Using POP3 away from your home broadband

Question

I have just moved over to BT from using Tiscali as my ISP for many years. In the past when I set up a POP3 email account I used the SMTP server of the specific email service for sending my mail OUT. I now discover, but only after asking the question of the help desk, that as a new BT customer I may not use any SMTP sever but 'mail.btinternet.com'. This is fine while I am working from home but presents problems when I am out on the road.
I have about 10 email accounts set up on my laptop from which I collect mail daily and then reply to them. Since moving to BT I have set up all the accounts with the BT SMTP server but when I away from home it will not be possible to SEND thru this server. My only option is to wait until I get home to send my mail (And BTW I will not be able to make a second collection during the day before coming home as the mail client will error on the sending. I am using Windows Live Mail and there is no option to *only* collect mail without sending). My other option is to go thru every account individually and reconfigure the SMTP sever (10 times) or I could log into every account via webmail.
I am pretty fed up with this state of affairs as it is not documented in BT material. If I'd known that this would be a limitation I would not have gone with BT in the first place. I cannot be the only one with this issue. Clearly anyone using solely their BT email account, for instance, is prevented from using a POP3 client away from their home base.
Any ideas?
Rob

Answer 1

Thanks for these replies and for the simple solution to my problem.
Last week I set up another new broadband connection at a site I work at but this was an Orange service, not BT. I tried using my desktop client to do my email and noticed that while the mail came in fine under the POP3, the outgoing mail was failing. As I mentioned before I am using 10 different accounts from a variety of different services: Googlemail, Yahoo, Tiscali and a couple of services provided by my web hosting suppliers. While these had worked fine under my Tiscali account they seemed to be failing under Orange. (Actually, as it turned out later, it was only the outgoing Tiscali mail that was failing). After a few calls to the help desk I was advised that I could *only* use the Orange SMTP server for sending mail under the new broadband package. I therefore changed all my accounts so that mail was sent out thru the Orange SMTP sever. For some strange reason I was still getting failures if I used Outlook Express or Outlook (an old version). However, when I changed to using Windows Live the problem disappeared and I am now able to send mail OUT from a variety of accounts with the reply address given as the one attached to the account.
When, this week, I set up a BT broadband line at a different site, I thought that I had better check with the BT helpline whether it had the same policy as Orange. I was informed categorically that I could only use the BT SMTP server (mail.btinternet.com) to send mail OUT. No other SMTP server would work. Naively, I accepted this at face value and did not try setting up any accounts with non-BT SMTP servers. Instead I set up all my accounts using the BT server, as I had done under Orange, but still the outgoing mail failed. It seems that you cannot send mail FROM BTinternet with a reply address different from that associated with the broadband account. I made multiple calls to the help desk and three times operatives used their remote assistance software to take over my screen and check all the settings. Not once did anyone suggest the simple expedient of using, say, the Googlemail SMTP server. On one occasion I even got a help desk supervisor to take over my screen and even he didn't give me an answer.
I had discovered from my own on-line searches that BT appeared to adopt a different policy from Orange when it came to sending out email under a non-BT email address. They require you to *verify* the address first. They give the instructions here... http://www.btyahoo.com/verify. I tried to follow them but the instructions do not line up with the screens you get. It was at this point I got the senior help-desk guy to tandem my screen so he could see what was happening. Even he had to agree that the screens did not match up and it was clear to me by the way his mouse was whizzing around the screen that he had never done this before. However, after a bit of trial and error he got it to work. After declaring your non-BT account, the server sends out an email to the target email account; you log into the target, non-BT account, open the email and copy&paste a ref number into a box on the BT screen. In principle, once you know what to do, its fairly straightforward. However, it didn't work! I still got failures when I tried to send mail from the 'verified' account and I could find no way to list my 'verified' accounts or backtrack and repeat the process.
I even emailed the support people with the query -- more or less the same wording I posted here and, to be fair, I got a phone call pretty quickly following my email. I can't fault them on speed of response. The woman I spoke to suggested I used the alternative server SMTP.MAIL.YAHOO.COM and even suggested that I did not need to set it up with a username/password. Complete nonsense of course and it did not work. She also referred me to BT FON service, which, again was completely irrelevant.
At one point during the day, one guy who took over my screen and, having fiddled around, clearly not knowing what he was doing (the mouse pointer wanderings tell it all!), concluded that he had done his best and BT would have to start charging me if I wanted them to continue working on the problem.
I have wasted hours on this problem and all because (1) I was given wrong information in the first place and (2) I was stupid enough to believe what I was told by an Indian Call Centre (I have learned my lesson now!). They are only capable of understanding and dealing with very simple problems that don't in any way deviate from their script.
The principles appear be:
(1) If you are using the ISP's own, dedicated SMTP service you do not have to check 'my server requires authentication' as the server knows who you are by virtue of the fact that you are coming in via a known broadband line.
(2) You cannot use the ISP's own SMTP server on a different line, say at wifi hotspot, to send your mail using a desktop client even if you check 'my server requires authentication'.
(3) When changing ISPs you cannot leave the old ISP's SMTP server in your account configuration - you must change it.
(4) If you are a peripatetic laptop user and need to be able to use any available internet connection to send your mail, then all you have to do is configure each mail account setting in your desktop client with a non-ISP specific SMTP server. Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail should work OK or you can use the SMTP server provided by your web hosting company (if it provides email in addition to web space - which most appear to do these days). However, you will have to check 'my server requires authentication' and also provide the username+password for the account, which will different from the POP2 account login.
Does that sound right?
Thanks again for your quick and simple answers. I am very grateful and can only conclude that you don't work for an Indian Call Centre!
Rob Wheeler (frustrated yesterday, but relieved today)