We’ve had a client contact us recently regarding his Vodafone netbook and the problems he’s had sending emails through it. The cheek of it was that Vodafone blamed us for the problems the client was having, when it was their fault. What’s more, they made the client jump through hoops before finally admitting the problem was of their making and then proceeded to charge the client for an additional service to rectify it.
So what’s the problem, how do you identify it and what do you need to do to resolve it?
Cheap and plentiful Internet-connected mobile phones
Mobile phones that can connect to the Internet are plentiful and cheap these days – you can obtain a suitably equipped pay-as-you-go phone for around £20, plus some credit, at the moment.
Spammers delight
The first problem is that spammers cottoned on to this and started to send their unwanted, and sometimes malicious, emails using a pay-as-you-go phone that is difficult to track down. In an attempt to clamp down on this mobile phone providers stopped users from sending emails through any email service provider, such as dynanti web design, and only allowed users to send their email through the mobile phone company’s own email service. This enables the mobile phone companies to track the usage and shut down the user’s email service if they think they are guilty of spamming.
550 errors
If you obtain a mobile phone, or netbook equipped with a mobile phone sim card, you might think that the world is your oyster and you can set up your phone/netbook to access your various existing email accounts and send mail out through them too. They’ll work fine when downloading emails, but when you attempt send an email through these email service providers it might fail and return a ’550′ error. This means that the mobile phone company has blocked the sending of emails through all email services except their own.
Don’t send emails through your mobile phone provider’s email service
Now you could set up your phone/netbook to receive emails from your usual email accounts and send your mail through the mobile phone company’s email service. However, this is not a good idea. If someone emailed you at yourname@yourdomain.co.uk and received a reply from yourid@yourphonecompany.co.uk they might think their email has been intercepted and they have received a spam reply and not open it.
Furthermore, if you set you phone/netbook and computer in the office up to access your usual email service correctly, any emails you send on your phone/netbook should appear in the ‘sent’ folder of your computer and vice-versa. If you have to resort to sending your emails through your mobile phone provider’s email service then it will be impossible to synch up your phone/netbook and computer.
The solution
In our client’s case, he had to sign up to Vodafone’s 360 service, at additional monthly cost, so that he could send his emails through our email service and synchronise them with his main computer in the office.
Our conclusion
Firstly, we don’t believe that Vodafone should have told our client that we were at fault because their service is understandably secure.
Secondly, we think Vodafone should train their level one, two, three and four engineers to understand what a 550 error is and how it should be resolved. Our client had to spend several hours on the phone trying to rectify this issue and only had it resolved when it was escalated to a level five engineer.
Thirdly, we think that it should be made clear to people when they purchase these devices that, despite the fact that they are advertised as being the central hub for all mobile communication, there are restrictions on what can and cannot be done without additional monthly expenditure.
Our advice
Before purchasing a new mobile phone/netbook for communication on the go, check to see whether the level of service you are receiving includes the ability to send email messages through third-party email service providers such as us.
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