Help and Support

Want to contact us about your email problem?

Before contacting us, we recommend reading the advice on this page, you might be able to fix the problem yourself.

If you do need to speak to Customer support, you can call us or use Contact us. So we can help you quickly, please provide as much of the following information as you can:

  • What the problem is
  • The email program you use
  • The email address you're having problems with
  • The error messages are you seeing (if any)

Check the settings in your email program

A lot of the email problems Customer support deal with are fixed by checking and correcting settings in your email program. The most common mistakes are made when entering the email address and the email username and password.

If you want to check your email program settings before calling us, our Email setup guides show you how to check and fix settings with all the major email programs for Windows and OS X.

Check your security software

Sometimes an anti-virus or firewall problem can prevent your email program from sending or receiving mail. This sometimes happens after virus definition updates or when a firewall is accidentally configured to block email traffic.

To find out if either is causing the problem, simply turn off your anti-virus and/or firewall and try using your email program again to see if the problem is now fixed. If it works then your security software is causing the problem.

Most problems with security software can solved by removing and re-installing the program in question. Unfortunately we can't offer support for third party software.

Check Service status

If we're aware of any major problems or we're performing maintenance on our servers we'll post about it on our Service status feed so it's worth checking there first.

You'll find that our systems are up-and-running smoothly for the majority of the time, but problems do happen and sometimes we have to take systems down for maintenance.

Help with common problems

If you have a specific problem that you don't think is covered in the advice above, click on the type of problem you're having and we'll explain how to fix it.

I can't send email unless I'm connected to my John Lewis Broadband line.

To send email while away from your John Lewis Broadband line you have two options:

I have to enter a password when I send email and I don't know what it is.

This means that your email program is using SMTP authentication. You should enter your account password (the one you use to log in to this web site). If this doesn't work, follow the SMTP authentication guide for your email program and make sure you've entered your account username and password correctly.

When I try to send email, I get this error: 503 valid RCPT command must precede DATA

To fix this error, check your email program settings (see our Email setup guides to find out how) and make sure your email address is entered correctly.

Once registered, your John Lewis Broadband email address will look like this: username@john-lewis.com

Once you've fixed your email address, delete any emails stored in your outbox and try sending email again.

Emails sent to me arrive late

If the email delay is caused by our systems, it's likely that the problem will be affecting a large number of John Lewis Broadband customers meaning we'll have posted something about it on Service status. It's a good idea to check this before you do anything else: https://johnlewisbroadband.servicestatus.net/.

Otherwise, we'll need to see the headers from the delayed email.

When you have the header information, use Contact us to raise a query with Customer support and we'll investigate for you. Please try to include the following information:

  • The sender's email address
  • The address they are trying to send to
  • Header information from the delayed email
  • How long the problem has been happening

I don't receive replies to my emails

Check your email settings (see our Email setup guides if you're not sure how) and make sure you've entered the email address properly.

If you're using a John Lewis Broadband address, make sure it ends in john-lewis.com.

I get connection errors or timeouts

Make sure you're connected to the internet and you can browse websites.

Sometimes an anti-virus or firewall problem can prevent your email program from sending or receiving mail. This sometimes happens after virus definition updates or when a firewall is accidentally configured to block email traffic.

To find out if either is causing the problem, simply turn off your antivirus and/or firewall and try using your email program again to see if the problem is now fixed.

If the problem is fixed, this proves that your security software is the problem. You'll be able to fix it by removing and re-installing the program in question. Unfortunately we can't offer support for third party software.

When I log in to Webmail, email I've read previously isn't there

There are two possible causes of this:

  • You're using the wrong details to log in: Make sure you're logging in with the correct username and password for the email address you want to check (I'm not sure what these are).

  • Your email program is setup to use POP3: once you've downloaded your email it will be removed from our servers. To change this behaviour you should be able to change the settings so email is left on our server for a set period of time (usually for 14 days or until you delete it). Please our Email setup guides if you don't know how to change the settings on your email program.

I'm getting a lot of spam

If you're getting spam from random addresses, our spam guide has advice on how to deal with this problem.

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Service Status

For full details of our current issues or any maintenance work that could be affecting your service please visit our Service Status site.

Can't find what you're looking for?

If we've not been able to address your query through a support article please contact Customer support for further assistance.