BT Customers Complain Of Mail Outage

BT has apologised after a “minority” of its customers were unable to access its email service over the weekend, blaming an unspecified technical error for the outage.

The company promises the affected accounts will be restored as soon as possible and says it will be contacting everyone affected by the fault. Alternatively, users can contact BT via email (if they have access to another account) or via an online form.

BT Mail outage

“We’d like to apologise for a technical problem that meant a minority of BT Mail customers weren’t able to access their email accounts in the past few days,” said BT in a statement on Monday. “We’re in the process of restoring access to the affected email accounts and expect to have the service working again later today, so if you’re still unable to access your email account, please wait and try again later.

“Once again, we’re very sorry for any inconvenience this has caused, and we appreciate your patience as we work to resolve the problem.”

BT has since confirmed to TechWeekEurope that the issue is related to the migration of millions of email accounts from Yahoo Mail to BT Mail, a process which started last year.

“BT was advised by their email partner Openwave Messaging that there was a problem with migration on Saturday night, which meant that a minority of BT’s customers would have seen an error when trying to log in and were unable to access their email,” said a spokesperson. “These customers were also unable to receive any emails into their mailbox during the period. Openwave Messaging has advised that some emails may have not have been received or been lost during the period of affected service.

“Access has now been restored for all customers. There is a possibility that some customers may still be experiencing issues this morning because they haven’t cleared their cache.”

Those unsure on how to clear their cache have been provided with a link for more information, but many disgruntled BT customers have already flocked to Twitter to express their frustration at not being able to receive email for a number of days, including Test Match Special cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew.

.@BTCare you continue to have a stinker. Give me one reason to continue my btinternet account. Thanks

— Jonathan Agnew (@Aggerscricket) July 14, 2014

The issue is embarrassing for BT, which recently apologised for a major broadband outage that affected a number of customers last month.

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