Webcentral clients: we still don't have mail

Stan Beer
Thursday, 30 April 2009 10:15

Business IT - Technology

It's just after 2PM 30 April 2009 and, more than two days after the first complaints were first made, at least some clients of Australian web hosting service Webcentral still don't have their emails.

The massive email outage at the Melbourne IT owned hosting service, which was first reported in the early morning of 28 April, has disrupted the operations of a number businesses which have come to rely on email as their principal means of communications with clients.

One such business is Sydney based Watterson PR. Principal Hannah Watterson told iTWire that the Webcentral email service is still sporadic, although it resumed this morning.

"We started to get some emails coming down at 8am but then it went dead again after 4 hours. We didn't get any emails on Tuesday," said Ms Watterson.

"The frustrating thing is that we call the 1800 number and it doesn't get answered."

According to a Webcentral notice to customers, the issue that impacted POP and exchange email services has been resolved.

The "issue" that Webcentral is referring to was a corruption of the company's data storage systems.

At this stage, Webcentral is saying that no emails will be lost.

However, to date, Ms Watterson says, Watterson PR has yet to receive many of its usual emails.

"I know that I've lost some because I subscribe to a lot of newsletters and I still haven't got them. We're now into day three of this."

Meanwhile, Webcentral is sticking to the line that all emails will eventually be downloaded to its clients. However, a Melbourne IT spokesperson indicated to iTWire at 2.30PM on 30 April that there were still some issues to be resolved.

"The feedback we're getting from clients is that they're now getting their emails and changes we've made this afternoon appear to have worked. However, we want to look at things for another hour or so before we say that it's been resolved," the spokesperson said.

What the fallout will be for Melbourne IT and Webcentral is still not clear but a lot of businesses have been disrupted with possibly substantial costs.