To update: BT has confirmed that the issues affecting its email accounts have now been resolved. If you are a BT customer and you were previously unable to reply to email messages, please sign in again now. In a statement sent to Express.co.uk, a telecommunications spokesman said: “In the early afternoon, some customers had problems using their BT webmail service for less than 90 minutes. A fix was implemented quickly and is now the services available. ” We would like to apologize to all affected customers. “
The original article, published before the fix, follows below …
Hundreds of disgruntled BT customers have flooded social media with complaints that they cannot log into their inbox, send or reply to email, or even access their contact book due to another outage. With millions still working and studying from home with the ongoing public health crisis, the timing is far from ideal. BT’s broadband network itself appears to continue to function smoothly, with problems appearing to be limited to BT Mail.
It is unclear whether the problems currently only apply to those who access their email through the online portal, or if those who rely on a third-party application such as Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail see the problems as well. BT’s customer care team seems to be trying to pinpoint exactly which users are having problems and responding to some of the dozen of customers with complaints on social media.
When a contract is signed for the first time, BT offers all broadband customers access to a free email address. These BT Mail addresses are provided by Yahoo Mail. However, it remains unclear whether the current issues are limited to BT email accounts only, or whether Yahoo account holders won’t be able to log into their inboxes as well.
The independent service DownDetector, which tracks the performance of online services by monitoring social media for complaints, currently collects around 900 complaints per minute from BT customers. Dozens of these come from Twitter, where users angrily asked the BT customer service team – available at @BT_uk – if they can use their email account again.
For now, BT has yet to confirm whether there are any issues with its BT Mail accounts. While the customer service team tries to capture the details of those affected by the outage, there is no confirmation of how widespread the problem is or whether everyone who can no longer log into their inbox is affected by the same problem.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time BT customers have lost their BT email account verification. Back in August last year, there were similar widespread complaints on social media about a problem preventing BT customers from reading their emails online or third-party email management tools like Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, Spark or Use AirMail.
The news comes after a report warned that BT customers could pay additional fees if they wanted to keep access to their inbox after switching to a different broadband company at the end of their contract. While it’s not uncommon for ISPs to charge for this, BT is one of the most expensive – it costs £ 90 a year. Ouch.
Express.co.uk reached out to BT to find out more. We will update this article as soon as we have some answers on what is causing the increase in complaints on DownDetector and preventing users from using their email account. Stay tuned.
