As mentioned here...

http://portal.plus.net/central/forums/viewtopic.php?t=53551&highlight=username

http://portal.plus.net/central/forums/viewtopic.php?t=48342&highlight=username

http://portal.plus.net/central/forums/viewtopic.php?t=45525&highlight=username

http://portal.plus.net/central/forums/viewtopic.php?t=44072&highlight=username

And there are many more examples.

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What's more, [email protected] is a more complicated e-mail setup for the user than [email protected]

I'd get very bored having to tell folk [email protected]

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You need to read my explanation again. It isn't [email protected] but rather [email protected] as you want. You have @username.plus.com and Zen's system does the same only @username.myzen.co.uk, except that it can be changed at a whim if needed and in addition to the main user name.

It depends how you define "Impossible" - I can't see anywhere there where we have said it's impossible, or have mentioned BT?

In reality what we are talking about is cancelling one account and opening a brand new one and then copying over all of the details. As none of our support staff have access to things like payment details, we have to involve the finance team to transfer over payment details and there are other complexities (Eg people that want to keep fax2email numbers, static IPs etc, all of which are difficult to move).

I agree with Rsharma about what sounds like the right approach to this one - However to be able to do this requires a lot of development work to get us there. Use of usernames is engrained in a number of internal systems, and there is some quite hefty code rewrites needed to change that (Although for every system we have built in recent years, a unique service identifier has been used instead so it should be easier now than it would have been a year or two ago).

That said, I'm hoping we can come up with something a bit simpler that will work for everyone. I also agree that the postmaster requirement is a bit legacy now. We nabbed that requirement from Demon 10 years ago if I remember correctly and it's never been reconsidered, even though things are rather different now and most people do have an alternative address.

Ian

>I agree with Rsharma about what sounds like the right approach to this one - However to be able to do this requires a lot of development work to get us there. Use of usernames is engrained in a number of internal systems, and there is some quite hefty code rewrites needed to change that (Although for every system we have built in recent years, a unique service identifier has been used instead so it should be easier now than it would have been a year or two ago).

Is there really much work required to allow a customer the ability to have a second username and in addition to their primary one, if this second username is not linked to their account operation?

>I also agree that the postmaster requirement is a bit legacy now. We nabbed that requirement from Demon 10 years ago if I remember correctly and it's never been reconsidered, even though things are rather different now and most people do have an alternative address.

An issue that was highlighted by me back in 2006 and many others before and since then. The sooner that this requirement is removed the better.

The postmaster requirement has been brought up repeatedly (like many of the other things that are now being looked at). I think that's why it grates upon some of us. To have had so many things dismissed in the past and now acted on. But at least they are finally getting seriously looked into.

I've always ignored the postmaster requirement. Anything of any import is also sent to the 'contact' address after all.

Hopefully they'll look into the whole accountname/primary email address/password thing. As currently I'm sure a large percentage of users use [email protected] for everything. This means the same username and password is used for DSL login, portal login, mail login, etc. And often passed unencrypted and in plaintext across insecure connections (when checking mail or logging into FTP for example).

I never checked the postmaster or username email accounts when I was with them for 14 months. Mainly because I wasn't aware of the requirement and secondly because I never used the PN email addresses for anything.

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It depends how you define "Impossible" - I can't see anywhere there where we have said it's impossible, or have mentioned BT?

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Here and in many other threads...

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Its not just a case of PlusNet changing it.

How do you think that when you go on to the internet with broadband it gets to the correct place at Plusnet.??
Your username is used as part of the routing stored in BT's database as well so that the system knows whereto send the packets from your PC.
It would also involve BT doing changes to accommodate your new name.
and they would want a fee for doing that.

johnessex on PlusNet forum 10 feb 2005

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I don't believe JohnEssex works for PlusNet - either way he's wrong

Hi there,

Your username for connection to the internet will be in the format of [email protected]. The bit before the @ is used for our authentication, and the bit following it is used for BT authentication. As such changing the username will have no affect on the broadband connection as long as the account is built correctly in our system.

The problem we have at the moment, as Ian stated earlier, is that to change a username we have to create a new account and manually transfer all the detail across, which takes some time. We are working on ways to improve this though, and will give more info on that as soon as we have it.