zealand's giant providers, and one of the worst.
Before Christmas, my wife kept telling me that none of the emails I sent to her via gmail were getting through to her work computer - her work uses xtra. There was no sign of them in the junk box, and we were mystified. Finally she did a bit more digging and discovered that they were sitting in the 'spam' box online, which meant that they weren't even getting down to her computer.
In other words, xtra was treating my gmail emails as spam - in spite of the fact that they were all perfectly innocuous and don't use any of those words that tend to signify that the email may be spam.
We sorted this out - made me an unblocked customer - and things were okay. But then, while selling stuff on Trade Me, New Zealand's successful equivalent of ebay, I found that a couple of the customers were writing emails to me, but not getting any of mine. And of course they were feeling a little aggrieved at my apparent lack of response.
I deduced, since they were both xtra customers, that the emails were getting blocked, and would probably be sitting online. I emailed one of these people from my work address (the maxnet one) and they got the mail straight away, and replied quickly.
So I rang xtra. And got the stroppiest customer service person I have ever encountered. Now I have to admit that I can be a difficult person when it comes to dealing with help desks. It's something I'm working on, and trying hard to rectify, and in this instance I was unfailingly polite, because I know how easy it is for me not to be.
But the woman, after listening to my concern, and interrupting me regularly, began to talk right over the top of me when I said that the problem had to be at their end, and not with my own provider (Orcon). I asked her twice to let me finish what I saying and without warning she pulled the plug! Xtra-ordinary!
I tried ringing Orcon, knowing that it probably wouldn't help, and they were apologetic, but confirmed what I knew...xtra would need to deal with the problem.
So, with some qualms, I rang xtra back and got a person who was the opposite of the previous woman in every respect: polite, informative, and someone who was prepared to listen. She still thought that they wouldn't be able to do anything about it, but did go off and investigate, and even promised to ring back if she came across anything that would help.
Apart from asking the email recipients to unblock me, there's little I can do - and of course I don't always know who's not getting the mail - out of half a dozen people I sent mail to at one point last week, most of whom were xtra customers, all but one got the email. With the Trade Me customers (and Zillion, another auction site) I've put a note on the payment instructions to say that if they don't hear from me within a day, they need to let me know. I can then reply from a different email address.
But this isn't really satisfactory. Next step, I think, is a formal complaint of some sort to xtra, who, by the way, have come out very poorly in the latest consumer magazine survey of NZ ISPs - at the bottom, in fact, in most cases.
Time to get your act together, xtra - though do they really care enough to do it when they have heaps of customers and are making piles of money?
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