Level 1

14 points

Trouble with AT&T Yahoo! Email?

My wife and I both use MacBooks and for years we have successfully used Apple's Mail application to poll several email accounts, including our bellsouth.net accounts.

Recently both of our Mail apps (on both computers) started to no longer properly log into our bellsouth.net email accounts, the error messages being most of the time that the password was incorrect (which it wasn't) or sometimes that the AT&T Yahoo! email did not support password authentication (which it does).

I spent quite a bit of time on the phone with AT&T and guess what... they said they couldn't help with the problem that it was third party software and that they could only refer me to the $15 per month ConnecTech people who would attempt to solve our problem. One person even said that AT&T was only going to allow the use of web mail; no more client apps. Another said that AT&T had put smtp blockers on all of the accounts to reduce spam.

Since I've set up quite a few email accounts--and can read and can follow written instructions--I resisted and tried to solve my own problem. I re-entered my password repeatedly in the accounts window. I restarted the Mail application. I restarted my computer. I corrected permissions. Mail continued to pop a window saying that my password was incorrectly entered, which it was not.

A curious little side point here: I noticed that if I opened Mail, let it give me the password incorrect error and then opened and logged into my bellsouth.net email (using the same password as was placed into my Mail app) it, meaning Mail, would then pull down my bellsouth.net emails! Go figure!

But the problem prevailed. I didn't want to have to log into web mail in order to poll that blasted bellsouth.net account. But it became clear that there was no way that I as a user was going to be able to get Mail to poll that bellsouth.net account on my own!!!

So I bit the bullet today and signed up with ConnecTech. Cost? $15 per month; one year contract mandatory; early termination fee of $120; and no guarantee that they could solve my problem.

But guess what: within minutes they had my Mail application polling my bellsouth.net account with no problem.

The problem is, that it was way too easy. They did the same things that Apple support and others suggested: re-entering my email password into my Mail app. I had done this 50 times but I watched as the tech, through screen sharing, did the "magic."

So you be the judge. What exactly was going on here? Why could they make the password work and I couldn't?

I'd be interested in hearing your theories and your stories of similar problems.

Posted on May 20, 2011 6:09 PM

25 replies

Sep 10, 2012 9:39 PM in response to John Hoge1

I too have Bellsouth mail and have the same problem as of say July 2012. Att says its a Apple problem, Apple says its an att problem. Att wanted to charge me a $45 ontime charge to give me the email settings as I deleted the account and added it back in to try to "fix" the problem--or the monthly fee--which was totally rediculous! I called apple and they too were going to charge me $45 one time tech support, but the apple guy walked me thru setting up the bellsouth mail account for NO CHARGE. I figured if I was going to pay someone, it was going to be Apple instead of ATT. I was furious they would not give me the settings for the mail w.o a charge. When i deleted the bellsouth mail and readded it, the settings came up different--was a pop account and then became a imap account--hence my confusion and wanting help.

It turns out--as I am still having the problem at various inoppertune times, like right now, if you just walk away, it seems to work later for no rhyme or reason. The web mail works, the iphone gets the bellsouth mail and so does the ipad--WHY NOT THE MAC??? I give up, and too have other mail accounts--bellsouth happens to be the primary as I ahve had it for years, and it has worked for years-- what a pain it will be to close it, BUT i will in order to NOT have this problem anymore!! I am looking into another service provider.

kostby

Level 4

2,964 points

Sep 10, 2012 11:18 PM in response to judyahill

Welcome to Apple Support Communities.

I don't have any guaranteed solutions, but maybe a link that might help you get the correct settings.

First, AT&T is moving away from all email clients in favor of accessing email ONLY from the web.

If you created a free att.net email address after June 11th, 2011 you will not be able to use an email client to access your email. Retrieve your email at http://www.att.net.

Second, as a business, AT&T is far more interested in getting you to pay support or repair fees than in providing any actual customer service online or via the telephone.

AT&T recently changed the names of inbound (POP) and outbound (SMTP) servers.

Allegedly, the names formerly used will still work.

Note that your ATT username and password must be entered for both the inbound (POP) AND outbound (SMTP) settings pages.

This table (difficult or impossible to find when navigating from their own support pages, but easily located with a popular search engine) shows the settings for all of the former regional Bell operating companies once again combined under the AT&T umbrella:

http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB401570&cv=804&title=Email+server+s ettings+(POP+and+SMTP)#fbid=hHprDeLEDuI

I can't find a link, but I'm fairly certain I read somewhere that IMAP settings will not work reliably with free ATT.net or free Yahoo! email accounts.

I recently dropped AT&T DSL after spending 90 minutes on the phone with an offshore support tech who tried, in broken English, to convince me that the problem was in my perfectly functional DSL router (diagnostics showed no problem and it worked on other DSL lines), rather than their 15-year-old buried copper phone lines to my house. In my opinion, Yahoo! mail (the provider for ATT email) has been flaky for a very long time, so I never used the 'free' ATT.net mail account, except to receive notices from AT&T.

Now, I've switched to a fiber-optic provider with fiber all the way to my router, giving me 5x the speed (15Mbit down/1.0Mbit up) at the same price as AT&T DSL (3.0Mbit down/512Kbit up). And US-based telephone support!

Message was edited by: kostby

John Hoge1 Author

Level 1

14 points

Sep 11, 2012 4:16 AM in response to kostby

Recent posts to this thread tell me that the problems I experienced over a year ago are still in existence. I finally had to simply dump my bellsouth.net email. I did this by posting an automatic reply that told people that I had moved to gmail and gave them my gmail address. I let this run for 6 months and traffic to my bellsouth.net email began to decrease. Recently I got AT&T/Yahoo/Bellsouth to actually kill my old email bellsough email address. IMO, it's good riddance to a company that has lost its edge and is attempting to force its users to interact with their service in only one way (e.g., webmail) and the IMO ugly (I don't want to see their tasteless adds) and intrusive (I don't want to chat with strangers everytime I hit their site) Yahoo web pages.

Sep 11, 2012 4:52 AM in response to John Hoge1

I left Bellsouth 15 months ago. I informed everyone I could think of that I was leaving that address.

I assumed Bellsouth would close my mail box. In the mean time, I had Mail.app continue to poll the server every five minutes. The mail account still works. Occasionally I receive a message. The other day I accidentally sent a reply from that account.

In all 15 months, I don't think the mail server has rejected my password once! I guess it's a special treat for paying customers.

Sep 11, 2012 11:31 AM in response to Stephen Throop

All this is still happening as I have just spent over 3 hours with Apple store employees and geeks and still have the same problem. I too will be dropping ATT/Bellsouth but I get so many emails it will be awhile before I can cancel completely. I don't mind going to their web site but I despise being herded into that direction by an uncaring corporation.

I find it interesting that my IPhone works fine, but my AIr has issues. I think it is an ATT/Yahoo issue and/or a land line issue as I have high speed internet with Bellsouth on my landline and, of course, wireless on my Iphone.

Nov 28, 2012 9:48 PM in response to John Hoge1

I began having these same issues last week. I was so frustrated last night, I just forwarded my att.net mail to a gmail account. Tested and it worked beautifully. Then I delected the att.net account on my macpro and my ipad. Life is sweet again.

mmjaved

Level 1

0 points

May 17, 2013 10:36 AM in response to John Hoge1

I know this conversation is proceeding somewhat slowly, but I wanted to add that this problem is still happening. My BellSouth e-mail address isn't working using Yahoo's settings. But I wanted to add that you can take Apple out of the equation. This is happening on my Android phone.

This is just the latest in a string of problems with this AT&T, Yahoo, BellSouth Frankenstein e-mail. I'm not even going to bother working on it. If it doesn't spontaneously resolve shortly, I'm dumping BellSouth. (After writing it, I realized this may even be the reason these issues get such little attention from the companies involved.)

Jun 27, 2013 3:37 PM in response to mmjaved

I have had the same issue with my bellsouth.net account. I just wasted an afternoon with ATT phone support and they wanted to refer me to their fee based support as well so I declined.

I think I successfully have fixed the problem by changing the setting in my Apple Mail client from being locked in to the "use custom port" and entering 465 to "use default ports 25, 465, 587".

I previously couldn't send any emails on the first try without having to resend to now trying it 10 times in a row without a problem.

Good luck.

John Hoge1 Author

Level 1

14 points

Jun 8, 2011 7:59 AM in response to Stephen Throop

Well, my problem is back, and, of this moment I can't use Mail to check my bellsouth.net account. The message says:

Enter password for account:

"jdhoge@bellsouth.net"

The POP server “pop.att.yahoo.com” rejected the password for user “jdhoge@bellsouth.net”

Please re-enter your password, or cancel.

[blank entry box where I reenter my PW]

and then a check box to remember this PW in my keychain.

I've tried this 4 times in a row now and get no results....

If I call ConnecTech I'll get a new, uninformed tech person who will run me through the same useless drills and then tell me that it is Apple's fault or Mail's fault; that there is noting they can do (but they are still charging me of course and there is an early cancellation fee = to twelve months @ $15 per....

Guess I'm stuck. This is the best AT&T and Yahoo! and bellsouth can do? Really?

Finally, regarding your comment about the Comodo server and this problem affecting regions and it being intermittent: How do you know these things? and Why can't someone fix it?

John Hoge1 Author

Level 1

14 points

Jun 9, 2011 4:18 PM in response to John Hoge1

Well, as per ConnecTech's request and as per Apple's guidance, I've archived and reinstalled my system software and Mail worked correctly for a few hours....

But now the problem is back again. PW error in trying to retrieve my jdhoge@bellsouth.net email. Repeated, over and over and over. And over and over.

ConnecTech cannot solve this problem by working with MY COMPUTER.

The problem is on their end not mine. I've wasted many hours following their advice and downloading bomgar and watching them re-create my jdhoge@bellsouth.net email account remotely.

What to do when you've done everything they suggest many times and Mail is still not able to retrieve or send email?

People need to know my story....

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Trouble with AT&T Yahoo! Email?