My webmail service broke the other week. I’d sign in then get a few menu options and an error message instead of an inbox. I’d heard that they were upgrading a whole bunch of stuff so I thought I’d give it a week for the problems to work themselves through. I found I could read my messages but not send via Outlook, and that I could send - though not read - through web mail. Less than ideal, but good enough for a temporary fix.

After a couple of weeks the problem was still there so I emailed the helpdesk and asked if it was something they knew about or something I had done… I got a polite message within a day or so saying that the problem was due to rules I had got set up. They weren’t 100% compatible from the old version to the new version. All I had to do was delete my existing rules and I’d be fine.

Unfortunately I had 526 rules and the web interface only allows you to delete one at a time. 3 Hours later (I was doing other stuff at the same time, don’t worry) I had no rules and an inbox again!

I considered getting upset about this. But then I realised, I pay £12 a year for web hosting, email, all configurable by me, and a prompt courteous person on the end of an email who is always helpful or at least patient. By contrast, my current project at work has spend many tens of thousands of dollars on an “embedded linux” product and we have yet to get civility let alone utility out of them.