Breathe Email addresses - £20/year to non-subscribers

Stuart_W

For the few of us out there with old email addresses with one of the many many long list of companies that have ended up as part of Breathe I thought a heads upon their new emails plans was needed.

If you have an email account - such as @macunlimited.com or @classicfm.net or @bushinternet.com or one of the many many other services managed by Breathe then there will be a new charge for email accounts if you are not an active subscriber to any of their ISP services (includes legacy ISP services such as Fast4)

http://www.breatheinternet.com/cmu

So my address will finally stop working after 11 years.

Jay_B_2

I've used my quista.net mail address for nearly 10 years. I'm not happy about paying £20 a year so I'm looking for another one.

Stuart_W

All email accounts operated by breathe will need to be upgraded to either use breathe as the ISP or to their £19.95/year email only package by Monday 8th December.

http://www.breatheinternet.com/cmu

mazzer12

Nice of them to send out a communication! I now cannot log on to my email address and this is linked to Ebay and loads of other sites. So I have to pay £20.00 PM for a what has been a dire service anyway? I have emailed asking for them to at least let me access my acciount so I can put an out of office on! Great customer service eh?

DatabaseError

Mazzer, how long have you been a paying customer of breath? It look, to me, that they have provided a free service for 12 years, at cost to themselves, and have now had enough. Seems fair.
A bit late now.....but get yourself a free hotmail/gmail account, or, better yet, buy a cheap domain and use their forwarding to a free account, that way, if the free account starts charging you can just forward to another one (or forward to your ISPs)

diamonds

no drama set a dial-up account & keep you e-mail !

http://www.breatheinternet.com/payg_dial

you can do this from most mobiles that have dial-up internet if your pc lacks a dial up modem ( most are broadband these days ! )

GeeAreDee

I've just effectively been forced to pay £19.95 to Breathe to obtain my emails which were previously with Netcom/Viatel and included within our business account for nothing. Whilst I have paid the annual charge it was purely to enable me to retrieve my last 2-3 months of emails and with a view to changing ISP.

When I first received Breathe’s warning that my account was now with Breathe my Outlook 2007 installation could not be made to logon even though Office 2003 & XP would work. Eventually, I had to uninstall 2007 and go back to 2003.

Fights with Viatel aside, I'm somewhat miffed with Breathe as their website is not easy to use - the normal logon says my netcomuk address is not a recognised domain(!!) - and it provides very little help. I also refuse to use their premium rate helpline although I confess the person I got through to on their national rate sales line was very helpful even though it did take a while to answer. I would add that their freephone sales number and their normal landline number do not work.

Anyway, to the point. Not wishing to go through this process again by having to change all my email contacts including the many website registrations like this which requires email addresses, I visited “order.1and1.co.uk” and setup my own domain with email.

1and1 charge £2.99 a year (currently reduced to £2.24) to host your domain plus 69p per month for email. This works out around £11 a year for your own personalised email account which won’t change assuming you renew your domain annually. This is, of course, assuming you already have an ISP for your internet connection.

I can’t help feeling I have a bargain and two fingers to Breathe and Viatel!

PS Just received my bill and it's all +VAT - still a bargain though.

Jay_B_2

I didn't pay the £19.95 but I?ve just discovered in the last two days that all my Quista e-mail can be received by Outlook Express. I can send too.
Does anybody know whats happening.

johnnybcool

I too can access my old breathe accounts again.
This is from the system status page:

20/07/2009 - Changes to some mailbox domains
What has happened to email?
Breathe have over the weekend moved customer mailboxes from one server to another for a number of different email domains that Breathe manage - we did this because previously Breathe was using the services of another company to supply you with your email at cost to ourselves: since we are able to manage this in-house however it is more prudent to move your mailboxes to our own servers.

Will there be any disruption to email delivery?
There should be no problems as a result of this with your ability to retrieve emails; 'old' emails that may still be on the original servers and that you have not yet downloaded should not be lost as we have taken steps to ensure all content is copied from the original servers.

Will my POP3 or webmail settings change?
No although you may notice that webmail looks different than it had previously.

Help! I'm missing a mailbox!
Mailboxes that had not been accessed for over three months and flagged as 'dormant' have not been setup on the new servers. If you have 'lost' a mailbox or are having problems accessing an existing mailbox please confirm the email address(es) affected and the mailbox password(s).

Posted by Network Support on 20 July 2009 at 13:10

Unfortunately all my old emails appear to be missing, but it would be nice to be able to use the email address I have had since the last century again. I just wasn't prepared to pay £20 per year for the privilege!!

carpy

i've just started getting these in my outlook inbox;

Hi!
First of all: Don't panic! Your e-mail is safe!
You have received this message because you are trying to access your fast4.net e-mail whilst you are not connected to the Internet via a valid fast4.net connection.
In order to receive your e-mail, you can do one of three things:

1. Connect to the Internet via your fast4.net subscription (0808/broadband) connection then perform a simple send/receive again.
2. If you no longer connect via your fast4.net connection you will need to signup for our 'mail only' package. This will allow you to collect your fast4.net e-mail from anywhere in the world, regardless of how you access the Internet.

In order to upgrade to our mail only option please visit My Account at www.breatheinternet.com and click on Billing at the top right of the website. Log in with your fast4.net e-mail address and password and once you have access click on Bolt-Ons in the left panel. My Account also allows you to send us a secure email and update your personal details. Information relating to your account and/or the Service will also be posted here.
The mail package is charged at £24.95 annually and will give you access to your account via both POP and webmail. However you connect to the Internet, you will be safe in the knowledge you will always have access to your fast4.net e-mail address.
If you have any further queries please log into My Account and send us an e-mail via the Contact section. Alternatively contact us on 0871 424 0185* where a member of our support team will assist you.
Kind regards,
Customer Services

• Please note calls are charged at National rate and lines are open 9am-5pm Mon-Thurs, 9am-4pm Friday
• Please do not reply to this email as this address is used for sending communications only

............................................................................................... i get one for every email i receive from my @fast4.net email account

i can still get my emails using mail2web.com and an odd time they still seem to come through to my outlook???

anyone else on a fast.net email got this the last few days?

Marcus_Hampshire

The same has just happened to me with my ...@arsenalfc.net account hosted by Breathe. I tried the dial up PAYG method but that only connected me to the internet and did not allow me email access.
I have forwarding and retrieve rules in place on my Gmail account but Breathe seemed to have closed those ports. This now leaves me in the position of having my emails held to ransom.