Last week I received an email from Internode advising that my mailbox was “at or near full capacity” and “your mailbox is currently at 9928198KB out of 7000000KB allocated.”
I had never previously received any message from Internode regarding full mail boxes during the past decade so I called them to ask what had suddenly occured.
The woman said that the only way I could get it working again was to delete message so as to get it under 7000000KB.
After I got it below 7000000KB, it still would not receive emails so I called Internode again.
I said to the person that I had received multiple emails from Internode over the past few days stating that the allownace was 7Gb to which he claimed that it had always been 1Gb and I would have to get it below that for it to work again.
The settings in the Webmail account showed some 2.5Gb used from 1Gb.
I deleted more emails and the Webmail settings showed around 7Gb instead of around 2.5Gb.
I deleted more emails and it started working when the properties for my account in Outlook 2016 showed around 3.67Gb althought the Webmail account showed some 4.92Gb.
Confused? You will be.
And just to add insult to injury, I also asked the person about getting a faulty Fritz Fon DECT handset I purchased from them repaired or replaced only to be told that they are no longer involved in handsets despite still selling Fritz Box modems.
They still have this posted on their website under Hardware.
VoIP Equipment
Including the FRITZ!Box 7490 VoIP router and FRITZ!Fon DECT handsets.
Interesting. I use Internode Webmail, and I have noticed they seem to have stopped cleaning out the trash. I looked, and there are over 2000 mails in the trash folder. I suppose I will have to go and clean them out.
I had precisely the same issue. That said, I was grossly over the limit. However, it had been that way for years, so why now? The email I was holding had long been due for a clean-up, and after a couple of weeks I got it below my limit. The trouble was, my problem did not go away and so I contacted Internode again. This time they couldn’t hive the problem off as “over your quota” and a very diligent tech assistant spent quite some time reviewing my settings and getting me to change them. She was excellent, and I have had no problems since. It seems to be the case that my settings were in need of a change when I initially called but the Internode staff person didn’t really assess the full problem and took the easy way out. In the meantime, I came across a product called Mailstorehomeportable. It’s free, and enables you to do a mirror image (or whatever) of your email. It also helps you control those unwelcomed occasions when Microsoft hives your old email off to some distant planet with no warning or forwarding notice of were it’s gone. I hope this is of some help.
@BassaJack would you like to share those Internode mail settings that were investigated and found to be in need of change? I’m interested as one of their users.
Well, I’d be most happy to if I knew what they were. It was a case of phone being on speaker while I was directed what to do. However, all is not lost. I simply rang the tech assistance of Internode, stated that I couldn’t get my email, and I was then directed with “open this”, “press that” etc. It took over 30 minutes. I was never rushed. Each time some facet was done, it was tested. When we got to the end, I sent myself an email and for the first time in weeks, it popped into my Outlook. Prior to all this I was managing my email via “webmail” on the Internode site. I had the “log-in” page as a “favourite” and so it worked well, but naturally, I wanted my email manager to function correctly. Sorry I can’t be more help than that, but when push came to shove, Internode stepped up to the plate. Have a go!
Ok, thanks. You use Internode as your server, and Outlook as your client app by the sound of it. I prefer Internode’s own Webmail app. Doesn’t have the fancy features of some mail client apps, but works for me. Of course I rely on Internode to safely store all my emails and if, one day, I decide to switch to another Internet provider I have a problem.
Might be worth your while looking for an alternative which is not tied to your internet provider. Thats what most of us have done over the years. I have a couple of free email addresses (outlook.com and zoho.com) and one paid one (protonmail.ch) which also has a free level but very little storage on that. Mind you, I have stopped storing emails for most things. And of course I have my me.com and icloud.com addresses which come with my Mac stuff.
One can also change the settings in Outlook to remove emails off the server rather than leaving the on there to accumulate. One can search for instructions on who to do it based on the version they have.
Other email software, such as Thunderbird, have similar settings.
The hard question is: Do you really need to have your email on a server?
There are of course advantages and disadvantages.
“safely storing emails” (aka avoiding having to do backups?) is a valid reason, albeit not compelling in my opinion.
The compelling reason for my money would be that you need to be able to access your emails from “anywhere”, using “any” client device.
The obvious disadvantages centre around privacy and control. So you get someone telling you to clean up your mailbox when it gets to 7GB.
Bottom line: The decision to have your email on a server should be a considered decision, not an accident. It should take into account who is operating that server and what the legal environment around that is. (Hence I would avoid gmail.com, hotmail.com and outlook.com, to name a few.)
Internode is still a good company. Just stick to using them as an ISP i.e. mail transport not mail store (or even mail box).
Indeed.
In my opinion everyone should always have an easy option to change ISP. The mere presence of that option should keep ISPs on their toes. Conversely, I wonder if any ISPs look at the size of and use of your mail store etc. and decide that you are a low flight risk, and hence can be given crappier service.
I use a ISP independent email provider…but have only one concern…what happens if they determine it isn’t their core business or it is uneconomic and either close the service or onsell it. Onsell can have privacy/security concerns especially new owners policies are different.
Closing of a non-ISP email provider can be problematic for its users.
This tends to push one to larger providers…where it is the devil you know and accept.
Certainly a valid concern - although it is noted that the same thing can happen with ISPs i.e. on-sell and changing policies, changing reputation, closing of services, …
One option you have is to register your own domain (very simple and relatively cheap) but let someone else host it for you. That gives you maximum flexibility - change ISP, change hosting, even change domain registrar.
Regardless though you are still faced with the same choice of storing email on a server v. downloading it to your own computer and deleting it from the server.
Originally the majority of my emailing was work related so I used my work mail system. The small amount of private emailing was fine using my ISP provided server. I wanted access to those emails device independently so Webmail was the go. I didn’t want to use things like Hotmail, or Gmail, because of the connotations of emails from those public servers. I know my work email system blocked any emails coming from those two.
But I don’t want to pay for an email service. I want it free. Maybe I’ll revisit Microsoft or Google mail if I start getting annoyed with Internode.
As the post that started this topic was a complaint about the 7GB limit on email stored on Internode’s servers (maybe they did not previously enforce this rigidly??) … it is germane to mention, from the Google FAQ that
Every Google Account starts with 15 GB of free storage that’s shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos.
So
a) even the 15 GB is not free - you are just not paying in cash, you are paying with your body, metaphorically speaking
b) it pushes the problem a little bit into the future, which may be enough, or not (if it took you 10 years to get to 7GB then 15GB may be enough to run with and forget about it)
If you want to pay Google cash then you can have more than 15 GB, but that is even less free.
Imagine the fun of downloading 7GB of Internode mail and then, horror of horrors, having to upload 7GB to Gmail, depending of course on the speed of your internet connection, and that assumes a highly reliable internet connection. That problem only gets worse, the more email you have, and that applies even if you pay someone to host your own domain.
A nudge to do a bit of cleaning up may not really be a bad thing …
However the basic service appears to allow you to have 5 mailboxes (in total). So ?maybe that means 5 GB in total, if optimally distributed between mailboxes - but you would still have to ruthlessly cull 2GB’s worth of email.
As you have been a customer for a long time, you also may be grandfathered on a more generous plan. So it can be difficult to get the actual Ts and Cs for your plan. Do you know what the limits were when you signed up as a customer?
I was with them years ago for ADSL2+, IIRC it was 5GB which was and still is pretty much the standard. Seems TPG is changing things. Don’t think iiNet would have done that.
It was at least a decade ago so I have absolutely no idea.
But you really have to question their competence when their automatically generated emails specifically state 7Gb and the first employee I spoke with said the same.
