Incorrect Greeting error message
Good morning!
About a week ago, we switched ISPs. Up until that point, Thunderbird has worked perfectly. Our old ISP, Frontier Communications, had served us well but it was time to upgrade to something much faster.
Upon leaving, we asked Frontier about our email accounts and they confirmed that, yes, we should still be able to access and use our email accounts on their servers. This was my @citlink.net email address.
But as soon as we switched to Suddenlink to get cable internet, we have only been able to receive emails thru Thunderbird. We cannot send them nor reply to them. We get the following error:
"An error occurred while sending mail: The mail server sent an incorrect greeting: 554 5.7.1 <47-216-183-76.kingcmtk02.res.dyn.suddenlink.net[47.216.183.76]>: Client host rejected: Access denied."
I have done a LOT of troubleshooting with both companies, to no avail. Frontier helped me to check that all the SMTP settings are correct, which they are. Suddenlink spent 5 hours on tech chat with me working on the problem until they suddenly disconnected me, telling me that they can't help because of Thunderbird being a third-party software.
So, I went to an outside source for tech support. The person that I went to was on justanswer.com and he was great! He really helped me troubleshoot tons of stuff that neither Frontier nor Suddenlink would try. But none of the things worked.
We tried different SMTP ports (465 is Frontier's port) but we tried 587 and 25. We changed up the security and authentication. They didn't work.
We pinged the smtp.frontier.com server. It responded normally, so we figured that the ports were not being blocked.
We tried to import my gmail account into Thunderbird and, voila! It worked! We could send emails thru Thunderbird using my gmail account. But not my @citlink.net address. It continued to throw back that error message.
We tried proxy servers to no avail. It still gave the error or it timed out almost immediately.
We used my VPN to no avail. It also gave the error.
Basically, after all our troubleshooting, we determined that it was likely that Frontier had my new IP address on a blocklist. When I contacted them through tech support chat, they refused to check my IP address against their blocked IP list.
We then contacted Suddenlink to see if they could change my IP address or at least give me a dynamic IP address rather than a static one. They refused to do so.
So, I am at a loss of what to do next! Through the troubleshooting it is extremely frustrating to both me and the guy from JustAnswer.com that none of these solutions have worked.
Does anybody else have some ideas? Would an uninstall/reinstall of Thunderbird work? Do I need to contact both companies in a different way (phone, etc.) to see about the IP issue? Could it be something completely unrelated?
I have seen other people having this same issue but I never really saw any resolutions.
Please help. I would be forever grateful and appreciative!
Dan
All Replies (5)
Some additional information that I failed to provide in the original message:
The issue also exists on my wife's computer.
It also works on my iphone with trying to send mail through the imail app. I confirmed that it has something to do with my home network/IP issue after I was able to send emails from my iphone when I'm on my network at my workplace and also when I'm on my 4g LTE mobile network. It's no problem to send emails in that way.
If my iphone is connected to my home wi-fi network, however, I continue to get the error on my iphone!
Also, on a whim, I installed 2 other email clients (Mailbird was one of them). They, too, failed to send emails with a similar error message on their platform.
So, this isn't necessarily JUST a Thunderbird problem.
Tools/Account Settings, select the Suddenlink account in the left pane, then look at the Outgoing Server (SMTP) drop-down in the lower right pane. Is the Suddenlink account sending on the smtp.suddenlink.net on port 465, SSL/TLS, that has the same User Name (email address) as the selected account?
If it's a network equipment issue, I would restart the modem/router, release/renew the IP, and do a flushdns.
I don't have a suddenlink email yet, so there is no suddenlink account listed in the left pane. I only have the frontier account for email at this time. We don't wish to change email addresses, so this is why we are trying to get this to work.
I did, however, set up a smtp.suddenlink.net server on port 465 as you discussed. But it only brings me to this error: "Login to server smtp.suddenlink.net with username [email]@citlink.net failed." It then gives the standard choices of Retry, Enter New Password, and Cancel.
Modified by Andrew
quote: "I don't have a suddenlink email yet, so there is no suddenlink account listed in the left pane. I only have the frontier account for email at this time. We don't wish to change email addresses, so this is why we are trying to get this to work.
I did, however, set up a smtp.suddenlink.net server on port 465 as you discussed. But it only brings me to this error: "Login to server smtp.suddenlink.net with username [email]@citlink.net failed." It then gives the standard choices of Retry, Enter New Password, and Cancel."
When Frontier said you could still access your account, they probably meant you could access it through webmail. But that doesn't mean you can send through the Frontier smtp when you're on the Suddenlink network; webmail and POP/IMAP/SMTP are not exactly the same systems. Most smtp servers nowadays require matching credentials between the sending account and the smtp server.
I suggest you add your Frontier account to the gmail account in gmail settings in Accounts & Import, Send mail as:, then set the Frontier account to send on the gmail smtp.
Modified by Andrew