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This model is sadly now generally out of date for many people (including corporates).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.