Method Community

Sometimes when we send email, we get the following error (when sending from Method).  Any idea why this is happening and how to prevent it?

*******ERROR*******

Error'Action Sequesnce 31. Error with user authentication: Server says 500 5.5.1 Command unrecognized. "AUTH LOGIN" 

HI pdirect,

Does this happen with specific user logins or all user logins? Who do you currently use as your email provider?

-Michael

It happens with all users and our SMTP provider is AT&T.

Hi pdirect,

I am going to need to do a bit more research on this.

-Michael

Hi pdirect,

Is the smtp address smtp.att.yahoo.com? I did a bit of google searching and it looks like yahoo itself may have been having some issues.

When Method sends an email it just passes information to the SMTP server and then the SMTP server takes over and actually sends the email 

I would suggest maybe contacting AT&T or Yahoo about this issue.

-Michael

I'm not surprised that would want me to contact AT&T or Yahoo about this issue  . . . that's the usual technology blame game.  The problem with that is that this only happens in Method even though we use the same SMTP settings for all of our Outlook users as well as a few other applications. 

Hi pdirect,

Take a look at the AT&T forums HERE. You will see that a lot of other people are experiencing email issues like the one you describe in this forum post.

-Michael

There are always going to be errors that show up in any provider's forum.  That's just part of email. But again, this isn't happening in any of our Outlook clients or other applications ... so I'm not going to point my fingers at AT&T at this point.

If you don't know why this is happening, that's fine. But I wouldn't blame AT&T without real proof. And based on our experience, it seems to indicate a problem with method more than it does to AT&T.

I think at this point, Michael has gone above and beyond the try and help. It wouldn't hurt to check with them (AT&T) to see if they are experiencing issues.  Just my 2 cents especially if everything was working fine and now you're experiencing problems.  We have not released any new updates since you reported the problem.  

Above and beyond?! This is just basic troubleshooting. We've had this problem ever since we started using Method, I'm just reporting it now.  And this ONLY happens in Method. If this were an AT&T problem we would be experiencing issue in Outlook, on our smartphones and other applications that use this same SMTP server.  I've been in tech support now for 13 years and logic would say that these symptoms would definitely point to a problem in Method, not AT&T. But it you can't figure it out that's fine . . . but don't play the blame game!

Considering it is a free forum which we provide to help give a helping hand to our community and point you in the right direction, I think Michael did go pretty far.  If you trully feel that this is a Method issue, feel free to call in and open a paid support session and we'd be happy to look into it even deeper.  If it's on our end, we'll have no problems owning up to it.  However, if it turns out to not be an issue with Method, then our standard rates for support will be charged.  

No one is doubting your 13 years of support experience here.  We're just trying to help. 

BTW, we had this same problem when using a different smtp server (non-AT&T) . . . but we switched to the AT&T smtp server to see if would go away, but of course it didn't.  It's not all the time, but it is frequent.

Hi pdirect,

I just wanted to add a couple of extra things.

1. The error is coming from the SMTP provider, not from Method.  Method is only reporting back the error from the SMTP provider.  
    
2. Method does things different than actual email clients like Outlook. In Outlook when you send an email it adds it to your Outbox, which is essentially an email queue. There is no immediate verification from Outlook that the email was sent, instead it sits in the Outbox until a send is successful. If the SMTP provider is flaky, Outlook may eventually get it through after multiple tries.  Method, on the other hand, communicates directly with the SMTP provider immediately and if the flaky SMTP connection fails, it reports it and does not retry. 
    
3. As part of a new feature a "Reminder Service" we are going to be introducing a new Email Server service queue on the Method's servers.  The Reminder service puts emails into a queue, and the Email Server service reads from the queue and tries to send.  If the email fails the first time it will try up to 14 additional times, about 1 minute apart, before giving up. After it gives up it sends an error report to the sender with the error message. 
    
4. After the Reminder service has been live for a month or so, we will likely route ALL emails through the EmailServer, thus having a similar queuing system that Outlook has. So this will mask the flaws of flaky SMTP servers just like Outlook does.

  -Michael