Hi Joe, Wednesday, October 25, 2006, 12:13:42 PM, you wrote:
J> Any prediction as to what they'll say? As a former technical support Product Specialist for BellSouth's FastAccess service, I can guess what they'll say, unless things have changed since I retired. The front line tech support agent you speak with at first will probably be in the Philippines, and they aren't trained to handle this issue. You'll have to go through their standard troubleshooting checklist to rule out all the other reasons why your mail isn't getting through. Be patient, cooperative, and persistent. This will likely take you more than one call. One thing I can almost guarantee you'll hear someone say, somewhere along the line is, "We don't support The Bat!, but I'll be glad to see if I can help you get your mail to work in Outlook Express." So make sure you can't send mail that way first. Have you tried using another MUA, like Outlook Express, and if so do you get the same results? Or can you send mail out through their Webmail interface (http://webmail.bellsouth.net)? Definitely do your homework in exploring these alternatives before calling and save yourself some grief. I'm afraid you won't get much help from them with getting The Bat! to work though. Leif's advice in mid:[EMAIL PROTECTED] is sound. Go through this thread and condense out the essence, make sure you understand it so that you can explain it, and have it laid out in front of you so you can keep your story straight. You will probably need to escalate your call to a Product Specialist There are two levels of those -- tier two and tier three. Tier three is higher than tier two. At each level, there are resolution checklists, so you'll have to allow them to try those things. The key phrase (read: magic words) to precipitate an escalation is "May I speak to your supervisor," but don't start with that because that will only prolong things. If you want to be polite, you might add "Please," but despite what your parents may have told you, that's not necessarily one of *BellSouth's* magic words. Also just FYI, the rule used to be that if three calls were received in a week about the same issue, the call was automatically escalated. Ultimately you *may* need to get this issue to the NOC (Network Operations Center), but generally that group is the last to become involved, because most things aren't network issues but rather they result from the individual's system being misconfigured. So it is regrettable, but the customer has to "endure" the help of those lower down the chain of problem resolution before the NOC will even take a look at the issue. Sending an issue to the NOC requires a lot of work by the PS who sends it (again to rule out the obvious), so they resort to that reluctantly. I'm writing, not to discourage you, but rather to prepare you that this may take you a while and to offer you some insight into the stages of resolution you may have to go through. Also you seemed to want to know, before you call, what they are going to say. The answer is, neither I nor anyone else knows with any certainty what they'll say, but it is an empirical question. Call and within less time than it took me to compose this message, you'll find out what they will say. The first words out of my mouth to them would be "have any other customers reported their mail being rejected because the SMTP servers at BellSouth were blacklisted for spamming?" Follow that with Miguel's (MAU) advice and explanation in mid:[EMAIL PROTECTED] A number of knowledgeable people have replied to you in this thread. I suspect their diagnosis of the issue is accurate, but it is going to take more work than it *should* for you to convince BellSouth of that, I'm afraid. -- Regards, Perry Using The Bat! v3.86.03 ALPHA (beta) on Windows XP 5.1 Build 2600 Service Pack 2 ________________________________________________ Current version is 3.85.03 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
