Comcast looks into claims of lost e-mail

An "e-mail counter issue" is at the root of at least some confusion over the status of e-mail sent during a Saturday outage to Comcast.net free residential e-mail, Comcast says.

According to spokesman Charlie Douglas, subscribers who regularly access Comcast e-mail through external POP clients may notice a discrepancy between the number of new e-mails displayed on the company's site and in their actual in-boxes. This may be leading people to believe that they have lost e-mail when, in fact, they have not.

Douglas said the company is working on a case-by-case basis with subscribers who are experiencing issues like this one, posted by CNET reader "jeninmd":

When I was finally able to log on to the Comcast Web site about 5 p.m. Saturday, April 4, it told me I had 31 new messages (which sounded about right). But when I clicked on the link to see them, it said I had none...I went back to their Web site today, Sunday, April 5, and it said I had 3 new messages. But the same thing happened; they disappeared when I clicked on my in-box!

Douglas reiterated on Monday that the company believes that intermittent disruptions in service Saturday, which lasted about 10 hours, did not result in lost e-mails but rather in delayed arrivals of messages. And he said the next version of Comcast's SmartZone Web mail interface, expected to debut this summer, will correct the message-counting discrepancies.

Via e-mail, however, the same reader who complained of 31 phantom messages--Jennifer Brasher--said she has "proof" of lost messages. "I called my sister, and she had sent me three, which I never got," she said. "I also know for sure that Telecharge e-mailed me a ticket I had purchased."

Brasher said a Comcast customer service representative with whom she spoke Monday afternoon "reluctantly admitted that e-mails were lost when I backed him into a corner."

The representative "did briefly mention an issue with external clients, but I explained to him that I wasn't running my POP client (Windows mail on Vista) because it couldn't access their server, so I took it down," Brasher wrote. "I am a former career software developer, so I wasn't buying his lame excuses."

Other users are voicing their concern as well. Responding to a story about the outage on AppScout, reader "Pamela" on Monday morning wrote, "Well, here it is two days later, and no e-mail. I am waiting for confirmation of my e-filed taxes. Um, this is not good at all!!!"

Responds Comcast's Douglas: "We're working with the engineers to investigate any claims. We take this very seriously."

[gregrochedc]

I have had the same problem for some time. I get my comcast email downloaded to my mac.com and I've gotten ONE email monthly from Comcast telling me my bill is ready for viewing. When I log into Comcast, it typically tells me I have between 5 and 9 emails, but when I look at my inbox, it is empty with a "no new messages" message.....

[paulsecic]

Get U-verse. I dropped Comcast in November. AT&T is just as fast and only costs $31 a month which includes landline service.

[Angmarr]

is it just for me .... or does comcast just suck!?

ive been disconnected multiple time since switching to comcast,
is fios any better!?

[bubba2million]

Why. Why do you people use "Comcast's" email they give you when you sign up? I never touched mine - and for reasons like this. Same goes for any other corporate email; MSN, AOL, etc. Yahoo, albeit corporate, is far more "stable". Why any common person uses anything else is beyond me.

[inachu1]

Grrrr! not only missing emaisl but when you call to have a tech drop by later in the afternoon they show up 3 days late and came knocking at 9:30am !!!!! Does that sound like 2-5pm appointment?!?!?

No! Comcast you are fired! verizon here I come.

[renGek]

I had a comcast cable guy show up 20 minutes before 5pm for their 1-5 pm window. He shows up and tells me he doesn't have enough cable for my wiring. He only had 6 feet of cable with him. My reaction was "what?!?!!?!?", you're the cable guy. If nothing else, you should have.....cables. Too bad he barely spoke english so he couldn't understand me and comes back an hour later with another cable guy.

The thing to do with comcast with this kind of problem is to flood them with credit requests because it cost them money and it creates excess work for them. They'll fix the problem if they have to keep taking requests for a credit.

[Dalkorian]

No, the thing to do is to drop them and go with someone else. Why waste your time trying to make more work for a company that doesn't care about it's customers WHILE GIVING THEM MORE MONEY EVERY MONTH? That's like taking off your clothes and getting into bed with someone while accusing them of raping you every night - it doesn't make any sense!

[DaveinDC]

My local organization sent out blast emails once or twice a week. We're having problems getting our eNews to our members who have Comcast email accounts. My ISP have filed paperworks with Comcast and they have not yet resolved this. This started in December (after Christmas). Does this email problems had anything to do with this? Could someone tell me what I can do to get Comcast to allows eNews to be allowed? Thank you.

[Viio]

I can confirm emails were lost over the weekend. I know for a fact of 2 emails sent to me on Saturday that I never received

[renGek]

Don't really care about comcast email but I do use it for sites where I need to register with an email and I'm suspicious that the site is a spam bomb waiting to happen. That said, I have used comcast email from time to time for other things and have noticed in the past that my emails would become lost. There were times when I get suspected the emails were not coming in and tested my theory. I would send myself a test email to multiple addresses, one of which would be a comcast account and confirmed that the comcast one is the one that goes to limbo. so yeah, they stink. Will be dropping them soon since I'm lucky enough to have another cable provider in my area.

[jeff327]

I received an email from the Director of Digital Care from Comcast. He said I should have all my lost emails now. I have not received one single e mail from the time of the outage. I know there were more then a few sent at that time. Funny though I started to receive emails that were many months old. I received nemerous emails that were first sent to me October 2008, Do you remember the movie Kingpin with Woody Harrelson? When someone did somethign stupid thay said they did a Munson. Well, from now on when I do something stupid I will say i did a Comcast.

[grizly59]

Why would anyone depend on Comcast as their primary email? Why not choose Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo mail?