chirpy said:
My view is that you have a quota for a reason. If a user allows their mailbox to exceed it, that's their problem, they should either remove the mailbox quota, increase it or purchase more disk space from you. IMO it's the end users problem, not yours in trying to "fix" something that is working correctly in the context of quota management. Disk quotas aren't forgiving (if the user uses up all their web space) so I don't see why mail should be different. I think luser education would be my approach

Sorry for the non-technical reply.
What better education could there be than a customer calling me to say "I'm trying to send you an email with a big attachment but I'm getting this bounced message back saying that your mailbox is over quota. What gives?"
In the event that I receive a call like this, what's likely to happen? Answer: I'm going to take steps to provide more mailbox space so that I can receive this email from my customer. I'm either going to manage this myself via cPanel, or get assistance from the company that provides me with the mailbox - which may include upgrading to a more generous hosting account.
But if the person sending the email doesn't get this message, none of the above takes place!
If I send a parcel by snail mail to a client then generally speaking I'd assume that it's been received. But if I get a message back from the Post Office to the contrary, then I can take action. Without that message back from the Post Office, the sender is thinking "when's Fred going to give me a call about that package I sent him?" and Fred, the intended recipient is thinking "where the hell is that package that Bill said he was sending?". Both Bill and Fred are very busy people and are too busy right now to start conducting their own investigations and leave it until they
really need a resolution on that package before making calls. Not good.
In other words, IMHO, the very best user education is
* Prompt (the moment an email server rejects a message because of over quota problems)
* Plain English (let's give the customers the best possible chance of understanding what's going on)
* Automatic (so that, in a perfect world, us techs don't have to get involved).
In summary - agreed, disk quotas aren't very forgiving and are working exactly as intended, but how about we promptly TELL people that what they expected to happen hasn't happened? Am I missing something here? Or am I just too customer-focused and should get back in touch with my tech roots?
