Review of CBS-supplied Star Trek-themed paid-for email service

Red_Machine · 6 Dec 2013, 04:03 AM

I was looking around at cheap paid-for providers and came across the Star Trek-themed email here. For $15 per year, you get unlimited storage, a dedicated support team, robust anti-spam and anti-virus and the novelty domain of your choice, all courtesy of CBS and MyBrandEMail. Seems like a pretty good deal compared to the price of some of the services I came across in my search.

The service, however, is not as intuitive/smooth as my experiences with Yahoo, Gmail, Mail.com, et al. It uses Roundcube as the webmail interface, and it is quite possibly the most idiosyncratic interface I've ever used. I did post a question on the support forum, asking if there would be alternative interface choices available in the future, but I'm not holding my breath.

There's no way to select all messages in a folder (which one would want to do inside the spam/trash folder), nor is there an "empty trash" button. This means I have to ctrl-click/shift-click through the messages until I have selected them all and delete them manually.
If you move an email into a different folder via a Windows client (I use SeaMonkey Mail with message filters/rules), it does not remove it from the inbox in the webmail interface. Instead, it greys them out and has a red x next to them and you can still interact with the message as if it were still in the inbox. I need to delete the "ghost" message manually. Even if I delete a message via SeaMonkey Mail, it still stays in the webmail's inbox.
There is no way to change your password inside the webmail interface. The only way I found to do it was to log out and click the "lost password" link and reset it to what I wanted. This is ridiculous.
IMAP access is by far the laggiest/glitch-prone I have come across. It can take several seconds to load the contents of my custom folders in SeaMonkey Mail, and sometimes I am told that there is an error with the server. Never before have I experienced this, and I've been using IMAP with various providers for years.
The settings section is one of the most basic I've ever come across, with only limited server settings, primarily being focused on look & feel and email composition options.

All in all, I'm not entirely thrilled with my first foray into paid email. It's by no means unusable, as I bypass the distasteful webmail interface entirely when I use my Windows client, but I'm still annoyed at having to log in every few days to remove the "ghost" messages that have been building up in my inbox. Granted, these may more be issues with Roundcube rather than CBS's fault, but it's still not a great experience in my opinion.

All in all, I'd say that the only advantage it has is that it's cheap and has unlimited storage. Otherwise I could take it or leave it. There isn't even a trial period, so I can't get a refund and try somewhere else.
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Red_Machine

janusz · 6 Dec 2013, 04:09 AM

Did you report your reservations to the "dedicated support team"? What was their dedicated response?

Red_Machine · 6 Dec 2013, 04:11 AM

A lot of the flaws with the webmail interface I consider to be "as intended". So they're not the kinda things you can complain about and hope to get what you want.

Red_Machine · 20 Dec 2013, 04:14 AM

I finally got a reply to the email I sent their support team. Coincidentally I'd posted a complaint about the service a few hours earlier on Facebook when the Star Trek page advertised the service.

This is what they have to say:

Quote:

Thanks for your detailed feedback. I am so sorry that you are disappointed so far.
But, I absolutely understand your comments regarding the webmail client.
We are going to be replacing it next year.
We have thousands of Star Trek email customers using their email addresses and to be honest, the vast majority use their own mail clients either on PC, Mac or smartphones such as Android and iPads etc.
I personally would never use webmail; I have all my different email accounts on my iPhone as that works for me.
I have sent your detailed feedback to our email dev team.
Please let me know if you would like your email address added to our notification list and we can then contact you when we upgrade our webmail client?
Once again, we're sorry about your experience to date.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Regards
Dave

So it seems like even they acknowledge that it sucks.

6 Dec 2013, 04:03 AM	#1
Red_Machine Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2013 Location: Great Britain Posts: 24	Review of CBS-supplied Star Trek-themed paid-for email service I was looking around at cheap paid-for providers and came across the Star Trek-themed email here. For $15 per year, you get unlimited storage, a dedicated support team, robust anti-spam and anti-virus and the novelty domain of your choice, all courtesy of CBS and MyBrandEMail. Seems like a pretty good deal compared to the price of some of the services I came across in my search. The service, however, is not as intuitive/smooth as my experiences with Yahoo, Gmail, Mail.com, et al. It uses Roundcube as the webmail interface, and it is quite possibly the most idiosyncratic interface I've ever used. I did post a question on the support forum, asking if there would be alternative interface choices available in the future, but I'm not holding my breath. There's no way to select all messages in a folder (which one would want to do inside the spam/trash folder), nor is there an "empty trash" button. This means I have to ctrl-click/shift-click through the messages until I have selected them all and delete them manually. If you move an email into a different folder via a Windows client (I use SeaMonkey Mail with message filters/rules), it does not remove it from the inbox in the webmail interface. Instead, it greys them out and has a red x next to them and you can still interact with the message as if it were still in the inbox. I need to delete the "ghost" message manually. Even if I delete a message via SeaMonkey Mail, it still stays in the webmail's inbox. There is no way to change your password inside the webmail interface. The only way I found to do it was to log out and click the "lost password" link and reset it to what I wanted. This is ridiculous. IMAP access is by far the laggiest/glitch-prone I have come across. It can take several seconds to load the contents of my custom folders in SeaMonkey Mail, and sometimes I am told that there is an error with the server. Never before have I experienced this, and I've been using IMAP with various providers for years. The settings section is one of the most basic I've ever come across, with only limited server settings, primarily being focused on look & feel and email composition options. All in all, I'm not entirely thrilled with my first foray into paid email. It's by no means unusable, as I bypass the distasteful webmail interface entirely when I use my Windows client, but I'm still annoyed at having to log in every few days to remove the "ghost" messages that have been building up in my inbox. Granted, these may more be issues with Roundcube rather than CBS's fault, but it's still not a great experience in my opinion. All in all, I'd say that the only advantage it has is that it's cheap and has unlimited storage. Otherwise I could take it or leave it. There isn't even a trial period, so I can't get a refund and try somewhere else. ---------- Red_Machine

6 Dec 2013, 04:09 AM	#2
janusz The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: EU Posts: 4,945	Did you report your reservations to the "dedicated support team"? What was their dedicated response?

6 Dec 2013, 04:11 AM	#3
Red_Machine Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2013 Location: Great Britain Posts: 24	A lot of the flaws with the webmail interface I consider to be "as intended". So they're not the kinda things you can complain about and hope to get what you want.