I probably get a handful of e-mails and phone calls every week making the above claim. Unfortunately, “not working” doesn’t give me or your provider much to go on to figure out what is going on.
E-mail isn’t always instantaneous. And, as more services and people go online, added with online telephone services (VOIP) all using the same pipelines — learn to accept the occasional hiccup or slowdown.
Sometimes there are geographic or weather related issues that cause a certain area of the pipeline to be blocked. Say a backhoe hits a fiber optic cable in Atlanta. Or ice storms in the Midwest cause various lines to go down. All of which could cause a domino effect and cause connectivity to slow and e-mail to take longer to get from point A to point B.
So, how do you determine what, if anything, isn’t working?
- If you can Send e-mail but cannot Receive e-mail, it isn’t your connectivity or both wouldn’t work. In this case contact your incoming/server provider. This generally applies to those who use their own domain for their e-mail address. Typically these folks have a different INCOMING server than that provided by their ISP.
- If you can Receive but you cannot Send, then you need to contact your ISP as it is the OUTGOING server (SMTP) advised by your connectivity provider (ISP) that is not allowing you to Send.
It is always a good idea to check your ISP’s “Network Status” page to see if they are aware of any problems or issues that may be causing network delays of e-mail delivery. Check the news and see if there are any issues in your area such as weather or accidents that could affect your connectivity.
When you determine who you should call you need to provide the detailed specific error message (word for word) that you are receiving when you go to send or check e-mail. This is a required courtesy for those you contact to actually be able to try and help you.
Without this information, there is no way to know what the problem may be. This error message is imperative to determining what the problem is and if there is anything anyone can do about it.
Your service providers will most certainly appreciate you providing as many details as possible when you contact them with problems — “not working” is really of no help at all.
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I changed over from Rogers to hotmail, It worked fine for a week or so. Then a sign came up saying I did not have an E Mail account.
As I’m quite new to Computers, I think I must have screwed up somewhere. So if you can help at all I would be modt gratefull as I am a Writer/Reporter and I need it.
Thank you in advance
John Doolan
Hey, John:
That’s tough for me to say — without actually having the word for word error message. Could it be you accidentally canceled your account? Or maybe you don’t have cookies on in your browser for the site to recognize you. It could be so many things.
With that said, when you rely on a free e-mail account — you get what you pay for. And, Hotmail in particular throws off errors on a regular basis — so it may not even be anything you did! Time to get a real e-mail account!
Spend the $20 and buy your own domain name and order your own e-mail services. Then you are not relying on any free service to provide you the flexibility and reliability you need to do business. (Shameless Plug: You can check out my DIY Domain Services site and order your domain for under ten bucks!)
HTH!
Judith