Last week I wrote about how my email provider Netidentity had completely messed up a migration with their web email system and left thousands of user without their paid for email service.
Well, after 5 days with no email I did finally gain access to my email. So how did my email get fixed? Did the people at Netidentity find the problem and fix it system wide? no. Did one of my emails or calls to support get my problem escalated to a priority and they fixed it? no. Did I spend days and days reading though the blog of one of their employees and all of the angry comments only to discover that I could post my email address there to get it fixed? Yup.
I am pretty sure that if I had not found the blog and read through it to figure out that netidentity was paying more attention to users problems if they post their information directly on the blog, I would still be without email. I can’t even imagine how this must be for the typical customer who does not read blogs or search alternative means for reaching customer service but instead just sits and waits for netidentity to fix their email.
So everything is fine now right? Wrong. My email worked for a couple of days and now I am getting an error message “An error occurred while reading your settings. Please contact your system administrator.” when I try to access my web mail.
This is ridiculous. I guess it is time to abandon this service and search for a new one. I really wish they didn’t own the domain name of my last name. I guess I will change my last name to zlkdjfaowiejfadsjf and purchase the domain name right away.
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I have had the same experience. My e-mail was down for days until I both posted on the forum AND sent an e-mail directly to Ross Rader. He is the one keeping up the forum. I still am unable to use POP but can read my e-mail via the web interface.
I left over 5 messages via the support form and have never heard back from them. The first message I left was over a week ago.
I hate to change e-mail as I have given it out over the period of about 7 years. I will go through the process and let my registration expire when it next comes due.
What a mess!
The extraordinary thing about this mess is that, nearly two weeks after it made its presence evident, Ross, the cheery fixit guy at Netidentity, still makes no admission that anything his team has done (other than mislead him — he thought things were okay, he wrote a few days ago, because his team told him that … and so, he delayed going into the system and seeing the mess himself. Shades of the Iraq war!) was wrong.
All his messages suggest that his team inherited an unworking mess from the earlier owner, and is working hard to fix those inherited problems. What lots of customers are saying is that a large share of the new problems have come from an inept redesign by a group of people who seem to have had very little idea of what an email service is supposed to do … and apparently still haven’t worked that out.
Mr fixit yesterday airily told customers that the reason their recently sent email is not stored in the Sent folder any more, is that these brilliant designers switched off the feature that would save them. Note … he didn’t say they had overlooked it, he said they had switched it off.
On the Netidentity login screen there’s a message from Mr fixit saying he wants complaints and will get answers back in a few days. His definition of “few” seems to be two weeks or more. Lots of customers are complaining that their earlier complaints attract no responses. Yet.
I’d love to know how many formerly happy Nameplanet customers are now doing the bulk of their emailing through other services. Lots & lots & lots, very likely.
NamePlanet/NetIdentity users, myself included, continue to be very unhappy with the non-service they have been receiving during the past three weeks — and it looks as though there is no end in sight to the problems with this train wreck.
I can’t believe this mess! I have lost all of my Sent Items, and it looks as all my contacts are gone as well. Has anyone thought of legal action against NetIdentity? I am ready to
Blog? Is that what I have to do to get my webmail working? I went there and the comments were “closed!” So now I’m stuck sending emails to support again and begging them to get my webmail working. It’s been two weeks now and I still can’t access my webmail. And I can’t bloody believe I’m paying for this “service!”
After more than 5 years of shelling out to NetIdenty for the use of my own surname, I am desperate to switch to gmail or hotmail or anyone except NetIdentty, and keep whatever money and dignity I still have left.
Considering the money I alone have paid them, I seriously cannot believe the amateur level of service they are now providing. I get the impression there is only one or two people running support over there.
Anyone considering NetIdentity should hang on to their wallets and run the opposite direction.
It is not November 21st. This migration began in September. There are still problems with the system.
Spam has increased by nearly 3 times. Many people on the Netidentity blog complain about the increase.
There are problems with loggin into your account if you use Internet Explorer.
The help desk is behind. The responses I have received have been poor at best.
I am moving my e-mail.
I agree with Michael, stay away from this company. Get e-mail somewhere else!
Oops, the first line should have been …
It is now November 21st.
Hay, I ve drawn completely. I just purchased the email from netidentity and **Just a single time** I was able to connect to my mail box.
and then its complete disaster.
some tell me how do i communicate with there support starff, I tried everything, email phone messaging etc. but no one is even responding me at all. Even my email is again available for sale on there site. 😦
I am tired of this service but who knows what is going to occure next.
I’ve had an email account with NetIdentity fo at least 8 years (multiple accounts now including web hosting.) The tech service was never very good, but the problems were few. Once Tucows took over, the service abrubtly went down the tubes … The service is now so poor and so unreliable, even after 8 years with the same email accounts, I fiqure the sooner I dump Tucows, the sooner I’ll recover from this mess. Today I set up alternative email accounts and have begun my own migration 🙂 There is no telling how much future revenue Tucows is going to forfiet over the years from customers who will no longer renew email accounts with them. I’ve been stung and I’m not going to hang around this wasp nest to get stung again. These people at Tucows had a good thing going but they decided to ignore their customers and now it will be our turn to ignore them. What a joke of a business Tucows is and I only hope they lose enough business to put them out to pasture. I fiqure for every dollar I don’t spend there times the number of other unsatisfied customers who have (or will) throw in the towel, it’s going to cost them more than a few jobs, but obviously they might as well lay them all off now, because nobody at Tucows is doing anything productive anyway.
Want a gmail invite anyway? 😉
I hate using anything else now…
does anyone know how to get a password reset and sent to an alternate address from NetIdentity? For some reason, I have been unable to log on for MONTHS. Please help.
[…] Netidentity Email Migration Nightmare: Update – Spontaneous Publicity (accoridng to their experience, nothing is getting fixed on Monday) […]
Having been accused of being a Spammer (which I am not) in late November 07, the abuse team at Netidentity blocked my account in a high handed manner with no advice to me. I eventually got through by phone (Buenos Aires to Toronto – no cheap rates) and I got them to put me back online. Less than a week later the system broke down completely and I have been without my mail since December 5 with no replies to e-mails or support forms. Voice mail informs customers that there is over 40 minutes wait before anyone will attend the phone (imagine the cost from Buenos Aires). I don’t see any fixing in the near future and if they do, what sort of compensation will us old customers get for the extreme damage they have caused us. Frankly I think they are going to go arse over tit and go bankrupt with all their clients leaving them.
NIGHTMARE
They won’t answer their support number, reply to the reported problems
or give back the money they are taking for NOT supplying a service
I have 8 reported problems since their server switch on Dec 7, none of
which have been answered and we still can’t logon.
STAY AWAY FROM NETIDENITY AND TUCOWS
It’s money tipped down the drain
Since about 1998 or so, I was on Mailbank, then it became Netidentity, now it has been bought by TuCows. It used to be a very good service, and I enjoyed having my last name as the domain name. Since the TuCows buyout and takeover, I am getting an average of 1 spam every 15 minutes, (over 100 a day on most days). The server is very slow, there is no customer support anymore, and the service is totally awful! There is no way I will renew when it comes up again, unless the management of this company can increase the speed, and do something about the spam problem. Since the problems on NetIdentity have surfaced, I opened an account on Yahoo, and the service is far superior. Their spam filtering seems to work decently, the speed is fast, and it is free. Stay away from this company, it was good at one time, but for now at least it is not worthy as an email provider!
I’m getting multiple copies of old e-mails being piped to my IP’s e-mail. The ones that have just turned up go back 6 months to August 2007. I’m paying a ridiculous amount for this service (when I joined with MailBank it was $5 a year – it’s now $25 a year). I’m reluctant to drop this service after 8 (10?) years, but on price alone it’s probably time I did so. There’s no excuse for there being serious bugs as well!