Moving away from BT

I am giving my neighbour every possible assistance in moving away from BT Internet to another ISP. So I have:

1. Ordered a broadband only service from another ISP and paid their connection fee;
2. Ordered a router;
3. Opened an account with a hosted digital voice supplier and obtained a temporary number that has been activated as a softphone on her mobile;
4. Found an available domain name and asked the new ISP to host it for a single email address;
5. Put in a porting request for her digital voice number with BT to pass over to the new supplier. Order accepted with no issues. Transfer date given.

BT have not been told about any of the steps taken above but have received from them the following letters: a) Sorry you are leaving us etc., b) A final bill which actually amounts to refund of monies, c) Money off their next bill (!) as compensation for the exceptional poor service which triggered moving away from them and d) Notification of a price rise (£5 pm) that applies from the 1st April.

All well and good but I am a bit stuck on knowing what to do about her BT supplied email address, configured within Outlook, which is currently working just fine. I think it could be retained for a monthly fee but out of preference a redirection service to her new email address which perhaps might be a cheaper and better option. How can either be organised?

With grateful thanks for any response received.

When I changed I forwarded the bt emails to my new address. This worked for a year or two, long enough for people to update to the new one.
That was some years ago now and it was just a personal, not business, address so it didn’t really matter if any went astray. Worth putting into place anyway.

In reply to a post by ploddo:

When I changed I forwarded the bt emails to my new address. This worked for a year or two, long enough for people to update to the new one.
That was some years ago now and it was just a personal, not business, address so it didn’t really matter if any went astray. Worth putting into place anyway.

I have subsequently found pages on BTs web site that shows how to setup call forwarding and also how to retain the BT email address at cost of £7.50 a month when moving to another ISP. Call forwarding looks ideal, but is that an option for a non-BT customer? Details here: https://www.bt.com/help/email/setting-up-auto-forwar...

It seems the only option available to non- BT subscribers to use the BT email service is the monthly fee option.

Next issue is the voice handsets. They will probably have to be returned but in the meantime I have tried to re-register them to the new router. Going down the settings menu you are asked to press WPS button on the router. Eventually the handset displays registration failed.

Assumption is that the handsets are locked to only connect to the BT router or that the new router hasn't got the ability to handle the request. Thoughts on this anyone?

Clearly you are referring to email forwarding, call forwarding is used with telephone calls.

They're DECT handsets, does the router you're trying to connect them to have a DECT base?

When the new number is ported, set it up on the softphone on the mobile device. Tell your neighbour of the wonderful feature that you get your landline calls when you are away from home!

Ignore or delete the temporary number which has been issued.

Optionally suggest to the neighbour to hand out their mobile number to callers on the landline number. If they can be weaned over, recognising the calls is simpler and easily managed in Contacts, and the calls are essentially free both ways with most mobile phone packages.

Correct; a typo on my part .......