End User in Tears

Just spent two hours with a distraught customer who moved from BT to SKY.

She was told by the untrained idiot that she could keep her BT Internet email address.

Needles to say the old email account is now dead.

She was in tears as she has now lost several years of valuable emails.

When will the ISPs learn that they can't tell people they can keep there email address.

BT email is BT Yahoo mail I believe and as such there is the Premium service for people who used to have BT Broadband

http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProduc...

£1.54 per month, so if they have ONLY just lost access it may be that they can signup and get to the account again. No idea if they delete account immediately or wait a few days.

Another search reveals
http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/13140...

"When you stop your BT Broadband service your email account is downgraded to a Pay-as-you-go or Basic email service. You'll be able to access your email account for up to 90 days from the date your BT Broadband service stops.

You won't be charged for the email account, but to continue to use it after 90 days you'll need to upgrade it to a Premium Mail account."

So unless the 90 days has passed I think they may be able to stop crying.

Agreed there is a paid for service.
We both know this, but the poor end user has no knowledge of this.

As she has changed to save money I doubt that she would have changed IF she was told about this charge by BT to retain her email address when she requested the MAC code. Allowing her time to "cool off" and decide if she wished to cancel the change over.

So BT are also at fault here...

Sorry forgot to say in last post.
I tried emailing her "old" BT internet account and the email bouced saying something like "no such user" so I fear it may be to late already.

The old email account is meant to be work for 90 days, so have we gone past that window?

Trouble being if extra cooling off is added to the process we will make even simple migrations take a month or more.

The best lesson is if you use web based email, never keep anything in it that you cannot afford to lose, keep a copy of important emails locally on the computer. Also always double check 'yeah it will be alright' type claims against the experience of others'

If she is within the 90 days of leaving BT, then I would recommend she chases them ASAP as while the account may be locked out, it may not have been deleted.

Yes still within 90 days.
Tried password recovery last night, but no joy.

Not suggesting extra cooling off period, just that the two sides give the end user ACCURATE information so that they can ask someone what the implications are.

I use Mail Store Home to archive my web based emails and it works very well.

Approx 50% of my customers don't even know that they are using web mail, they just go to a link on their desktop and read their emails... If this user had asked my advice before switching I would have definately told her that she would loose the BT email address (after 90 days). This is the first time I have seen it acting immediately with BT.

Never ASSUME (that the ISPs are telling the whole truth) it makes an ASS of U and ME
In my experience they will say whatever they need to in order to get the SALE.

Technically they CAN keep their email account. In this case things have not gone to plan. Get the customer to call BT and get things sorted if still within 90 days.

In reply to a post by Mike_Williams:

When will the ISPs learn that they can't tell people they can keep there email address.

Users shouldn't trust the new ISP (I assume Sky in this case) to tell you anything accurate about the old ISP.

Some ISPs give you email for life even when you stop paying them, this includes Sky. Other ISPs give you no email at all (e.g. BE).

In reply to a post by Mike_Williams:

Just spent two hours with a distraught customer who moved from BT to SKY.

She was told by the untrained idiot that she could keep her BT Internet email address.

I'm confused about a couple of things here - what do you mean "your customer?", what do you provide?

Was it Sky or BT who told her she could keep her BT email? Because she can, you know?

And why had she not downloaded all of the emails into a suitable mail client on her PC?

I hear, too often, that people have lost their webmail account and have not bothered to have their own copy of emails. Webmail should NEVER be regarded as a service that will always be available and uses or their advisers need to ensure suitable processes are in place.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Users shouldn't trust the new ISP (I assume Sky in this case) to tell you anything accurate about the old ISP.

It's very unlikely that a CS rep would have any information on the email policies of other ISP's anyway.

In reply to a post by MHC:

I hear, too often, that people have lost their webmail account and have not bothered to have their own copy of emails. Webmail should NEVER be regarded as a service that will always be available and uses or their advisers need to ensure suitable processes are in place.

This model is sadly now generally out of date for many people (including corporates). I agree with your sentiment which is "you should have a backup of your mail" however, no question! Many people now access their mail from multiple devices, either multiple PCs, or pervasive devices including phones, tablets of any mobile OS.

Services such as GMail, Hotmail/Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail, and even the paid for services Google Apps for Business, Microsoft Exchange Online - offer 25Gigabytes of storage or more with amazing levels of reliability - and these offer IMAP and ActiveSync type access. Its the legacy ISP mailboxes with POP3 and basic webmail (e.g. SquirrelMail or RoundCube) that tend to give problems when accessed from multiple devices.

Email has evolved and many ISP "freebies" haven't.

No such thing as a free lunch so wouldn't trust any free services.

I do sympatise with the customer of the OP but as well supported mail hosting can be had for as little as 12 quid a year plus maybe 2.99 for a domain I really do wonder why people still use @ISPname addresses if their intent is to shop around for the best deal.

That's why I registered my own domain and pay a small fee for mail hosting,. so am not tied to my broadband provider but in any case I do make sure I keep a copy of important mails on my PC.

Never ever rely 100% on a third party to store stuff long term that is important to you, hardware failures happen and backup procedures can go wrong.

I fear this kind of scenario will occur more and more as people put more and more trust in 'the cloud', trust which I personally feel is misguided.

I have never used an isp email, as it will always end in tears when you leave a provider. Stuck with my hotmail account since time began and glad i did.

In future always get her to back her email to her pc and memory stick.

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/

Edited by deleted (Sun 24-Mar-13 07:31:24)

In reply to a post by dusty:

I have never used an isp email, as it will always end in tears when you leave a provider. Stuck with my hotmail account since time began and glad i did.

It's not always the case. The only email address of mine that was terminated was my NTL one which Virgin Media cancelled without warning not long after they bought NTL.

My old Bulldog email address is still active even though I haven't been a Bulldog/Pipex/Tiscali/Talk Talk customer for nearly 10 years. The only problem with it is that I can't access the webmail interface because when Tiscali took over they stopped allowing full stops in usernames which Bulldog had allowed.

I should of said can end in tears and not always. Always best to have an email address not tied in to your isp, in my opinion.

In reply to a post by simon194:

It's not always the case. The only email address of mine that was terminated was my NTL one which Virgin Media cancelled without warning not long after they bought NTL.

Just FYI - Virgin Media didn't buy NTL, they *are* NTL, same team. NTL merged with Telewest, and NTL:Telewest then bought Virgin Mobile.