testing Sympatico mail servers

[David J Patrick]

Chris Gow wrote:

>On March 30, 2005 12:47 pm, David J Patrick wrote:
>  
>
>>the Sympatico mail servers have been acting strangely for me, for the
>>last couple of weeks. smtp down for days at a time, and incoming mail
>>arriving late.
>>
>Have you complained to Bell about this? A friend of mine is having similar 
>problems receiving email. He called and complained and got a month's free 
>service.
>  
>
OH yeah ! Howling and growling ! Grumble MSN this, and Passport that !
I leaned on the linux horn with a heavy hand. For your amusement, I've
copied the latest here.
=========

I have been a loyal Bell Canada customer for over 20 years and used
Sympatico for the past 5, or so. Several years ago I switched to linux
(after huge frustrations with Windows) and with the help of the linux
community, have been a happy sympatico customer.
I'm not happy any more !
The recent merger with Microsoft has broken several things for us (linux
users) and I suspect this is no accident. In particular, the move to the
MSN mail servers has resulted in truly poor mail handling. If I thought
that this was temporary I would just live with it, but as you phase out
the old smtp servers you are forcing all customers to "upgrade" to
Passport authentication. As you may or may not know, Microsoft will not
allow access to Passport sign-up with linux. This is a big problem.

so what do I want ?
1) I am paying for mail handling that I am not receiving. I would like a
rebate for the week+ (and ongoing).

2) wake up and smell the coffee ! linux is here. It is stable, secure,
easy to use and free. People who try it, stay with it, and this year you
will see linux adoption on an unprecedented scale. Your "What we don't
support" webpage lists linux among "Out-of-date and server-based
operating systems". This is grossly inaccurate; I run no servers and my
entire system is upgraded daily.

 No-one can tell you what to use internally, be wall-to-wall Microsoft,
if you like (and if you don't mind the down-time) but to be a
world-class ISP you should recognize that your pals from Redmond are not
the only game in town. Failing to do so will result in loss of customer
base and big bad press.

3) If your new policy is decidedly anti-linux (instead of the usual
apathy) you should just be honest, and send a notice to your many
linux-using customers alerting them that their chosen platform is "no
longer welcome" giving them a chance to secure a more compatible ISP.

I have been promised a response, in previous exchanges with Sympatico
tech support, but my Inbox remains empty (see: technical difficulties ?)
I expect a coherent response to this one.

Sympatico customer, for now,
David Patrick
====


Still no decent response, though. I think my days as a Sympatico
customer are numbered.
djp
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