said by my3cents4:

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reality sucks sometimes

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quote:

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Hundreds of users left without e-mail through Sympatico
`Issues' arise in try for enhanced service

Internet provider promises fix soon

RACHEL ROSS
TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

Hundreds of Sympatico customers have had trouble accessing their e-mail since the Internet service provider introduced new services from MSN early last month.

"The whole intention of our new partnership with MSN was to provide our customers with an enhanced and more robust e-mail service," Peter Costanzo, director of service quality and delivery for Sympatico, said yesterday. But, he admitted, "there have been some issues."

Merging Sympatico's old e-mail system with MSN's system has been problematic.

"Glitches" in the dual-system environment, where some e-mail is handled by Sympatico and some by MSN, have left some users without e-mail access for weeks.

Paul Barker hasn't been able to get his Sympatico e-mail for almost a month.

After several calls to Sympatico technical support, he still doesn't feel any closer to getting the problem solved.

The Toronto man recently went on paternity leave and was hoping to use his e-mail to keep in touch with his friends from work.

Barker said he received a message last month asking if he wanted to switch his regular Sympatico e-mail to the enhanced MSN service, but he declined.

"Now they say my password has been corrupted and they can't reset it," Barker said. "I just want my system to keep working like it's always worked."

The MSN e-mail service offers such additions as more storage space, junk-mail filters and virus scanners.

Costanzo said Bell Canada, which owns Sympatico, decided to operate in a dual e-mail environment so customers such as Barker wouldn't be forced to make the switch to MSN. He said the dual system was tested before implementation, and some customers were proactively contacted by Sympatico to deal with the problems Bell found.

Unforeseen problems are still popping up, however.

A special "transition team" has been assembled to deal with issues arising from the dual environment, Costanzo said, adding that the number of affected customers is small.

"It's certainly in the hundreds, not in the thousands," he said.

The problems of many have already been solved. Costanzo said the remainder will be taken care of in the next seven days.

Customers who experience e-mail outages can have their accounts credited.

Anyone experiencing problems with a Sympatico e-mail account is asked to call 416-310-SURF.

Sympatico currently has approximately 1.4 million customers.

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