Problems with Centurylink Mail

[RJSakowski]

In the past couple of weeks, I have noticed a significant decrease in the number of e-mails coming to my centurytel (Centurylink) account. I use Thunderbird for my e-mail browser and have for more than twenty years. Concerned, I logged into Centurylink's e-mail browser and found 112 e-mails in the spam folder, including some from our financial manager and others of particular importance to me. It turns out that Centurylink had elected to filter out e-mail from sources that were not found in my address book or contacts list without my authorization and my knowledge. Since messages in the spam folder older than 7 days were deleted, who knows how many more messages had been filtered out.

The fix is fairly simple. In the centurylink.net browser, click on the settings icon at the far right on the header. then click on the mail tab, followed by the junk mail tab and select deliver junk mail to inbox and save. I then use my Thunderbird mail browser to filter any spam messages.

This also happened to my wife. She had noticed that she had not been receiving e-mails from her Washington Post subscription. She went to the centurylink browser and found them sitting in her spam folder. She moved all the messages from the spam folder to her inbox and they all appeared in her Thunderbird inbox..

IMO, it was irresponsible of Centurylink to unilaterally undertake such an action but then all of us who are Centurylink, aka Brightstar, customer already have an opinion concerning their operation.I am a customer of theirs by necessity. I have no other realistic option. I was a customer of a local telcom for forty years. The telcom got bought out by another some twenty plus years ago and then by Centurylink. Living in a rural area, I have no other land based option so I have endured their less than acceptable service. That may all be changing as early as next summer as an adjacent telcom is running fiber optic to service us. Most likely, we will take advantage of the 6700% increase in bandwidth for 1/2 the cost very soon after.

 

[Deleted member 69715]

You got your important emails back, so you did good. Congrats, and may The Gods Of Fiber smile on you.

 

[woodchucker]

You got your important emails back, so you did good. Congrats, and may The Gods Of Fiber smile on you.

He didn't get them all back. Anything over 2 weeks was deleted.

I moved off Century Stink last year. After not having any internet for weeks, and them saying that the server was down, and they had no idea when they were replacing it. I could write a book about all the issues I had with them. I could tell you about Hosptials using them and not being able to conduct business, they were down, and Century Stink was saying they were up. We had to get involved, and over and over they'd find out that they were the cause of the problem. They were paying for a very high quality(MPLS) connection, not your average setup. And Century Stink had no idea how to manage or monitor it. They literally were playing with peoples lives.

 

[Deleted member 69715]

I was a "Century Stink" (I like that) customer for years; I suffered too. I was impressed he recovered any of his emails; I never got any of mine back.

 

[mksj]

I use to have ATT DSL which wasn't much better, would have outages for days, and always was an issue on their end. DSL internet gave me data speeds that I would see 20+ years ago, not to mention the package cost and all the antics they do to prevent you from discontinuing service. I switched to Starlink about 5 months ago, their data rate speeds are about 10X higher, and I have only had one short outage since switching to them. Worthwhile option if you are in rural areas and/or do not have access to cable/fiber internet. Downside is there is a slow rollout and the wait time for me was around 6 months. You need a clear view of the sky for the dish, I attached my dish to the chimney on an extended pole. You also need to purchase an Ethernet adapter if you want to hardwired your internet, their connection modem only has connections for wireless (go figure). We stream all of our TV content over the internet these days. I routinely check my email spam folder through my internet browser, as you never know what gets taken out, but agree that they should not make filtering changes w/o prior notifications.

 

[silence dogood]

OH, yes. Centurystink great name Bone Head. Our modem went bad, so we asked for a new one. Old Stink told us that we had to pay $150. for a replacement even though the first one was free. Looked around and decided to go with a local service. They offered fiber-optic, far better speeds, and a local office that you can actually talk to face to face. Told Stink to drop the internet. They kept charging us for the service that we did not want and did not get. After numerus "on hold" phone calls, finally got some guy that could speak real English. Told him, all I want is basic phone service. He started laughing, I asked what 'so funny. Well, I have to be more specific. Really! Got a better idea, I want no more service which means no more money to you guys. The only reason to keep the phone was because of my wife's business. Turns out she just transferred her number to her cell phone. RJ, if you can get fiber optic, go for it. The difference is astounding.

 

[rabler]

The fix is fairly simple. In the centurylink.net browser, click on the settings icon at the far right on the header. then click on the mail tab, followed by the junk mail tab and select deliver junk mail to inbox and save. I then use my Thunderbird mail browser to filter any spam messages.

The other thing you may want to try is to use Thunderbird to "subscribe" to Centruylink's spam folder. That way if they suddenly turn the feature back on (never know what may happen), you will still have some warning. Just right click on the account name and select "subscribe" from the left side list of accounts/folders. I've found it is sometimes necessary to restart Thunderbird after changing subscribed folders to get them to show up.

 

[rabler]

@silence dogood

I think there are some carriers/services for internet, phone, cable, etc that are just milking the last dollar out of a dying service where they have a monopoly. Starlink has been pretty robust for me now for a year. You do need a broad view of the sky. For me, due to trees, that meant a 20' high mast.

Frontier tried to claim we never returned the satellite LNA when we terminated service. I had pictures and the tracking number. They just ignored our claim and eventually turned it over to a collection agency. I sent the whole thing to the state's department of commerce complaints department which resulted in the collection agency dropping the collection with no impact on our credit.

 

[extropic]

@silence dogood

I think there are some carriers/services for internet, phone, cable, etc that are just milking the last dollar out of a dying service where they have a monopoly. Starlink has been pretty robust for me now for a year. You do need a broad view of the sky. For me, due to trees, that meant a 20' high mast.

Frontier tried to claim we never returned the satellite LNA when we terminated service. I had pictures and the tracking number. They just ignored our claim and eventually turned it over to a collection agency. I sent the whole thing to the state's department of commerce complaints department which resulted in the collection agency dropping the collection with no impact on our credit.

Trying to define the meaning of "broad". I looked at Starlink Customer Support and the graphic seems to indicate a 100 to 120 degree cone. Is that angle consistent with your experience?

 

[MrWhoopee]

I am, similarly, a hostage/victim of Frontier until I can afford Starlink. I do not use their email, I have Yahoo and Gmail accounts. Just because you get your internet from Century Link doesn't mean you have to use their email. The other advantage is that, when I do switch ISPs, my email is not affected. I do find that Yahoo will occasionaly send mail to the spam folder that doesn't belong there, but I have 30 days before they delete it.