Fastmail the failure

[digp]

http://tdh.me/fastmail-failed/

[William9]

Thanks for pointing out that interesting article. I think satisfaction with a provider depends in part on whether or not you are using it for business messaging and how much you are willing to pay for the service. I previously had a couple of Enhanced Fastmail accounts (which were top of the line back then) which I used for business. I, too, felt let down by FM when I experienced issues with my accounts. I have a much more expensive provider now, but experience nearly 100% messaging availability and receive awesome customer service for my business and personal email. Customer service includes calling me (on the telephone ) once when that form of communication was necessary.

[digp]

is that luxsci?

how are you getting on with rackspace these days?

[William9]

I have accounts with several providers, which are discussed herein. I assume many of us who frequent EMD do. The one I was referring to above with the awesome support and uptime is LuxSci.

[EdinwolfPA]

I have been with Luxsci since October 2013 and the customer service is excellent, sure it is a little more expensive than the average e-mail provider but well worth the money.

I actually get my support tickets responded to in 45 minutes or less at Luxsci .........unfortunately, I can't say the same thing about FM

Luxsci has been a problem free e-mail provider and I have been very happy with them thus far.

David

[bluebit]

Can you let me know exactly what type of emails are you sending? Could you please move a few of the sample ones into a “forwebmaster” folder in your account?

This is the section of the article that I'm concerned about - When Fastmail is advocating privacy, I'm a little worried about a member of their support team having no problem accessing a customer's email messages. With the amount of personal and account information stored in email accounts, one trusts their email provider to "not peek".

[Terry]

Originally Posted by digp

http://tdh.me/fastmail-failed/

Sounds like he is a bit of a clown or perhaps a spammer.

[bluebit]

Originally Posted by Terry

Sounds like he is a bit of a clown or perhaps a spammer.

I would have to disagree with you on this one. He is pretty well known in the WordPress arena: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thord_Daniel_Hedengren

And his issues: mostly the viewing of emails and delay in support concern me as well.

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by Terry

Sounds like he is a bit of a clown or perhaps a spammer.

I thought his write up was a fair factual account of his experience. It is a fact that Fastmail's support is not consistently what many business customers are looking for. He was possibly unfortunate (and the precise limits he breached are unclear) but it is a fact that (i) when he gave up on Fastmail his problem was unresolved; and (ii) the request to let support staff look at his emails seemed irrelevant to explaining and resolving his issue, as well as making Fastmail look cavalier about email privacy.

I personally have few serious issues with FM support, only because I can step around their systems with private messages when I am desperate. However, FM really does need to understand that support is a critical need for business customers and consider how those needs can be properly address. For several years, I have suggested they set up a paid support phone line (which can be expensive) that is guaranteed to allow customers to get immediate help when waiting is not an option. Business customers forced to pay for genuinely fast response will moan, but they will not jump ship.

[William9]

It's a long-standing issue, especially important when one considers business customer expectations.

[janusz]

Originally Posted by bluebit

, I'm a little worried about a member of their support team having no problem accessing a customer's email messages.

The customer was asked to copy a sample "problematic" messages to a specific place to enable investigation of his problems.
What alternative do you suggest? "Some messages do not reach some recipients. I do not want you to see either the messages or the recipients. Sort it out double quick"???

[bluebit]

Originally Posted by janusz

The customer was asked to copy a sample "problematic" messages to a specific place to enable investigation of his problems.
What alternative do you suggest? "Some messages do not reach some recipients. I do not want you to see either the messages or the recipients. Sort it out double quick"???

Log files. Mail servers (per the administrator's configuration) typically store the metadata of every email message sent and received, so since you (as customer support) know the customer's email address, one of the first steps could have been to run a query on the mail log and determine how the server was handling the email messages.

Having once working for a major web hosting firm, I can't recall a single time that I ever needed to access a customer's files. Every issue that customers sent our direction could be solved by reviewing the web server log files. Granted, I don't know how Fastmail has their setup configured, but I'd assume at least the basics are being logged to provide general accounting.

[bwat47]

To me it makes 100% sense for fastmail to limit sending on trial accounts. I'd imagine trial accounts are the biggest source of outgoing spam for them... If there is a limit they should indeed make that more clear though, to avoid making a potential customer angry as evidenced in the OP. But the fact that they have a limit on sending in trial accounts is something that makes complete sense IMO...

I do tech support at a small ISP, and outgoing spam is indeed a huge problem, if too much outgoing spam goes out the email provider can end up with awful situations such as being blocked by various spam filtering services, which in turn angers even more customers (this happened once at the ISP I worked at, it was awful lol).

[kijinbear]

Slow support is definitely a problem with FM. Even with an Enhanced account, it's typical to wait a day or two for simple questions to be answered. Maybe things are better with the recently introduced Premier account... but my server hosting company always responds to support tickets within an hour, and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect my email hosting company to do the same.

What I find even more annoying about OP's episode is that it took a couple of email exchanges for FM to even recognize that their sending limit was causing the problem. There was another thread a couple of weeks ago where someone with an existing business migrated to FM and their existing volume of email triggered the limits right away. This seems to be a common occurrence, but FM seems ill equipped to deal with it. If someone says they're unable to send emails, check the status of the account (e.g. sending limit triggered at 3 p.m.) before replying with a canned response!

[bwat47]

Originally Posted by kijinbear

What I find even more annoying about OP's episode is that it took a couple of email exchanges for FM to even recognize that their sending limit was causing the problem. There was another thread a couple of weeks ago where someone with an existing business migrated to FM and their existing volume of email triggered the limits right away. This seems to be a common occurrence, but FM seems ill equipped to deal with it. If someone says they're unable to send emails, check the status of the account (e.g. sending limit triggered at 3 p.m.) before replying with a canned response!

Yeah, I'd imagine they have some way to check if an account has hit the limit (and if their tech support doesn't have a way to check this, than they should, its hard to provide proper tech support when you don't have access to important information like that).

The following would probably also help to avoid these situations:

1. Put a disclaimer on trial accounts, saying what the sending limitations of the trial accounts are

2. Provide a proper error message in the webmail interface when the sending limit is hit.

3 ???

4. Profit!