Problems Logging In

There are a couple of things that can cause login problems:

1. You forget your username or password

2. You forget that passwords are case sensitive

Solutions

Forgotten Username 

If you forget your username, you'll need to send in an enquiry and we'll let you know via your registered email address what it is.

Forgotten Password

If you for get your password, you can get the system to send you a new one by following the 'Forgot my Password' link on the login form. The system creates a random 10 digit number and sets this as your password. You can use that to login and then change it to whatever you like (10 digit numbers are hard to remember).

NB: We have no way of reading passwords - we designed the system like that because some people use the same password for many systems and we felt that in the interest of privacy your password is secret to you only - even the technical staff cannot do anything to recover them which is why we always rest them if you request your password from us.

When you request a new password, the system sends it to you immediately and so it should arrive within a few minutes depending on your internet service provider.

Passwords are only ever sent to the email address registered when you created your account - you can of course change your email address once you login (although the system will not allow the change if the email address is registered to another account).

If it hasn't turned up within say an hour, the chances are, that something is wrong and it never will (occasionally, service providers block mail generated by commercial sites, believing it to be junk mail - we don't send junk mail). If your new password doesn't turn up as expected, just let us know and we'll send you a temporary password via a different route and that generally solves the problem.

I'm sure I'm entering the correct username and password, but the system still won't let me in - what's wrong?

All passwords are case sensitive so make sure you enter it exactly as originally created. For example, the system would see all of the following as different passwords even though they are the same in terms of spelling:  password, Password, passWord, PaSSword, PASSWORD.  If you have problems, its a good idea to check you haven't left your Caps Lock turned on.

Other Problem Sources

In mid Sep 2007 we carried out a major upgrade to make the platform ready for some new security features. Unfortunately, Microsoft had changed the way some of their encryption facilities worked and the side effect was to make existing passwords appear invalid. The simple solution is to get the system to send a new one (using the 'Forgot my Password' link on the login form), and everything is ok again.