Outgoing mail very slow

[pentodes]

Having a ding dong at the moment with Virgin Media with slow outgoing Emails which has been going on a few weeks now, you can send a single letter 'a' and you can be waiting for about 3 minutes, I get connected to SMTP and the blue bar moves across.

No problem with incoming mail nor Internet browsing, the outgoing mail is OK with MSN Hotmail and Google Mail.

Having had two engineers out to date and another one coming Monday and that was after reporting to ISPA, there time is almost up when it will be passed to CISAS.

Here's what I've tried-:
Upstream power level sometimes is as low as 25.5dBmV... it really ought to be 30 plus 3dBmV to allow for drift etc and no greater than about 55dbmV - trying an attenuator increased the upstream to around 45mdBmV mark but the problem was still there.

Conflicts etc I thought, so clean installed XP pro on a spare hard drive, my mobo drivers and my ethernet driver - thats all...! Problem still the same on Outlook.

I got my friend round the corner to create my account on his computer and he has no problems at all.... so folks what can it be?

The first engineer that came said "yeah, thats a server fault", off he went a couple of hours later the fault cleared, the person in the CEO rang me to as if all was ok she said, "it was a power level fault at the server and another fault"... and a few days later the fault returned.

The excuses from engineers I spoke to and the person at CEO to date are mounting and some are really so pathetic and changes like the wind.

Is there anything at all that comes to light or that I can try, maybe something I missed out... and oh yeah, the two engineers was supposed to have adjusted the cab power levels and they didn't. I did ask the CEO person if the engineer would have a spare modem... "yes", was the reply... but did he certainly did not!

So what can I do.... after all thats what people like ISPA and CISAS are for when things can't get sorted... and I'm still expected to pay the full amount as shown on my recent bill.

Modems a Scientific Atlanta 2100 and 2mb bb with talk anytime phone. Thanks

David

[lincsat]

Have you tried running your own SMTP server to see if that works, it could be a configuration problem with your e-mail client. Have you tried to configure your client to use Google - not the webmail service

[pentodes]

It shouldn't be the case in having to use other Email providers, I like to use Thunderbird just like some people prefer using others..

...it is obvious people (namely VM) who comes out with varying excuses and not being able to fix the problem, being lied to in being told there is a local issue when there is no mention of it on the Status page, you would think that other people would be having the same problems in the area, another fine excuse from the CEO was traffic congestion.... one way traffic congestion and that would be in the morning, afternoon, evening and the wee small hours prior to daybreak, no problems at all with downloading Emails - must think I came on the Manchester ship canal on a cream cracker..!

Watching the data flow, we have a burst of packet data when you click send followed by a long pause couple of spikes in both directions, a couple of more spikes and another long pause then the final burst of data as the 'sent' message appears.

I could mention the other excuses given but that will not help any... I just want the darn thing fixed and working as it had been.

Dave

[lincsat]

I was suggesting trying a different SMTP server and different client to prove it's not a configuration problem your end.