charges after leaving BT

johan1

Can anyone out there assist me. I have just moved from BT to talk talk and am delighted with the service. Have been with talk talk for approximately 4 weeks and yesterday received an email from BT saying that if I wanted to retain my @btinternet.com email address I had to pay BT a monthly fee. I contacted talk talk and they reassured me that they have not heard of this before. Any advice would be welcome. Don't really want to change my email address, but again, don't want to be paying BT.

Rock_Bottom

johan1 wrote: »

Can anyone out there assist me. I have just moved from BT to talk talk and am delighted with the service. Have been with talk talk for approximately 4 weeks and yesterday received an email from BT saying that if I wanted to retain my @btinternet.com email address I had to pay BT a monthly fee. I contacted talk talk and they reassured me that they have not heard of this before. Any advice would be welcome. Don't really want to change my email address, but again, don't want to be paying BT.

TalkTalk have a good email service and you can have up to 5 different usernames. BT are going down the pan.

PNPSUKNET

Why not get a hotmail address, I can understand in a way where bt are coming from after all its using their servers which cost them money.

LeeSouthEast

Why should BT let you keep the address for free after you leave? It costs them money to handle your email.

Sponge

Unfortunately, this is what usually happens when you change internet service provider. They no longer provide you with email accounts, or if they do they'll charge you. (As you've discovered.) It can be a pain if you change ISPs frequently. One way around it is to sign up to one of the webmail options that are independent to your ISP, e.g. Hotmail or Google Mail (as PNP suggested). Another option to register your own domain name and use the mail servers provided by the host, and/or start your own mail server. But the latter can be ott for many.

Recently, I had to come to terms with losing my blueyonder.co.uk email addresses (from Telewest/Virgin Media) after using them for nearly 10 years. But it wasn't too difficult to set up some live.co.uk (Hotmail) accounts for my family in advance of the loss and let people/companies know.

ihatebt_2

I would never use the email address provided to me by my ISP as when you change ISP you lose that email address. BT are right to charge you for that.

Get a free email address at Hotmail, Hushmail, inbox.com, etc.

Or you could buy your own .co.uk domain for just £3 a year, and have your own POP3 email delivered to that .co.uk domain for just £1.25 a month from www.fasthosts.co.uk. ie. [EMAIL="johan@johan1.co.uk"]johan@johan1.co.uk[/EMAIL]

You can get it a bit cheaper elsewhere, if you like phoning Indian call centres for tech support, but what the hell is £1.25 a month?

PlutoinCapricorn

Getting a Google or Hotmail address is good advice, no matter what else you have got. You can divert messages to Google.

I have not left BT (yet) but I have stopped using my dialup Internet access service. I got a BT Internet email address when I started using their dialup. I have had two emails from BT saying that my email address would be discontinued as I have lost the dialup service, but it is still working. I did consider paying, but they wanted a regular direct debit or credit card payment. I would have been happy to see the amount on my phone bill.

Just a thought: when I expected to lose my BT email, my first choice of a web-based email was Yahoo, but when I tried to create one it routed me to my BT Internet email. BT Internet is hosted by Yahoo now: could this be why I still have my BT Internet address? I am confusing myself here, I think I am trying to say that Yahoo pays BT so BT does not cancel emails?

Some people say that the BT email will still work for receiving messages, but will the Google divert still work? Some people say that sub-accounts will still work.

BT_company_representative

Hi Johan1,

The email you have received refers to the Premium Mail email service where you pay £1.50 per month to keep your email address or if you prefer you can ignore the reminder and your account will be closed.

Hope that helps

David

BT Support

espresso

BT_company_representative wrote: »

Hi Johan1,

The email you have received refers to the Premium Mail email service where you pay £1.50 per month to keep your email address or if you prefer you can ignore the reminder and your account will be closed.

Hope that helps

David

BT Support

Or you can access your BT account using dial-up every 90 days and it will stay active.