My ISP’s Vision of What E-Mail Should Say

When I first registered my web site’s domain name in 1999, I signed up under one of GTE Hosting’s web site hosting plan, which provided me with a reasonably good package of features. In those days, I really didn’t need a whole lot beyond server-side CGI using Perl. As the years went by, GTE Hosting became Verizon Hosting, and Verizon Hosting got spun off into Idearc Media Corp. recently.

With that spin-off, some things changed. While I got larger disk space and greater server-side offerings, including MySQL database support and a web mail client with IMAP support, I also lost my dedicated IP address, something that help you with some search engines. And, along with that change, I also found myself being served by a company with arguably the most inept customer service department!

Having worked in a variety of capacities in the web development industry, I have tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but some months ago, I finally had to contact their investor relations group to get some very basic issues resolved. And, they did—well, they only halfway-resolved them, but it was good enough.

Today, I’m thinking it’s time to go even higher.

About a month ago, I joined an e-mail list group related to the business of Macintosh software development and found that about a quarter of my e-mails from the list appeared to be spam, so I just deleted them and moved on. However, as I read some e-mails recently, I began to get concerned that I was once again not getting all the e-mails I was supposed to get, one of the issues that I had to contact Idearc’s investor group to get resolved. Before going through the hassle of trying to find someone who knows how to do their job at Idearc, I decided to look at the contents of one of those supposed-spam e-mails and found that Idearc’s web mail software was only showing me a small portion of the e-mails.

When I found that Idearc’s web mail software was the cause of my losing potentially important e-mails, I was very angry, but I decided to send them screenshots and a sample e-mail that was being convoluted by their web mail software. Below is what their web mail shows:


Below is what the latest version of Microsoft Entourage shows. Note the highlighted sections that are common between the two.


The response I got back from Idearc made me livid:

Hello Gary,

Thank you for contacting Superpages Technical Support!

We have investigated the issue and have found out that the Webmail works properly. Please see the attached screenshot of Webmail. It looks like the issue is on your end. Please check the settings of your Internet browser and email client. If the issue persists please provide us with the screenshots where the issue appears.

We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for additional assistance, and invite you to contact us if you have any additional concerns.

Regards,

N.C.U
Technical Support Specialist
mysuperpageshosting.com
1-877-988-3775
support@mysuperpageshosting.com

To assist us in serving you better, please do not delete any portion of the Technical Support Specialist correspondences.

The moral to this story is: Stay away from Idearc Media Corp. For a modern ISP to say that their software works correctly when it is so obviously flawed tells me that they don’t want any serious customers.