Indigo's profile

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Tuesday, July 28th, 2020 2:00 PM

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Added one new email account now can't add another one

This is driving me insane - Windows Mail suddenly stopped downloading email for my long time secondary account so I went to https://connect.xfinity.com to create a new account - kept getting an error message "Validation of server mail.comcast.net failed due to invalid credentials" - but after repeatedly attempting to add the account somehow it started working.

 

Then I deleted the old non-working account (could access via the xfinity website but not from my PC email app), and shockingly, all the email stuck in that account magically got delivered to my PC - HUH!?! But now the account is gone - I tried to recreate it and now I'm getting the same error message above, "Validation of server mail.comcast.net failed due to invalid credentials", and even stranger when I try to change the username it says "somebody already has that username" - it's like the old account was NOT wiped off the Xfinity server. Now I'm totally messed up - the deleted secondary account is the one everyone in my life has, I never use the original Comcast email address, the main account.

What am I supposed to do now!?! I've tried calling Comcast Customer service 3 times, even have a service ticket, but they keep putting me on hold then I get disconnected. I work from home, that old email account is the link to EVERYBODY on earth, and I've been trying to fix this for four days now - beyond frustrated - I need help!

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Contributor

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145 Messages

5 years ago

Did I forget to mention that until this problem is fixed I will not be able to recieve email from ANYONE, and they're probably going to get an email bounce msg as undeliverable? This cannot be a worse nightmare!

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145 Messages

5 years ago

Spent 1  1/2 hours on the phone with 2nd level tech Jorge D.  this morning- it was an exhausting process, but we finally got my main email account restored, he had the patience of Jobe! Can't even begin to describe exactly how we fixed it because we tried so many different things - in short, he had to recreate the account on Comcast's end, I had to delete and recreate  it on my end, and the key was resetting the password (did a ton of other things in between those steps). There's a trick to doing that on an Xfinity website that is hidden, in all the hours of searching online I never came across this - you have to go to https://idm.xfinity.com (actually I typed in www.idm.xfinity.com, it redirects) and reset it there, doesn't work when you try changing it from the https://customer.xfinity.com/users page. And contrary to what I found on the web, email scanning antivirus software had nothing to do with this problem.

Expert

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29.7K Messages

5 years ago

"Then I deleted the old non-working account (could access via the xfinity website but not from my PC email app), and shockingly, all the email stuck in that account magically got delivered to my PC - HUH!?! "

 

If you had the account enabled on the PC using a desktop email client or app, that would explain why the emails went there.  Here's why--------------

 

When a user ID (that part of the email address to the left of the @ symbol) is changed or deleted, it is suspended for 90 days, and then released back into the pool of available IDs for any Comcast customer that wants to claim it.  However, if the account was enabled in a client or app, that  would keep it signed in until the end of the 90 day period.  Using the app or client you would still be able to send or receive emails.   The account is still running in the background. You just wouldn't be able to sign into the webmail interface any more.

Contributor

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145 Messages

5 years ago

Thanks for the explanation - unfortunately, my email worked for all of 19 hours - this morning I realized my email wasn't downloading again because I made several Amazon orders yesterday and didn't get email alerts for either of them. I noticed that yellow triangle error alert in the corner of Windows Mail, clicked on it, and saw the exact same error message this all started with, first image in my first post of the thread "https://forums.xfinity.com/t5/Email-Web-Browsing/Secondary-email-account-is-not-receiving-email-AGAIN/m-p/3357124#M219906".

 

Then I went to the Xfinity webmail app, saw a few emails there, and forwarded the Amazon ones to my 2nd working Comcast email addy. But before I hit send/receive in Windows Mail, I checked the trouble account settings again - the incoming mail server was mail.comcast.net (same as the email addy that DOES always work, my Xfinity username@comcast.net), recalled something I'd read on the Xfinity troubleshooting page, that incoming mail server should be pop3.comcast.net, changed the non-working account to that (I'd tried this solution before and it didn't work), hit send/recieve, and got something similar to "this server has an invalid security certificate" error and "do you want to continue" , so I clicked yes and a flood of 30 emails showed up in the trouble email inbox - huh? Why did I only see 7-8 emails in that account using the Xfinity webmail app (including the one saying you had replied to this thread, thank god)?

 

Something is still really wonky with Comcast's email servers - I don't have reliable email access via Windows Mail OR the web page https://connect.xfinity.com/appsuite. Just to throw further confusion into this mess, a 3rd email account I managed to create in the webmail app was the one receiving those few emails intended for the trouble account - I noticed that while on the phone with the L2 tech but left it alone because things were already confused enough - how on earth that addy got ANY email is a mystery. I just changed it back to my old trouble account name to test if that works - when it came to the outgoing server authentificaiton section it initially wouldn't let me change the email address associated with the account because the "use same setting as inbound server" was checked, so I unchecked it and it let me manually change the outgoing credentials. Whether that works or not I won't know for a day or so.

 

This missing email problem is not trivial, it has huge financial implications - on Wed. late afternoon I entered an after hours stock order on my desktop trading platform to see if I could get some stock at a really cheap price (a stink bid well below the official closing price) - I didn't get an email from TD Ameritrade saying the order had filled, so I tried to buy the same amount of stock for the same price yesterday during normal trading hours - luckily it didn't fill, because I would have bought twice the intended amount of stock and I'd be stuck with it, can't get trades you made by mistake reversed just because your email broke. I didn't get the TDA email saying the AH order had filled until I got the Windows Mail account working again this morning - it did not show up in the Webmail inbox.

 

I hope you'll revisit this thread, you appear very knowledgeable and I can use all the help I can get - everything and everyone in my life is associated with that trouble email account, it HAS to work reliably.

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