Toucan email statements

Update: Toucan have responded. One of their techies has evidently flipped a virtual switch and now I can read their email statements!

I don’t know if it is just me or whether telecoms companies are all rubbish (see also my battle with NTL). I switched from BT to Toucan recently to save money on the line rental. They only got three things wrong.

The first was that they registered me for their Call Minder service, even though I had taken care not to tick the box on the application form. Fortunately it took only one call to their support line to undo this.

The next mistake was that they registered me for their ToucanTravel card service. I don’t want this because anyone who obtained my PIN number would be able to make calls charged to my account. It is probably very unlikely that this would happen, but why should I take the risk, however small, when I have absolutely no use for the service myself? I called them to ask for this service to be cancelled for my account but apparently they can’t to this. The operator offered to reset my PIN but not send out the notification letter. While this didn’t really address the issue I accepted it as a compromise. A few days later a notification letter arrived with my new PIN. But some battles are not worth fighting…

However the one that really takes the biscuit is the following. When I signed up for the service, I opted to receive only email statements, to reduce my line rental by £1 per month. My first statement arrived by post. Not a disaster – I went online and unticked the box for paper statements. Then the first email statement arrived.

Here is a copy of my subsequent email correspondence with Toucan. I think it speaks for itself.

To: help@toucan.com
From: Ian Goldby 
Subject: Can't read email
Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 19:38:16 +0100

Account ID: 4165631

I just received the following email from you, but I can't read it. I want to
change my preferences so that you send me plain text emails, not HTML, but I
cannot find how to do this. Please can you arrange this?

Thanks

Ian Goldby

---------------------
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"  
"http://www.w3c.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd">

<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Toucan Invoice</TITLE>

<style>
	.InvoiceSummary		 { background-color: white; BORDER-COLOR: #ffec06;  
BORDER-STYLE: solid; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans- 
serif; width:509px; font-size:12px; }
		</style>

<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">

etc…

To: Ian Goldby 
Subject: Re: Can't read email [Case Num: 454473]
Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 15:48:36 GMT
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Dear Mr Goldby,

Thank you for your email.

Your request has been forwarded to the Internet department who will endeavour
to contact you as soon as possible to resolve this issue.  Your patience is
greatly appreciated. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused.

If you have any more requests or queries, please do not hesitate to call us
free on 0800-0613-615 or email us on help@toucan.com. 

Our Customer Service team is available from 8am to 9pm, Monday to Friday,
Saturday and Sunday 9am to 5pm to answer any questions you may have. 

Kind Regards
L Mc Cauley (Ms)
Customer Service

From: internetfaults@toucantele.com
To: ian.goldby@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Fw: Can't read email [Case Num: 455029]
Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 10:10:13 GMT
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Dear Mr Goldby,

Thank you for your email.  We apologise you are not receiving our emails in the
correct format.  Unfortunately, as we are not your current internet service
provider we are unable to set up your emails correctly for your.  If you contact
your service provider they will be able to give you the support you need.
Apologies again that i am unable to assist you further.

If you require any further information or should you have any further queries,
please contact our Customer Services department free on 0800-0613-615 and we
will be glad to assist you. Our customer services department is open 8am to 9pm
(Mon to Fri) and 9am to 5pm (Sat and Sun)

Kind Regards

Sinead
Internet Team

They are passing the buck to my ISP. I need to explain more carefully.

From: Ian Goldby 
Subject: Re: Can't read email [Case Num: 455029]
Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 19:44:21 +0100
To: internetfaults@toucantele.com

Dear Sinead,

I think you have completely misunderstood the problem. It is not a problem of
configuration of my email as you imply.

The problem is specifically that the email in question was sent in HTML format
only. This means that it can be displayed only by an email client capable of
displaying HTML. Normally email is sent either in plain text format or in dual
format (plain text plus HTML).

For security reasons I do not use an HTML email client, so I can only read email
if it contains a plain text version of the message. Fortunately almost all email
does so, but not apparently Toucan's.

Please would you take this issue back and look into providing either a customer
preference for sending out HTML or plain text email, or sending all emails in
dual format. To do so really is not difficult at all.

Many thanks.

Ian Goldby

From: internetfaults@toucantele.com
To: Ian Goldby 
Subject: Re: Can't read email [Case Num: 455029]
Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 17:32:12 GMT
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Dear Mr Goldby 

Thank you for your email. I have taken a look into your account and can see
that we cannot help you with this problem as we are not your internet provider.
I do realise that you did receive the email off of us but we do not decide how
you read it. You will need to contact your internet provider to help you out
with this problem. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused. 

If you require any further information or should you have any further queries,
please contact our Customer Services department free on 0800-0613-615 and we
will be glad to assist you. Our customer services department is open 8am to 9pm
(Mon to Fri) and 9am to 5pm (Sat and Sun)

Kind Regards

Internet Team

Same response again. They just don’t get it.

From: Ian Goldby 
Subject: Re: Can't read email [Case Num: 455029]
Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 19:44:10 +0100
To: internetfaults@toucantele.com

Perhaps I am not explaining myself properly.

You wrote: "I do realise that you did receive the email off of us but we do not
decide how you read it."

The issue here is that you are providing the email only in an HTML format. In
order to make it universally readable, you must provide it in plain text format.
(You can provide an HTML version in the same email in addition if you wish.)

My ISP will not be able to help with this because they do not control how the
email is sent. Only you can resolve this problem.

If you still do not understand what the problem is, please ask for more
clarification. But I insist that you do not continue to fob me off with
irrelevant excuses. Perhaps you would escalate this issue to someone at Toucan
who can help to resolve it if you are unable to do so yourself.

Ian Goldby

From: internetfaults@toucantele.com
To: Ian Goldby 
Subject: Re: Can't read email [Case Num: 455029]
Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 11:20:20 GMT
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Dear Mr Goldby,
Thank you for your email.
Unfortunately we cannot sent emails to you in a different format.
The emails sent to you are generated by our computer system,and as such,we do
not have the option of changing the format.Apologies for the inconvenience this
may be causing you. If you have any further queries,please feel free to contact
our customer services team on 0800 0613 165,and our agents will be glad to
assist.
Regards,
Gail
Toucan Interent Team

Finally, an answer that makes sense. Fair enough then. I’ll just get them to log this as a problem in the hope that sometime in then future when they are upgrading their systems they’ll reconsider it.

From: Ian Goldby 
Subject: Re: Can't read email [Case Num: 455029]
Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 18:05:43 +0100
To: internetfaults@toucantele.com

Thank you for a response that demonstrates that you do (finally) understand what
I am asking for.

I understand that modifying the system that sends out statements by email is not
a trivial undertaking. In view of this, I would be grateful if you would put a
feature request into your system for what I have requested, so that in due time
perhaps it might be considered as an enhancement.

In summary, what I want is either one of the following:

a) Emails to be sent with 'MIME multipart/alternative' content including both
text/plain and text/html.

or

b) A customer configuration option to give the choice of email in text/plain or
text/html format.

Many thanks,

Ian Goldby

To: Ian Goldby 
Subject: Re: Can't read email [Case Num: 455029]
Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 11:58:21 GMT
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Dear Mr Goldby,

Thank you for your email. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.  Unfortunately
we cannot sent emails to you in a different format. 

Roisin

Internet Provisioning

???!!!

3 weeks later…

3 weeks later I received my next email statement. To my surprise it was properly readable in plain text format. Not pretty, but certainly readable. Wait a moment…. I took a peek at the email source and behold:

X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.3790.2826

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

------=_NextPart_000_A657_01C7B1F4.870ED020
Content-Type: text/plain;

Thank you Toucan! Just occasionally my faith in human nature is restored – a bit.